Reginald Le Borg

Serving his apprenticeship with Austrian theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt, Vienna-born former banker Reginald LeBorg struck out on his own the 1920s as a director of European musical productions. Moving to Hollywood in the 1930s, LeBorg paid the bills with a few appearances as a movie extra, then secured work as directing MGM musical shorts; his script for the 1943 2-reeler Heavenly Music won an Academy Award. A contract director at Universal in the 1940s, LeBorg helmed several of the Inner Sanctum "B"-picture series starring Lon Chaney Jr. His best Universal effort, the whimsical comedy San Diego I Love You (1945), bears the distinction of being the only Hollywood feature film in which Buster Keaton ever smiled. From 1945 onward, LeBorg was confined to such second-string studios as Monogram (where he was principal director for the Joe Palooka series) and Lippert. He was reunited with his old friend Lon Chaney Jr. for the 1955 horror film The Black Sleep, one of LeBorg's few totally worthwhile projects of the 1950s. Reginald LeBorg spent his final years calling the shots for various TV series and for such lurid drive-in fodder as So Evil My Sister (1973).

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide