Buffalo-born H. Bruce Humberstone was a juvenile actor and script clerk during his first few years in Hollywood. Humberstone worked in a number of capacities (grip, prop man, production assistant) on several silent westerns of the '20s, during which time he earned the nickname Lucky for reasons that he'd keep changing from interview to interview later in life. After serving time as an assistant director, Humberstone was given his first solo directing assignment with 1932's Strangers of the Evening. Exhibiting no discernible style of his own, Humberstone was able to shift from comedy to drama to melodrama with ease. During his long stay at 20th Century-Fox, he directed several of the Charlie Chan films, where he hit upon the dubious technique of keeping star Warner Oland drunk so that Oland would deliver his lines in the slow, hesitant cadence necessary for the Chan role. Humberstone's best work of the '40s include several Fox Technicolor musicals, the shadow-laden mystery meller I Wake Up Screaming (1941), and Danny Kaye's Wonder Man (1945). In the '50s, Humberstone switched his attentions to TV work, finding a few spare moments to direct some of the Tarzan theatrical programmers of the era. H. Bruce Humberstone called it quits after 1962's Madison Avenue, which he produced as well as directed.
by Hal Erickson
biography
