A onetime magazine illustrator, Indiana-born Harry Lachman became one of the leading European postimpressionist painters in the teens and twenties. Lachman worked as set designer with the equally artistically inclined filmmaker Rex Ingram at the latter's studio in Nice, France. At age 42, Lachman put aside his oils to become a film director in England. He came to Hollywood when signed by the Fox Studios in 1933. Lachman's most impressive American directorial projects included the elaborate Spencer Tracy vehicle Dante's Inferno (1935) and Laurel and Hardy's Our Relations (1936); both were made in collaboration with Rudolph Mate, Lachman's favorite cinematographer. He worked extensively at 20th Century-Fox's "B" unit, turning out several of the better Charlie Chan programmers as well as the atmospheric The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe (1942) and Dr. Renault's Secret (1942). Harry Lachman returned to painting in 1943; his works both in the field of art and the realm of cinema are still exhibited worldwide.
by Hal Erickson
biography
