by Hal Erickson
biography
Beginning his film career as an assistant to D.W. Griffith in 1912, James Flood graduated to full director at Fox studios 11 years later. Transferring to Warner Bros. in the mid-1920s, Flood specialized in such pseudo-Lubitsch frivolities as Satan in Sables (1926) and The Lady in Ermine (1927). His first talking picture was the independently produced The Swell Head (1930), a baseball picture that for various reasons was held up from release for nearly five years. Flood's career went into a slight eclipse in the sound era when he became a principal director at low-budget Tiffany Studios. James Flood remained a busy if undistinguished "B"-picture dispenser until his retirement in 1947.
