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From his beginnings in vaudeville as an actor and song-and-dance man, Richard Thorpe entered movies in 1921 as a performer, and moved to the director's chair in comedy shorts two years later. By the second half of the decade, he was one of Hollywood's busier directors making B-westerns and comedies. He joined MGM during the mid '30s and found success again as one of the studio's more reliable directorial hands, equally adept in action thrillers (Tarzan Escapes, [1936]), comedy thrillers (The Thin Man Goes Home, [1944]), biographical drama (Carbine Williams, [1952]), and costume spectacle (Ivanhoe, [1952] -- arguably his best film), and toward the end of his career even managed to work with Elvis Presley (Fun in Acapulco, [1963]).