AllMovie

From Dartmouth University and New York Law School, American producer Arthur Hornblow Jr. went directly into government counterintelligence during World War One. Gravitating to playwrighting after the war, Hornblow was hired as a production supervisor for Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn (who always respected a man with several degrees attached to his name). From 1933 through 1942, Hornblow was a producer at Paramount, where among many other accomplishments he helped develop Bob Hope into a romantic lead by costarring Hope with Paulette Goddard in a trio of play adaptations: The Cat and the Canary (1939), The Ghost Breakers (1940) and Nothing But the Truth (1941). Hornblow became the first husband of film star Myrna Loy in 1936; curiously, their divorce in 1942 coincided with Hornblow's new job at MGM, Loy's home studio. While recognized as an elegant social arbiter in the Hollywood community (his parties were masterpieces of careful planning and social correctness), Hornblow was capable of acting like any unschooled "So when are you gonna finish?" producer during work hours. He so irritated director George Cukor, for example, that Cukor banned Hornblow from his set, obliging the producer to set up appointments in order to discuss business. Still, Hornblow's MGM films were among the classiest of this very classy studio: Gaslight (1944), The Hucksters (1946), The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and many others. As an independent producer in the '50s, Hornblow oversaw such projects as Oklahoma (1955) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957) -- the latter film directed by Billy Wilder, who'd been given his first opportunity to direct in the Hornblow-produced Paramount film The Major and the Minor (1942). Retiring after his final production, United Artists' War Hunt (1962) (which was also the first film of Robert Redford), Arthur Hornblow Jr. devoted his time to writing children's books in collaboration with third wife Leonara Schinasi.