Vincente Minnelli

Vincente Minnelli's work sometimes began with building the set. By a note at the AFI, MGM wanted to use the Hardy family street it already had standing for Meet Me in St. Louis; the art director Jack Martin Smith and Minnelli talked the studio into having a new set built from scratch instead, and that cost 208,275 dollars. The Bad and the Beautiful opens with a telephone call: in the summary there, the actor Georgia Lorrison, the writer James Lee Bartlow and the director Fred Amiel each take a transatlantic call from the producer Jonathan Shields. Minnelli's directing credit sits on all twenty-four films here, and they fit between 1943 and 1963.