GEORGE SIDNEY

'George Sidney' (October 4 1916 - May 5 2002) was a prolific American film director, who directed many notable films, mostly for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. He was born in Long Island City, New York.
Sidney got his start as an assistant at MGM until being assigned to direct the ''Our Gang'' comedies, which MGM had just acquired from Hal Roach, in 1938. Sidney, then age 21, was the youngest ''Our Gang'' senior director ever, and was only nine years older than the oldest ''Our Gang'' kid, Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer's brother Harold.
After a year of working on ''Our Gang'' shorts, Sidney moved on to the ''Crime Does Not Pay'' series. Soon, he graduated to features, directing a number of popular MGM films, many of them musicals, such as ''The Three Musketeers'' (1948), ''Annie Get Your Gun'' (1950), ''Kiss Me, Kate'', ''Show Boat'' and Elvis Presley's ''Viva Las Vegas'' (1964).
Sidney had helped MGM colleagues William Hanna and Joseph Barbera bankroll their side company Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1944, a company he remained associated with for ten years. The following year, Hanna and Barbera's Jerry Mouse appeared alongside Gene Kelly in Sidney's film ''Anchors Aweigh''; Sidney later featured images of Fred Flintstone and Huckleberry Hound in his film of ''Bye Bye Birdie'' in 1963, when the animators had moved to Screen Gems (the TV division of ''Birdie'' 's production company, Columbia Pictures).
For his work in the art of cinema, George Sidney was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He died of complications from lymphoma on May 5 2002, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the age of 85.
Motion picture actor George Sidney (1876-1945, born Samuel Greenfield) was his uncle.

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