Victor Fleming

Victor Lonzo Fleming (February 23, 1889 – January 6, 1949) was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were Gone with the Wind, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director, and The Wizard of Oz (both 1939). Fleming has those same two films listed in the top 10 of the American Film Institute's 2007 AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies list. Fleming was born at the Banbury Ranch near what is now La Cañada Flintridge, California, the son of Eva (née Hartman) and William Richard Lonzo Fleming. He served in the photographic section for the United States Army during World War I, and acted as chief photographer for President Woodrow Wilson in Versailles, France. Beginning in 1918, Fleming taught at and headed Columbia University's School of Military Cinematography, training over 700 soldiers to cut, edit, shoot, develop, store and ship film; filmmakers that participated in the program included Josef von Sternberg, Ernest B. Schoedsack, and Lewis Milestone. He showed a mechanical aptitude early in life; while working as a car mechanic, he met the director Allan Dwan, who took him on as a camera assistant. He soon rose to the rank of cinematographer, working with both Dwan and D. W. Griffith, and directed his first film in 1919.