Famous Masons

Lloyd Bacon is probably best known for his director?s credit on such classic Warner Bros. films as ?42nd Street?, ?Footlight Parade?, ?Knute Rockne ? All American?, and ?Action in the North Atlantic?. Still, other film personalities are better remembered for these films: choreographer Busby Berkeley for the musicals, and actors Pat O?Brien, Ronald Reagan, and Humphrey Bogart for the 1940s films. Today Bacon is lost in the literature about Warner Bros.

Bacon?s most significant contribution to film history probably came during his early days at Warner Bros. as that studio pioneered new sound technology in the late 1920s. Bacon presided over several significant transitional films, none more important than ?The Singing Fool?. Although ?The Jazz Singer? usually gets credit as the first (and most important) transitional talkie, ?The Singing Fool? should receive far more credit because for more than a decade, this film stood as the highest grossing feature in Hollywood annals. As its director, Bacon was honored by the trade publication ?Film Daily? as one of the top ten directors of the 1928?29 season. As a consequence of his involvement on this and other films, Bacon established his reputation as a director who helped thrust Hollywood into an era of movies with sound.