Long neglected by film historians, Mitchell Leisen and his oeuvre have undergone a reexamination in the last decade and his reputation as a director has been raised somewhat. While he is not on par with contemporaries like Lubitsch or Sturges, he did helm a handful of motion pictures that have withstood the test of time. In the 1930s, he excelled at screwball comedies and in the 40s with so-called "women's pictures". By the waning days of his career, though, Leisen had directed more than a few oddities and although he proved a capable craftsman for the small screen, his earlier work was relegated to footnotes, partly because the director was less of a maverick than his more lionized brethren. Yet, at the height of his prowess, Leisen utilized the ironic sensibility and cynical tone of the Paramount film as counterpoint to the sentimental strains of the scripts like "Death Takes a Holiday" (1934), "Swing High, Swing Low" (1937), "Hold Back the Dawn" (1941) and "To Each His Own" (1946).

Born in Minnesota, James Mitchell Leisen was raised in St. Louis, Missouri by his mother and stepfather. At age five, he underwent surgery to correct a club foot which left him with a slight but permanent limp. Much of his childhood was spent in isolation, during which he amused himself by crafting models of buildings. His mother and stepfather became concerned over his "unmanly" pursuits and sent him to military school. In his adult life, Leisen was a bisexual and that separateness informs some of his best work.

Trained as an architect, Leisen moved to Chicago after college to work for a design firm. In his spare time, he pursued acting at a local theater company. As Hollywood was experiencing a shortage of leading men because of WWI, he headed west around 1918 to try his luck. While finding work before the camera proved difficult (he landed one bit part), Leisen found success designing sets for the Hollywood Community Theatre. That in turn led to an introduction to Cecil B DeMille. After viewing preliminary costume sketches, DeMille offered him a contract, with "Male and Female" (1919) marking their first collaboration. Leisen spent two years toiling for DeMille, moving up to working as a set dresser and art director, reportedly doing uncredited work on DeMille's 1923 silent version of "The Ten Commandments". Because of constant clashes with DeMille, though, he quit in 1922 to join United Artists where he created period costumes for such Douglas Fairbanks Sr. vehicles as "Robin Hood" (1922) and "The Thief of Bagdad" (1924).

When DeMille launched his own production company in 1925, he lured Leisen back in the capacity of art director. The next seven years proved to be an important training ground for the designer and he often credited DeMille with teaching him everything he could about making motion pictures. Leisen crafted the detailed decor for such films as "The Volga Boatman" (1926), Lois Weber's "The Angel of Broadway" (1927), DeMille's biblical epic "King of Kings" (also 1927), "Chicago" (1928) and "Dynamite" (1929). For the latter, he earned a Best Art Direction Oscar nomination but more importantly served as an assistant director to DeMille. Fulfilling double duty on such other epics as the 1931 remake of "The Squaw Man" and "The Sign of the Cross" (1932), Leisen was preparing for his own directorial career.

Moving to Paramount in 1933, Leisen was assigned as Stuart Walker's assistant on back-to-back features, "Tonight Is Ours" and "The Eagle and the Hawk", both starring Fredric March. Reportedly, Walker ceded most of the work to his assistant who rose to the challenge. While the former was a fluffy romance, the latter was a timely anti-war tale that still retains a power and resonance after more than sixty years. The studio eventually promoted Leisen to full-fledged director with "Cradle Song" (also 1933), a negligible film built around German actress Dorothea Wieck. More successful was "Death Takes a Holiday", an allegory about Death assuming human form (Fredric March) to learn about human behavior. For the female lead, Leisen tapped Evelyn Venable who had made her debut in "Cradle Song". While in its time, the film was met with a mixed reception, over time, it has come to be appreciated for its visual flair (owing to the director's background in design) and its fine acting. (The 1998 Brad Pitt film "Meet Joe Black" was "inspired" by this version.)

Also in 1934, Leisen directed the startling mixture of musical and thriller, "Murder at the Vanities". Insisting on staging the film's musical numbers in a proscenium, the director hoped to avoid the overblown spectacle favored by Busby Berkeley for a more realistic, Broadway-style. Leisen also pushed the envelope by including risque banter, simulated nudity and references to drug use. The musical set pieces are among the films highlights but the denouement falls flat. Leisen scored again with the screwball "Hands Across the Table" (1935), featuring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray as star-crossed lovers, which also marked the first of his "role-reversal" movies (to use biographer David Chierichetti's phrase) with MacMurray as the sex object and Lombard the aggressor. Contemporary reviews also noted more detailed characterizations and more complexity in Leisen's directorial style. Little of that was on view, however, in efforts like "The Big Broadcast of 1937" and "The Big Broadcast of 1938", formula entertainments populated by favorite radio personalities (i.e., Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Martha Raye). On the other hand, Leisen proved to be nearing the apex of his powers with "Swing High, Swing Low" (1937), a comedy-drama that reteamed Lombard and MacMurray in love story between a hairdresser and a trumpet player. Some historians feel Lombard gave her best performance in this often overlooked gem.

"Easy Living" (also 1937) has a better reputation more because of its screenwriter Preston Sturges then for Leisen's contributions. The film revolves around a mink coat which is discarded by a millionaire during an argument with his wife and ends up in the hands of a working woman who, in turn, is thought to be the millionaire's mistress. Unlike Leisen's other work which is more character-driven, Sturges' script is one of a true "situation" comedy. Again, 30s filmgoers were less impressed with the movie which has acquired the patina of a social comedy classic. A second teaming with Sturges as screenwriter, "Remember the Night" (1940), which also marked Leisen's producing debut, followed the relationship between a district attorney (MacMurray) and a jewel thief (Barbara Stanwyck) who reforms after spending the Christmas holidays together. Unlike "Easy Living". "Remember the Night" focused more on character and is more typical of the director's efforts.

Sandwiched between these two Sturges scripts is what some feel is Leisen's masterpiece, "Midnight" (1939). Like most of the director's best work, this film possesses an undercurrent of cynicism and bitterness overlaid with sentimentality. Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, "Midnight" is a witty comedy of mistaken identities that revolves around greedy, yet sympathetic characters. The proceedings are filtered through Leisen's sensibilities as an outsider yet are presented in a visually stunning fashion. Coming into his own as a director of actors, Leisen followed with a handful of finely performed features in the early 40s, notably "Arise My Love" (1940), set against the backdrop of Europe on the brink of war, "I Wanted Wings" (1941), with Veronica Lake making a splash in her film debut, and "Hold Back the Dawn" (also 1941). Told in flashback, "Hold Back the Dawn" was superior soap opera, recounting the tale of a shifty refugee (Charles Boyer) who marries a spinster (Olivia de Havilland) to gain American citizenship and then renews his relationship with his former mistress (Paulette Goddard). Leisen then went on to direct films of varying quality, motion pictures that had a detrimental impact on how future generations viewed his overall career. Efforts like "Lady in the Dark" (1944), "Kitty" (1946) and "Golden Earrings" (1947) possessed fine production values but suffered from bad scripts or miscast leads. On the other hand, "To Each His Own" (1946) offered Olivia de Havilland an Oscar-winning tour-de-force as an unmarried woman who gives up her child, yet remains in his life as his "aunt".

Of his remaining films, only "No Man of Her Own" (1950) is considered on par with Leisen's best work. It is a well-composed film noir that hinges on mistaken identity and blackmail and offers star Barbara Stanwyck a superlative vehicle for what she did best. "The Mating Season" (1951) similarly revolved around crossed identities but was played more for comedy and benefited from Thelma Ritter in an Oscar-nominated performance. By the mid-50s, though, Leisen found film offers to be less forthcoming. Turning to the small screen, he helmed episodes of such series as "Shirley Temple's Storybook", "Twilight Zone" and "Wagon Train" into the mid-60s despite declining health. Ironically, his last years were like his early ones, lonely and spent in relative isolation. He succumbed to heart problems in 1972, somewhat forgotten and underappreciated. It took the publication of David Chierichetti's 1973 biography to renew interest in his work and begin the reevaluation of his contribution to American filmmaking that continues to this day.