It Happens Every Spring

Lloyd Francis Bacon (December 4, 1889 – November 15, 1955) was a screen, stage, and vaudeville actor and film director. Bacon was born in San Jose California, the son of actor Frank Bacon, later the co-author and star of the long running Broadway show ‘Lightnin’ (1918), and Jennie (Weidman) Bacon. He was not related to actor Irving Bacon whom he directed in a number of his films.

Bacon started in films with Charlie Chaplin and Bronco Billy Anderson and appeared in more than 40 total. As an actor he is best known for supporting Chaplin in such films as 1915’s The Tramp, The Champion and 1917’s Easy Street.

He also directed over a hundred films between 1920 and 1955. He is best known as director of such classics as 1933’s 42nd Street, 1937’s Ever Since Eve from a screenplay by the playwright Lawrence Riley et al., 1938’s A Slight Case of Murder with Edward G. Robinson, 1939’s Invisible Stripes with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart, 1939’s The Oklahoma Kid with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, 1940’s Knute Rockne, All American with Pat O’Brien and Ronald Reagan (as “the Gipper”), 1943’s Action in the North Atlantic,¹ and 1944’s The Fighting Sullivans with Anne Baxter and Thomas Mitchell. He also directed Wake Up and Dream (1946).

At the time of his death, he was survived by numerous ex-wives, and a son (Frank, b.1937-d.2009) and a daughter (Betsey).