Abstract from Wikipedia : Lloyd Francis Bacon (December 4, 1889 – November 15, 1955) was an American screen, stage and vaudeville actor and film director. As a director he made films in virtually all genres—westerns, musicals, comedies, gangster films, crime dramas—and was one of the directors at Warner Bros. in the 1930s who helped give that studio its reputation for gritty, fast-paced "torn from the headlines" action films.