William Jackson Keighley (August 4, 1889 â June 24, 1984) was an American stage actor and Hollywood film director.
Keighley was born on August 4, 1889, in Philadelphia. He studied at the Alliance française in Paris.
After graduating from the Ludlum School of Dramatic Art, Keighley began acting at the age of 23. By the 1910s and 1920s, he was acting and directing on Broadway. With the advent of talking pictures, he relocated to Hollywood. He eventually signed with Warner Bros. He was the initial director of The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but was replaced by Michael Curtiz. During World War II, he supervised the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces.
David Lewis wrote that Keighley was a friend of Hal Wallis and "He was a rather suave man, very pleasant, with certain intellectual pretenses. He did not have the humor of a Berkeley or the talent and drive ofa Curtiz, but he was nonetheless a very acceptable director. He was known around the studio as âÂÂthe grocery man,â largely because he owned several markets. To a point this also applied to the quality of the merchandise he delivered on the screen."
He retired in 1953 at the age of 64 and moved to Paris with his wife, Genevieve Tobin. In retirement, he became a photographer. He died of a stroke in New York City.