American film director and choreographer
Educated at USC.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1160-1164. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
Directed 3 actresses to Oscar nominations: Leslie Caron (Best Actress, Lili ), Marjorie Rambeau (Best Supporting Actress, Torch Song ), and Debbie Reynolds (Best Actress, The Unsinkable Molly Brown ).
Actor, dancer and choreographer on Broadway. Signed in 1942 by Arthur Freed for the new MGM musical unit. Worked as dance director from 1943 to 1946, then made the transition to full motion picture director, specialising in musicals and comedies. He remained at MGM in that capacity from 1947 to 1964.
Had a reputation as a womens director.
He was under contract to M-G-M, first as a choreographer and then as a director, for over 20 years and all the films he directed were made for that company except his last one, "Walk Dont Run" , which he made for Columbia. In the later days of his Metro contract, he was often called in to direct additional scenes for other peoples movies - these tended to be very unlike his own films, and included the erotic drama "Go Naked In The World", the western epic "Cimarron" and the Biblical epic "King Of Kings". All these assignments were uncredited.
Walters met his life partner, actor/agent John Darrow, in 1936 and were publicly together until Darrows death in 1980.
