The Key West Citizen

Hal Boyle

NEW YORK (AP)-It takes a real laugh master to retain the true comedy touch for three decades.

One who has never lost his skill at tickling the national funnybone is Hollywood director Leo McCarey.

"I'm accused of being the laziest man in the business," said Leo, who has a weatherbeaten face and dark snapping eyes.

"In over 30 years I've only made about 25 pictures. Some men in that time have turned out 200, or even 300."

But McCarey has won three Oscars and been nominated for two more. And his roster of films include such landmarks as "The Awful Truth," "Ruggles of Red Gap," "My Favorite Wife," "Indiscreet," "Going My Way," and "The Bells of St. Mary's."

Leo over the years has been one of Hollywood's top money earners. He has a great gift for friendship, and his friends have ranged from Jack Dempsey and the late Jack Barrymore to a host of colorful unknowns, in practically every walk of life.

An associate said this is McCarey's unspoken creed: "Never go up the hill alone."

Son of a famous West Coast boxing promoter, Leo became a lawyer and still brags he retired from active practice with a perfect record: He never won a case.

He started in pictures as a script clerk, directed a number of the Charlie Chase and Laurel and Hardy comedies. They gave him a love for pantomime that has never left him, and he still likes to write with his camera as much as his typewriter.

"Everything I do is partly visual," he remarked. "I love pantomime-I revel in it. Words are necessary, but the movies are still a very visual art. I like wherever possible to let action tell the story."

Whether he takes a writing credit or not, Leo almost always takes a firm hand in shaping the final script.

"Nobody should tell a story who is not a story teller," he said. "The writer is the story teller, and the future of movies is to have more directors who are also writers.

"I find it easier to direct characters I have created rather than those created by someone else. You know them better as people."

A stout defender of Hollywood, McCarey says its biggest need now-and always has been-fresh ideas.

"The truth is," he added, "that every time you have a novel idea, it is hard to find people willing to put their money into it - because it doesn't remind them of something else that has been successful."