Early in his Hollywood career, Leo McCarey honed his skills by working with some of the great names of comedy, including Laurel and Hardy, W.C. Fields, and The Marx Brothers, whose 1933 classic, , McCarey directed. Later, as a writer and/or director, McCarey was responsible for a number of classic films, including , , and . McCarey's 1944 film was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven, including the first triple crown awarded to the same person for writing, producing, and directing. Its sequel, , would receive eight nominations, including Best Picture and Director. Despite all of his commercial and artistic successes, McCarey has been sadly neglected by film historians and scholars. While many of his contemporaries have been elevated to auteur status, McCarey's contributions to film have not sparked the same level of interest or esteem. Film scholar Wes Gehring seeks to rectify this with , the first full-length biography of this underappreciated artist. By exploring the director's life as filtered through his art, Gehring maintains that McCarey's films were often a reworking of his antiheroic self. In addition, the apparent diversity of his films actually represents an interrelated web of various comedy genres and a pattern of antiheroic characters and themes. The author makes the convincing case that throughout his life and career, McCarey was driven to entertain any audience, from a single person to movie millions, always trying to tell a better story. McCarey's own, long overdue story is finally revealed in this biography about one of the most fascinating figures to ever come out of the Hollywood dream factory.