February 27, 1998
DGA President Jack Shea announced today that former Directors Guild President George Sidney will be the inaugural recipient of the DGA Presidents Award at the 50th Annual DGA Awards dinner on March 7 at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and Windows on the World in New York. The DGA Presidents Award can only be given by a unanimous vote of the living former DGA Presidents and the sitting President.
"On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the DGA Awards, the Guild is establishing a new award that will be given from time to time to an individual who has provided leadership and made extraordinary efforts to enhance the welfare and image of the Directors Guild of America and the motion picture industry," said Shea. "George Sidney embodies that standard perfectly and it will be with great pleasure that I join with past Guild Presidents on March 7 to present this high honor to him."
Born in New York in 1916, George Sidney began what would become his illustrious directing career as a messenger-boy for MGM Studios in 1933. By the age of eighteen he had directed twenty four Our Gang comedies, at the ripe old age of twenty he became the director of MGM's screen tests, musical numbers and second units. The studio soon elevated him to feature director, and over the fifteen year period from 1941 to 1956 he directed such classic films as As Thousands Cheer (1943), Anchors Aweigh (1945), The Three Musketeers (1948), Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Show Boat (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Young Bess (1953) and Kiss Me Kate (1953).
In the late 1950's, Harry Cohn persuaded Sidney to helm Columbia Studios, while at the same time producing and directing The Eddy Duchin Story (1956), Jeanne Eagels (1956), Pal Joey (1957) and Pepe (1960). Sidney's later films Bye Bye Birdie (1962) and Viva Las Vegas (1964) are revered to this day as cult classics.
Sidney was the thirty-sixth member of the Screen Directors' Guild and, after being nominated by John Ford, became the Guild's President in 1951, at the age of thirty four. He served as president from 1951-1959 and from 1961-1967, and his sixteen years of service in that capacity is by far the most of any DGA president. In 1959 Sidney was made an Honorary Life Member of the Directors Guild, and in 1986 he received the DGA's Robert B. Aldrich Award, given for extraordinary service to the DGA and to its membership.