During the s, he was one of the two great practitioners of economical and effective film directing at Warner Brothers studios, the other his colleague, Michael Curtiz. Perhaps his most notable achievement as a producer is the film The Wizard of Oz. LeRoy's mother was a frequent attendee at San Francisco's premier vaudeville venues, the Orpheum and the Alcazar , often socializing with the theater's personnel.
LeRoy attributed his early interest in vaudeville to "my mother's fascination with it" and to that of his cousins, Jesse L. Lasky and Blanche Lasky, vaudevillians during LeRoy's youth. LeRoy's parents separated suddenly in for reasons that were not divulged to their son. They never reunited and his father Harry raised LeRoy as a single parent.
His mother moved to Oakland, California with Percy Teeple, a travel agent and former journalist, who would later become LeRoy's stepfather after the death of Harry LeRoy in LeRoy visited his mother as a child, regarding her more as "a grandparent or a favorite aunt. The doctor who advised this procedure cautioned LeRoy's parents: "Make sure the flame is real low, however. The San Francisco earthquake and fire devastated the city when LeRoy was five-and-a-half years old.
He was sleeping in his bed on the second floor when the quake struck in the early morning causing the house to collapse. Neither LeRoy nor his father suffered serious physical injury.
His father's import-export store was completely destroyed. LeRoy retained vivid mental images of the city's devastation:. My memory is a kaleidoscope of pictures. I have always thought in visual terms and when I recall that morning of April 18, , I see a mental album of tragic pictures Reduced to virtual penury, father and son lived as displaced persons at the military-run tent city on the Presidio for the next six months.
