Bernard Durning

Bernard Joseph Durning was an American silent film director and actor who worked primarily with Lon Chaney, Dustin Farnum, and Buck Jones.

Durning was a top director of actionpacked melodramas starring Dustin Farnum and Buck Jones when William Wellman became his assistant director in 1921. Wellman called his two years with Durning the greatest school a director ever had. Wild Bill Wellman and Big Bernie Durning had wild adventures making movies, such as their film companys fight with lumberjacks up in Eureka, California, which William A. Wellman, Jr. describes in The Man and His Wings. In Wild Bill Hollywood Maverick by Todd Robinson, Wellman biographer Frank T. Thompson theorizes that Wellman may have based his 1937 classic A Star Is Born on his own relationship with Durning. Wild Bill Hollywood Maverick Quite frankly, he was my God. Wellman declared of Durning.

Source: Wikipedia