Vincent Sherman, the director of numerous glossy Warner Bros. melodramas of the 1940s, died of natural causes Sunday night at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills.
Among his most important films are The Hard Way (1942), with Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie; Mr. Skeffington (1944), with Bette Davis and Claude Rains; and The Damned Don't Cry (1950) with Joan Crawford. In the 1950s, Sherman's film career was severely curtailed by the Red Scare.
On a personal level, Sherman boasted in his 1996 autobiography of having romanced Davis, Crawford, and Rita Hayworth.
Sherman would have turned 100 on July 16.