Hugo Fregonese

Hugo Geronimo Fregonese (April 8, 1908 in Mendoza – January 11, 1987 in Tigre) was an Argentine film director and screenwriter who worked both in Hollywood and his home country.

A former sports journalist, Fregonese attended Columbia University in 1935, and then was hired to be a technical advisor for films with Latin American themes.

By 1938, he was again living in Argentina.

There he worked as an editor, assistant director, and short film director before heading to Hollywood, where he developed much of his career as a feature film director.

He made his directorial debut in 1943.

Fregonese and actress Faith Domergue were married in secret in Ciudad Juárez on October 8, 1947, hours after she divorced bandleader Teddy Stauffer there.

In 1949, he directed Apenas un delincuente.

Their first child, Diana Maria, was born on January 1, 1949, in Buenos Aires.

Their second child, John Anthony, was born on August 22, 1951, in Los Angeles.

For directing the now-almost forgotten film My Six Convicts (1952), Fregonese was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing - Feature Film.

Most of Fregonese's American films were Westerns and crime melodramas, like Man in the Attic (1953) and Black Tuesday (1954).

He worked with renowned actors such as Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Anthony Quinn, Edward G. Robinson, Luisa Vehil, Víctor Laplace, Soledad Silveyra, Paul Naschy, and Joel McCrea.

The couple separated twice before Domergue was granted an uncontested divorce on June 24, 1958.

In his later years, Fregonese directed some pictures in Europe.

In 1971, he returned to Argentina, where he continued to make films.

While living in the city of Tigre Fregonese suffered a heart attack and died on January 17, 1987.

John, who became an urban planner, died on what would have been his mother's 94th birthday.