Trivia

First person to ever win the Academy Award for Best Director.

He was Lon Chaney's first choice to direct The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923).

Many of his films combine romanticism with spirituality, or feature the lives of lovers imperiled by adversity, usually turbulent socio/political events, as for example, the First World War, the Great Depression or the rise of fascism.

To date, only one of four people to have won the Best Director Oscar more than once without any of those films having won the Oscar for Best Picture. His two wins are for 7th Heaven (1927) and Bad Girl (1931). The other three individuals are George Stevens for directing A Place in the Sun (1951) and Giant (1956), Ang Lee for directing Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012), and Alfonso Cuarón for directing Gravity (2013) and Roma (2018).

He has directed four films that have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: 7th Heaven (1927), Bad Girl (1931), A Farewell to Arms (1932) and Flirtation Walk (1934).

Noted for his technical skills. His films often had a lyrical appeal and were visually striking. He was especially effective in matching mythical subjects with innovative camera work and lighting.

Worked with a touring company, eventually graduating to acting. Entered films as an actor in westerns and comedy shorts in 1912, alternating leading roles with character parts as villains. Began to direct the following year. Borzage worked under contract at Fox, 1925-1932; at Warner Brothers (1934-1937); and at MGM (1937-1942). His films were often characterised by sentimentality and pathos.

Brother of assistant director Lew Borzage.

Interred at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA., in the Garden of Everlasting Peace.

Brother of actor Danny Borzage.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 41-47. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Directed 2 actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Janet Gaynor, Margaret Sullavan. Gaynor won, Sullavan didn't.

His father Luigi Borzaga (sic) was from Roncone in Trentino, then Austria-Hungary and his mother from Zurich, Switzerland. The family immigrated to the U.S. in Pennsylvania where his father worked as a coal miner for a time. The family then headed west to Wyoming and then to Salt Lake City where Frank was born.

Won a 1962 D.W. Griffith Award for 'outstanding contributions in the field of film direction'.

Directed two of the three films for which Janet Gaynor won the first ever Best Actress Academy Award for, 7th Heaven (1927) and Street Angel (1928).

He separated from his wife in 1940. They divorced in 1941.

Was a licensed pilot.

He has directed three films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Humoresque (1920), The Lady (1925) and 7th Heaven (1927).

His father, Luigi Borzaga, was a stone mason who was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles in 1934.

In 1936, the press announced that George Beranger, Borzage, Malcolm St. Clair, Tom Brown, Alan Mowbray,Henry Mollison, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, and Boyd Martin of the Louisville Courier-Journal were selected to attend a dinner held in honor of D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett.