American motion-picture director whose wide variety of 75 films included dramas (Little Caesar 【1930】, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang 【1932】, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo 【1944】), romances (Tugboat Annie 【1933】, Waterloo Bridge 【1940】, Random Harvest 【1942】), epics (Anthony Adverse 【1936】, Quo Vadis 【1951】), comedies (Three Men on a Horse 【1936】, Mister Roberts 【1955】), and musicals (Gold Diggers of 1933 【1933】, Lovely to Look At 【1952】, Gypsy 【1962】). He also produced several films, including the classic The Wizard of Oz (1939).

LeRoy, an impoverished youth, worked as a newsboy and then appeared in vaudeville for nine years before getting work in films from a relative, film pioneer Jesse L. Lasky, as a wardrobe handler. He worked his way up to directing his first feature, No Place to Go, in 1927. After establishing his reputation with Little Caesar, he turned out scores of films during his 41-year career. He touched the public's conscience with motion pictures decrying such brutalities as lynch mobs and savage prison conditions, and in 1946 he received a special Academy Award for the documentary The House I Live In, an indictment of intolerance. In 1957 he successfully persuaded Motion Picture Academy officials to allow the academy rather than studios to choose whether a performer should be nominated in a leading or a supporting role. A memoir, Mervyn LeRoy: Take One, written with Dick Kleiner, appeared in 1974. At the Oscar ceremonies in 1976, LeRoy received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for outstanding work as a producer.