A onetime magazine illustrator, Harry Lachman, born LaSalle, Indiana June 29, 1886, became one of the leading European Post-Impressionist painters in the teens and twenties. By his late twenties, Lachman had established himself as an artist both in America and Europe. He exhibited in America at the National Academy of Design, New York, as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Early on in his career Lachman traveled to Europe to paint and eventually lived at various times in France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. In Europe, the painter's works were accepted at the annual Parisian Salons.

Lachman worked as a set designer with the equally artistically-inclined film maker Rex Ingram at the latter's studio in Nice, France.

At age 42, Lachman put aside his oils to become a film director in England. He came to Hollywood when signed by the Fox Studios in 1933. Lachman's most impressive American directorial projects included the elaborate Spencer Tracy vehicle "Dante's Inferno" (1935) and Laurel and Hardy's "Our Relations" (1936). Both were made in collaboration with Rudolph Mate, Lachman's favorite cinematographer.

He worked extensively at 20th Century-Fox's "B" unit, turning out several of the better Charlie Chan movies as well as the atmospheric "The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe" (1942) and horror film, "Dr. Renault's Secret" (1942).

Harry Lachman returned to painting in 1943; his works both in the field of art and the realm of cinema are still exhibited worldwide. He died on March 19, 1975.

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