Gus Meins

Gus Meins (March 6, 1893 – August 1, 1940), born Gustave Peter Ludwig Luley, was an American film director. He was born in Frankfurt, Germany.

Career Meins started out in the ‘teens as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Evening Herald before becoming a comedy writer for Fox Film in 1919.

In the 1920s, Meins directed a number of silent short subjects film series for Universal Pictures, including the Buster Brown comedies. He is best known as senior director of Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies from 1934 to 1936, and also as director of Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland (1934). Bizarrely, the circumstances of his death in a car from suffocation were reminiscent of the demise five years earlier of comedian Thelma Todd, whom he had frequently directed.

He was interred at Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

He was generally remembered as 'a cheerful, convivial gentleman'. His son Douglas Meins (1918–1987) appeared in at least seven Republic and Warner films in the late 1930s and early 1940s; he then served in the U.S. Army Corps during World War II.

Selected filmography

Feature films: Babes in Toyland (1934), starring Laurel and Hardy His Exciting Night (1939) The Covered Trailer (1939)

ZaSu Pitts/Thelma Todd shorts: Sneak Easily (1933) Asleep in the Feet (1933) Maids à la Mode (1933) One Track Minds (1933)

Thelma Todd/Patsy Kelly shorts: Beauty and the Bus (1933) Backs to Nature (1933) Air Fright (1933) Babes in the Goods (1934) Soup and Fish (1934) Maid in Hollywood (1934) I'll Be Suing You (1934) Three Chumps Ahead (1934) One-Horse Farmers (1934) Done In Oil (1934) An All-American Toothache (1936) Hill-Tillies (1936)

Our Gang shorts:

Second Childhood (1936) The Lucky Corner (1936) Our Gang Follies of 1936 (1935) Little Sinner (1935) Little Papa (1935) Sprucin' Up (1935) Teacher's Beau (1935) Beginner's Luck (1935) Anniversary Trouble (1935) Shrimps for a Day (1934) Mama's Little Pirate (1934) Mike Fright (1934) Honky Donkey (1934) The First Round-Up (1934) For Pete's Sake! (1934) Hi'-Neighbor! (1934)