American director and filmmaker Vincente Minnelli was BOTD in 1903. Born in Chicago to a theatrical family, he travelled with his parents in touring productions before settling in Ohio. After completing high school, he returned to Chicago, working as a window dresser in a department store, and later as a costumier and set designer in local theatres. He relocated to New York, directing successful musical reviews at Radio City Music Hall and on Broadway. Lured to Hollywood in the 1940s, he was offered a contract with MGM. One of this first jobs was designing a musical sequence for the Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney musical Strike Up the Band. He began a relationship with Garland, whom he directed in the 1944 musical film Meet Me In St Louis. They married in 1945 and had one child, the future singer-actress Liza Minnelli. He became one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers, celebrated for his expressive use of colour, elaborate art direction and skilful choreography of song-and-dance numbers. His musical films An American in Paris and Gigi, both won Oscars for Best Picture, with Minnelli winning Best Director for Gigi. He had success in other genres, including the family drama Father of the Bride starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor and the sultry film noir The Bad and the Beautiful with Kirk Douglas and Lana Turner. After his divorce from Garland, Minnelli married a further three times, having another daughter with his second wife. Biographers are generally agreed that he was gay or bisexual, retreating to the closet so as not to damage his Hollywood career. The queer subtext of his films has been analysed extensively by historians and academics, notably Tea and Sympathy, his 1956 drama about a young man who is “cured” of his homosexuality via an affair with a married woman. His penultimate film, the musical On a Clear Day you Can See Forever starring Barbra Streisand, was a box office failure but found a second life as a camp classic. Minnelli died in 1986, aged 83.