John RANDAL KLEISER , born on this date, is an American film and television director, producer, screenwriter and actor. He is best known for directing the films Grease, The Blue Lagoon, Flight of the Navigator, and White Fang.

As a freshman at the University of Southern California, he appeared in George Lucas’ student film Freiheit. (Kleiser also lived in the house that Lucas was renting at the time.) Kleiser graduated in 1968. His award-winning Master’s thesis film, the 1973 short Peege about a grandson’s bond with his ailing grandmother, launched his career and was selected for preservation by the United States Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2007. He also directed an animated short that year called Foot Fetish (which was later aired on Saturday Night Live a decade later).

Kleiser directed several television movies in the mid-1970s, including Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (1975), The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976), starring John Travolta, and the Emmy Award-winning The Gathering (1977). Kleiser was tapped to direct his first feature film, the 1978 film Grease, in large part because of Travolta’s recommendation based on their work together on The Boy in the Plastic Bubble.

Kleiser directed several more feature films, including The Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields, Summer Lovers with Daryl Hannah, Grandview, U.S.A. with Jamie Lee Curtis, Flight of the Navigator, featuring the first use of digital morphing in a film, Big Top Pee-wee, White Fang, and Honey, I Blew Up the Kid. In London, Kleiser directed the comedy Getting It Right. In 1996, he wrote and directed It’s My Party. As a writer-producer, he was responsible for the surfing film North Shore for Universal Pictures. He also directed the thriller Shadow of Doubt. In 1987, he had an agreement with upstart diversified film studio Management Company Entertainment Group to develop, direct and produce low-budget pictures that were financed by the studio, and he will shepherd indie projects of promising students and decided to build various international directors on its own.