Sam White was an American film producer, film director and actor. White was born in Los Angeles on October 16, 1906 to parents who had immigrated from Austria and Hungary. In 1937, he married Claretta Ellis, a studio contract dancer. They were married for 65 years until her death in 2002. For much of the 1930s, Sam White directed numerous musical sequences in films such as Roberta with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Irene Dunne; Old Man Rhythm with Betty Grable and Buddy Rogers; Top of the Town with George Murphy; and Hooray for Love, with Ann Sothern.