Rowland Vance Lee (September 6, 1891 – December 21, 1975) was an American film director, actor, writer, and producer.

[3] Lee had early appearances in Wild Winship's Widow (1917), Time Locks and Diamonds (1917), The Mother Instinct (1917), Polly Ann (1917), The Stainless Barrier (1917), The Maternal Spark (1917) and They're Off (1918).

[citation needed] Lee made What Ho, the Cook (1921), Money to Burn (1922), The Men of Zanzibar (1922), His Back Against the Wall (1922), A Self-Made Man (1922), Dust Flower (1922), and Mixed Faces (1922).

After Gentle Julia, Lee spent several months studying filmmaking in Europe, a practice he would continue for the next decade.

[6][7] Other credits included Havoc (1925), The Outsider (1926) (with Walter Pidgeon), and The Silver Treasure (1927), based on Nostromo by Joseph Conrad.

[17][18] Edward Small hired Lee to write and direct an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) for United Artists starring Donat; it was a huge success and ushered in a cycle of swashbuckling films.

Fox had merged to become 20th Century-Fox whose production head Darryl F. Zanuck hired Lee to direct one of the studio's first films, the biopic Cardinal Richelieu (1935) starring George Arliss.

He returned to RKO to do Powder Town (1942), then made a film for another independent producer, Benedict Bogeaus, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944).

Among the films shot there were I've Always Loved You, Strangers on a Train (1951), At Sword's Point, The Night of the Hunter (1955), Friendly Persuasion (1956),The Light in the Forest (1958) and Back Street (1961).

[25] In 1975, three months past his 84th birthday, Lee died of a heart attack at home in Palm Desert, California, having just finished writing a screenplay, a mystery called The Belt.

Portions of the ranch had begun to be developed by the late 1950s, with the Corporate Pointe industrial park among the first major projects to be built in the area.

Development continued throughout the 1960s, with much of the ranch becoming suburban single-family housing typical of the western San Fernando Valley.