They were the ones I saved seats for at the premieres. They were who I wanted to be. All Arthur Freed films bear his stamp. It doesn't matter who directed it or who wrote it, you could tell that Arthur Freed made it. The same is true for Joe Pasternack and Pandro Berman.
Movies are now a director's medium.
But that's a fairly recent phenomenon. It wasn't always that way. You could say the same of Steven Bochco's shows or Aaron Spelling's. On my pictures, the director is hired the same way cinematographers and writers are. They are brought on board because they have an expertise that's required.