John Malcolm Stahl (January 21 1886 – January 12 1950) was an American film director and producer.

Born in New York City, New York, he began working in the city's growing motion picture industry at a young age and directed his first silent film short in 1914. In the early 1920s Stahl signed on with Louis B. Mayer Pictures in Hollywood and in 1924 was part of the Mayer team that became MGM Studios.

In 1927, John Stahl was one of the thirty-six founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. With the industry's transition to talkies and feature-lemgth films, John Stahl successfully made the adjustment and for Universal Pictures he directed the 1934 film Magnificent Obsession and the next year Imitation of Life which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.

John Stahl continued to produce and direct major productions as well filler shorts right up to the time of his death. Some of his other notable directorial work was with The Keys of the Kingdom in 1944 and the 1945 film noir, Leave Her to Heaven with Gene Tierney who was nominated for Best Actress.

Stahl died in Hollywood in 1950 of a heart attack, aged 63, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

John Stahl was the final executive in charge of Tiffany Productions (located on the Talisman lot, later owned by Monogram Pictures), once a big fish in the pond of Poverty Row, which in those days also included Columbia Pictures. With a B-movie history dating back to the silent era and after making 70 talkies, Tiffany imploded in 1932 in the midst of the deepening Depression and ended its days grinding out so-called 'Chimp Comedies,' where chimps chewed bubble gum to dubbed actors' voices scripted to corny plots. These simian shorts were popular as filler in second run movie houses until the freakish novelty wore thin. A sad end to a studio once notable for a roster of stars that included Rex Lease, Ken Maynard, Conway Tearle, Bob Steele and 'Mae Murray'. He moved over to MGM, producing and directing the notable flop Parnell (1937), widely considered the studio's worst effort to date. Despite this, Stahl would continue in the business as a producer and director of some note until his death in 1950.