John Cromwell (director)

John Cromwell (born Elwood Dager, December 23, 1886 – September 26, 1979), was an American film and stage director and actor. His films spanned the early days of sound to 1950s film noir, when his directing career was cut short by the Hollywood blacklist.[2]

John Cromwell
Born
Elwood Dager Cromwell

(1886-12-23)December 23, 1886
Toledo, Ohio, U.S.
DiedSeptember 26, 1979(1979-09-26) (aged 92)
Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
OccupationDirector, actor
Years active1912–1978
Spouse(s)Alice Lindahl
(m. 19??; died 1918)
Marie Goff
​
(
m. 1919; div. 1921)

​
(
m. 1928; div. 1946)

​
(
m. 1947; his death 1979)
[1]
Children2, including James Cromwell


Biography

Early Life and Education

Born was Elwood Dager in Toledo, Ohio to a well-off Scottish-English family, executives in the steel and iron industry, Cromwell graduated private high school at Howe Military Academy in 1905, but never pursued a higher education.[3]

Early Acting Career, 1905-1912
John Cromwell (seated) as John Brooke with Alice Brady as Meg in the Broadway production of Little Women (1912)

Upon leaving school, Cromwell immediately began his stage career touring with stock companies in Chicago, then made his way to New York City in his early 20s. Billed as Elwood Dager in his youth, he changed his name to John Cromwell at the age of 26 following a 1912 New York stage appearance.[4]

Cromwell made his Broadway debut in the role of "John Brooke" in Little Women (1912) an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel. The production was an immediate hit and ran for 184 performances.[5]

Throughout Cromwell’s stage career, he worked in close collaboration with one of the outstanding Broadway producers of the day, William A. Brady. Indeed, virtually all of the stage productions Cromwell participated in before he began his film career were produced by Brady.[6][7] The Painted Woman (1913) marked Cromwell’s first assignment as stage director. Written by Frederic Arnold Kummer, the play closed in two days.[8] By 1914, he was acting in and co-directing productions, including "Too Many Cooks" (1914), which ran for 223 performances.[9]

In 1915 he joined the New York Repertory Company and performed in the American premieres of two George Bernard Shaw plays: Major Barbara and, in 1916, as character "Charles Lomax", and in a revival of Captain Brassbound's Conversion. Cromwell’s stage career was interrupted by a brief stint in the U.S. Army during World War I [10][11] By the 1920s he had become a respected Broadway director, often in collaboration with co-directors Frank Craven or William Brady. Cromwell. Cromwell frequently performed on stage in this period which included works by future Pulitzer-Prize-winners Sidney Howard and Robert E. Sherwood. In 1927 Cromwell directed and played the lead in the gangster drama, The Racket, with newcomer Edward G. Robinson debuting in the kind of tough guy role for which Robinson would become synonymous. [12]

In 1928, Cromwell immigrated to Hollywood to serve as a dialogue director during the movie industry’s transition to “talkies” Though Cromwell would return to Broadway in later years, his primary occupation after 1928 was as movie director. [13]

Film Career

Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky, 1929

Paramount film producer Ben Schulberg signed the 42-year-old Cromwell as a screen actor in October 1928 at the time of the industry wide transition from silent productions to the new sound technology. After a satisfactory début performance in the 1929 early talkie The Dummy with some of the most experienced movie actors of the day: Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, Jack Oakie and ZaSu Pitts, Cromwell was invited to undertake directorial duties with Edward Sutherland, an experienced filmmaker.

Though Cromwell had never served behind a camera, Paramount was eager to enlist a veteran stage director “because of their presumed knowledge in handling dialogue.” However erroneous this assumption, Cromwell and Sutherland enjoyed a productive collaboration completing two early talkies, both in 1929: Close Harmony, a jazz-band romance, and The Dance of Life, based on the George Mankers Watters play Burlesque (Sutherland’s co-direction was uncredited in The Dance of Death). Cromwell had a minor acting role in each of these productions.[14][15] In a 1973 interview with Leonard Maltin, Cromwell offered a frank assessment of his difficulties adapting to the new medium as a movie director:

“I never got accustomed to the terrific range of the camera, and what the choice of a shot can do to a scene...[though] i was always very aware of composition. I had to rely enormously on my cameraman, especially at first. I was never able to learn much about lighting because it seems to me that every cameraman I had was so different from the last in his technique that it became almost impossible to learn unless you just took out time and devoted yourself to it. So I had to be completely at their mercy...But I was very lucky. I had some wonderful cameramen—wonderful in that they never let me down...men like Jimmy Howe, Charlie Lang, Arthur Miller.”[16]

During Cromwell’s early films with Paramount-Famous Lasky, he was tasked with directing stage and film star George Bancroft, the studio’s top property. Bancroft had performed in a number successful silent films with Paramount’s rising director Josef von Sternberg, culminating in a Best Actor nomination for Bancroft in Thunderbolt (1930). The Mighty (1930) was Cromwell’s first of four pairings with Bancroft, and his first solo debut as director. [17]

On his next film, The Street of Chance, Cromwell formed a personal and professional bond with producer David O. Selznick in his first production, then an assistant to B.P. Schulberg. The picture, starring William Powell, Kay Francis and Jean Arthur, was a success at the box office.[18]

A curious coda to Cromwell’s last credited picture with Paramount-Famous Lasky entitled Seven Days Leave (1930) is that he denies directing the film. According to biographer Kingsley Canham, “Cromwell disputes the credit. Claiming he was hired to work [strictly] on dialogue... [he] in fact contributed nothing to the finished film.”[19]

Paramount-Publix, 1930-1931

In 1930, Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation changed its name to Paramount Publix Corporation because of the growing importance of the Publix Theatres,

The Texan (1930) was Cromwell's adaptation of the popular writer O. Henry’s short story “A Double-Dyed Deceiver” and starring Paramount’s rising star Gary Cooper.[20]

Paramount again enlisted actors Powell and Francis in Cromwell’s 1930 For the Defense, a legal drama involving a lawyer and his criminal fiancée. He directed the second cinematic version of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (1930) with Jackie Coogan starring as the eponymous Tom.

During 1931-1932 Cromwell fulfilled his commitments to direct Bancroft in three more films. Indeed, Cromwell had agreed to continue working with Bancroft only if Paramount arranged to let him direct Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes in an adaption of Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms, a project that never materialized.

The Bancroft films include Scandal Sheet, with co-star Clive Brook, Rich Man's Folly (1931), an adaption of Dickens’ Dombey and Son and The World and the Flesh (1931), a romance set in revolutionary Russia. Cromwell’s professional view of Bancroft’s performance in Rich Man's Folly elicited these remarks:

“[The role] should have been absolutely splendid for Bancroft except it required a consciousness of the material—of which he had none! To him it was always just another part to play in the same old manner...”[21]

Cromwell finished up 1931 with three more pictures for Paramount-Publix: Scandal Sheet, with Bancroft, Unfaithful, with Ruth Chatterton and The Vice Squad with Paul Lukas and Kay Francis.[22]

During pre-production of the 1932 The World and the Flesh, a tale of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Cromwell became disgusted with both the quality of the scenario, as well as the Paramount’s sharp curtailment in rehearsal time. Cromwell historical outlook and stage experience informed these following comments:

“The World and the Flesh was the high point of degradation from my point of view. It was such an asinine, concocted story! I had personally taken an interest in the Russian Revolution, and had heard a great deal from a journalist...Lincoln Steffens who had been in Moscow at the time it happened...And so I had an idea of what chances there were to do a real picture. Then to have this...this almost disgusting tale, the same old hash served up as a script! I made up my mind that would be the last of it, I would try to get away."[23]

In the early sound films, the studios, having experience only with dialogue-free (silent) pictures, deferred to the Broadway dialogue-savvy stage directors, like Cromwell, who they enlisted during the transition to “talkies”. In early production of For the Defense, Cromwell reports he was informed about a change in policy concerning rehearsals:

“I set up the usual rehearsal schedule [of 2 ½ weeks], but at the production meeting Schulberg said ‘We can’t have anymore rehearsals, John.’ I asked him what he meant, and he continued: ‘It’s a waste of time. The [film] directors don’t know what to do with rehearsals...’ I had noticed this too, but I had improved every minute of my time with rehearsals, so I said ‘Well, you know you don’t have to do that with me, you know I don’t waste my time.’ Schulberg replied ‘If I give you the privilege, they’ll all want it, and that will just create a situation...’”[24]

Cromwell bargained with the producer, and they agreed to trade shooting days in exchange for rehearsal days. Cromwell recalled: “I think I ended up with four days rehearsal [by] cutting two days off the shooting schedule. Incredible! I couldn’t believe it years afterwards.” [25][26]}}

RKO: 1933-1935

Cromwell’s disaffection from Paramount led him to “walk off the lot” after The World and the Flesh, and with the help of his agent Myron Selznick, he moved to RKO studios. At the time, David O. Selznick was running RKO, and Cromwell recalled his professional experience there fondly: “RKO was always an endearing place to me; it had a distinct feeling of independence and individuality it never lost…”[27]

Cromwell was initially assigned by RKO to direct “a series of soap operas and films about family strife”. Among these were his Sweepings (1933), starring Lionel Barrymore in an unusually “restrained” performance. Cromwell made a fine adaptation of a play he directed in 1926, The Silver Cord. His 1933 film adaptation concerns a young wife, Irene Dunne, who battles with her interfering mother-in-law, Laura Hope Crews. The picture, which disparaged “motherhood”, was considered audacious in its day.[28]

Cromwell finished off this series with Double Harness (1933), “a shrewd and sophisticated interior drama” with Ann Harding and William Powell.[29]

Ann Vickers (1933)

Cromwell ended 1933 filming with a controversial adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s novel Ann Vickers. Irene Dunne plays the eponymous young social reformer who exposes the degrading conditions in American prisons and has an affair with a jurist Walter Houston. Jane Murfin’s screenplay reflected the characterizations in the Sinclair novel, where Vickers is a “birth control advocate” who engages in an extramarital affair. The script drew the ire of the Production Code Administration and the Catholic Church. The Studio Relations Committee (SRC) chairman James Wingate called the script “vulgarly offensive.” The SRC, overseeing the MPPDA, demanded an overhaul of the Murfin’s script. RKO managers protested, and a compromise was reached when Dunne’s character was relieved of adultery charges by a change in her marital status. Though awarded approval, RKO’s controversial production spurred the formation of the Production Code Administration under moral crusader Joseph Breen[30][31]

Katherine Hepburn and Spitfire (1934)

Cromwell’s first two pictures of 1934 are termed “largely forgettable” according to author Micheal Barson, beginning with a “miscast” Katherine Hepburn in Spitfire.[32]

RKO’s 26-year-old Hepburn as “Spitfire” (her pejorative sobriquet) was conceived as a “character study” rather than a genuine narrative, to showcase the rising young star. Based on the play “Trigger” by Lula Vollmer, Hepburn is improbably tasked with portraying an anti-social hillbilly-tomboy and faith healer in a rural backcountry community. Cromwell admitted that he was skeptical as to Hepburn’s suitability for the part and objected to her contrived country accent.[33]

Cromwell, struggling with setting up his shots and conscious of avoiding cost overruns, disputed with Hepburn as to re-shooting of a key scene. The contretemps led to Cromwell’s emphatic rejection of her requests and the director, “who did not like the film much”, recalled that “I think those [disputes] were reflected in the picture.” Nonetheless, Cromwell’s visual compositions, along with the work of his talented cinematographer Edward Cronjager showcase Hepburn’s “exuberant” performance, in which “her physical celebrations of the joys of life make this an eccentric and likeable film.” [34]

After completing another soap opera with Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy, This Man is Mine (1934), Cromwell embarked on a film that proved to be highly offensive to the censors, but immensely popular among moviegoers: Of Human Bondage.[35]

Of Human Bondage (1934)

Though film historian John Baxter considers Cromwell’s adaption of W. Somerset Maugham’s famous novel Of Human Bondage “overrated”, critic Jon Hopwood reports the director “made his name” in Hollywood with this picture.[36][37] The film dramatizes forms of personal tyranny and obsession, in which an unsophisticated and heartless waitress, Mildred (Bette Davis)employs low-cunning to win the affection of a club-footed and self-effacing young medical student, Philip (Leslie Howard). The scenes are shot with great efficiency and effect in which “the camera movement seems to represent the emotional state of the characters.” [38] Cromwell adapted to studio budget limitations,employing the spartan interior sets to good effect in emphasizing the “unreality” of medical student’s daily routines. [39]

Bette Davis’ Mildred marks the emergence of the actress in a “breakthrough” performance and “her first truly great film role.” Davis’ rendition fully conveys “the vulgarity and venality” of the character, impressing studios executives and audiences.[40]

Like Cromwell’s 1933 Ann Vickers, Of Human Bondage was targeted for censorship by the Production Code Administration (PCA), led by Joseph Breen. The PCA demanded a number of alterations to the scenario, among them that Mildred’s diagnosis of syphilis be changed to tuberculosis, and that the coarseness of Davis’ interpretation of the “slatternly waitress” be toned down. RKO readily complied with this censorship, under threat of a $25.000 fine per violation.[41][42]

Despite Cromwell submitting to the censorship, Of Human Bondage was picketed in the major cities in the Mid-west by the Catholic Church's Legion Of Decency. Perhaps in response to the notoriety the film acquired by these demonstrations, the picture broke attendance records at Chicago’s Hippodrome Theater with hundreds of moviegoers turned away. Nationwide, the movie enjoyed a tremendous box office success.[43][44]

As to Cromwell’s successful handling of Davis’ role, he was never labelled a “woman’s director” (as were contemporary film directors George Cukor and King Vidor). His extensive experience as a stage performer endowed him a sympathy which elicited fine performances from his players, especially them women. Davis’ notable performance was an early manifestation of this salutary influence.[45][46]

"Whether by luck or design, Cromwell’s eclectic career has been redeemed by the iconographical contributions of Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Madeleine Carroll, Mary Astor, Carole Lombard... Fortunately, his formal deficiencies seldom obscure the beautiful drivers of Cromwell’s vehicles."—Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) [47]

The last film Cromwell completed in 1934 was a post-WWI romantic drama The Fountain concerning an Englishwoman who must tell her devoted German husband returning from the war that she has fallen in love with her childhood sweetheart.[48]

Film historian Kingsley Canham considers this a “key” film in Cromwell’s oeuvre, showcasing the director’s “elegance” and “assurance” in his handling of the décor and its relationship to performances. [49]

The “restlessness and soul searching” of the ex-patriot wife Julie (Ann Harding) and her lover interned British flyer Lewis (Brian Aherne) is conveyed through camera movements, and with a minimum of dialogue. The “metaphysical” nature of this romance is made explicit by Cromwell’s insertion of an excerpt from the English poet Coleridge ’s poem Dejection. Canham praises The Fountain as “undoubtedly one of Cromwell’s most outstanding achievements...”[50]

After finishing Of Human Bondage, Cromwell enjoyed a pleasant interlude making Village Tale (1935), “one of Cromwell’s favorite projects.” Comprising a series of character studies, the picture features Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and Ann Dvorak.[51] Jalna (film) and I Dream Too Much, both 1935, represent a return to Cromwell’s “soap opera” depictions of familial relations and marital strife. The director’s wife Kay Johnson was featured in Jalna and Henry Fonda starred in I Dream too Much.[52]

After his recent collaborations with a number of producers, including Pandro S. Berman, Cromwell reunited with David O. Selznick, following him to United Artists and 20th Century Fox to make five films: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), To Mary – with Love (1936), Banjo on My Knee (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and Algiers (1938). [53]

United Artists and 20th Century Fox, 1936-1939

David O. Selznick enlisted Cromwell to make a heavily invested re-make of the silent era film Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921)[54][55]

The casting of child actor Freddy Bartholomew in the title role was a masterstroke by Selznick and Cromwell’s direction showcases the “sheer professionalism” of Bartholomew’s acting abilities. Cromwell wisely selected his supporting cast from Hollywood’s renowned “English Colony” of British ex-patriots. A film that emphasizes characterization over incident, Cromwell’s handling of the camera endows the picture with a cinematic quality that avoids the impression of “filmed literature.”[56]

The first film created under Selznick’s International Pictures, Little Lord Fauntleroy was his most profitable production until his 1939 Gone With the Wind.

In 1936 Selnick tasked Cromwell with filming “another marital drama” released by 20th Century Fox studios with Claire Trevor alta s interloper and Myrna Loy and Warner Baxter as the happy couple.[57]

Banjo on My Knee (1936)

Cromwell’s next feature, Banjo on My Knee was set in the New Orleans, a comedy-of-errors interspersed with musical productions, and including a fulsome rendition of W. C. Handy's St. Louis Blues. The film bears similarities in setting and staging to director James Whale’s Show Boat released the same year.[58]

Cromwell fails to cinematic ally develop the characters of co-stars Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea and reduces the plebeian denizens of the Mississippi River Delta to caricatures.[59]

Walter Brennan, as the rural patriarch Newt Holley, emerges as welcome comedy relief in a picture where “nothing ever comes easily to the people in Cromwell’s films and ambition often cloaks failure or death for commoners or even Ruritanian royalty.”[60]

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

In reviving novelist Anthony Hope's dated swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda, David O. Selznick took a calculated risk as to popular taste. That leading man Ronald Colman was under contract to Selznick was the key factor in proceeding with the project.[61] The decision to pick John Cromwell as director was based on his demonstrated ability to handle actors, and his disciplined observance of budgetary restraints.[62]

Despite Cromwell’s skill with both male and female actors, an amusing contretemps arose during script and storyboard development. Ronald Colman (like screen actor John Barrymore) favored presenting just one facial profile to the camera to conceal his “bad side”. Co-star Madeleine Carroll soon approached Cromwell, claiming a facial defect on the same side as Colman, meaning any face-to-face on-screen close-up would put one actor at disadvantage. [63]

As director Cromwell remembered:

"I called on Jimmy Howe [the cameraman] and asked him if [Carroll] had a bad side, and he said: “You couldn’t fault her if you stood her on her head!” So I went back to her, pointing out how ridiculous it was and that we wouldn’t be able to shoot the picture if she had the same [bad] side as Colman. After that, she would not speak to me for the rest of the picture.”[64]

Despite the generally “fluid style of the finished work” the authorship of several of the action scenes remain in question. Selznick was adamant about engaging directors George Cukor and Woody van Dyke to instill a sharper expressive element into the acting or to provide a more graphic presentation of the action episodes. Cromwell’s widely recognized for his “visual elegance” may have influenced Selznick’s “poor opinion of him as an action director...”[65] Both Cukor and Van Dyke went uncredited as was customary under Director’s Guild rules.[66]

Film critic consider Cromwell’s The Prisoner of Zenda as the beginning of his “golden age” among Hollywood directors, and a production regarded as a “classic”.[67][68]

Films with Selznick and Zanuck

Cromwell was wooed by the powerful producer David O. Selznick to launch his new independent film company with Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) starring Freddie Bartholomew and Dolores Costello. He followed this with two lesser-known works for Daryl Zanuck at 20th-Century Fox, directing Myrna Loy in To Mary With Love, a portrait of a marriage tested, not by adversity but by success. Then a hillbilly musical called Banjo on My Knee (1936) starring Barbara Stanwyck with a scene-stealing Walter Brennan, set in Alabama, and worked on by William Faulkner. The final script by the soon-to-be-celebrated writer-director Nunnally Johnson was well received. Banjo on my Knee got an Oscar nomination for Sound Recording by Edmund H. Hansen.

It was Selznick's glossy The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) starring Ronald Colman and Madeleine Carroll, with Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, David Niven, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. that truly solidified Cromwell's reputation as a top Hollywood director; wildly successful at the box office, it was nominated by the Academy for Lyle Wheeler's art direction and Alfred Newman's lush score (though Selznick did bring in another director, Woody Van Dyke, to reshoot the sword fights.)[69] It also won honors for him that year at the Venice (Italy) Film Festival as Best Foreign Film. Cromwell's Algiers (1938) unveiled two exotic European imports, the debonair French actor Charles Boyer and an Austrian Jewish emigre fleeing the Nazi Anschluss named Hedy Lamarr in her Hollywood debut. The film was a near-exact remake of Julien Duvivier's 1937 French film of a gangster on the run, Pepe le Moko, this Hollywood version was produced by activist anti-fascist producer Walter Wanger and shot by James Wong Howe. Made famous by a line which never actually occurs in the film - "Come with me to the Casbah" - Algiers also garnered 4 Oscar nominations: for Boyer, supporting actor Gene Lockhart, art direction and Howe's cinematography.

In 1939, Cromwell made two back-to-back Carole Lombard pictures, first for Selznick, who paired the screwball comedian with upcoming actor Jimmy Stewart, in Made For Each Other (1939), a film that threw away Lombard's and Stewart's comedy skills on the trials of newlyweds who marry after one day, and whose baby nearly dies but is saved by a brave pilot making a treacherous flight bearing a miracle drug. The life-saving flight was a last-minute change based on producer Selznick's own white-knuckle experience when he chartered a TWA plane to fly a new serum developed in New York back to LA to save his beloved brother Myron's life. The serum was rushed to the hospital where Myron lay in a coma; the next day, he was out of danger. "This is too good to waste on Myron," Selznick cracked. "Let's put it in the picture." [70]

Lombard was then teamed with Cary Grant in RKO's In Name Only, where Grant plays an unhappily married wealthy man for whom Lombard's character, a young widow, falls but whose unloving society wife, played by Kay Francis, refuses to let him go. Carole Lombard was determined to work with Cromwell again and corralled him and Grant to team up with her. Oddly, this film also ended with a third act life-or-death medical cliffhanger, when the miserable Grant, sick with pneumonia, will die unless he has true love to live for - Lombard's. But it proved popular and turned a decent profit.

Rise of World War II

As tensions rose in Europe, Cromwell returned to his Broadway roots - and longtime friendships - by directing the film adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood's 1939 Pulitzer-prize-winning, anti-isolationist play Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) with Raymond Massey repeating his tour-de-force performance as Lincoln struggling with the decision to fight slavery, in which he had triumphed on Broadway. Gene Lockhart, and Ruth Gordon in her screen debut, starred with him, and Cromwell himself played the part of the abolitionist radical, John Brown. Once again, Cromwell's directorial skills brought his leading actor an Oscar nomination in what would be the most famous role of Massey's life, but neither Massey nor James Wong Howe, nominated for his work in the black-and-white category, won. The film also jostled with John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), covering much of the same period in Lincoln's life as in Henry Fonda's Oscar-nominated portrayal from the year before.

Cromwell's 1940 film adaptation for Paramount of Joseph Conrad's first popular novel, Victory (1915), repeated a film that had already been made in 1930 by William Wellman and, in 1915, as a silent film with Lon Chaney Jr. Cromwell's version was adapted by John Balderston, who'd written The Prisoner of Zenda, and starred Fredric March and Betty Field in a tropical psychological thriller.

Cromwell and Frederic March teamed up again in So Ends Our Night (1941), one of the most explicitly anti-Nazi films to be made in Hollywood before the United States entered the war at the end of that year. An adaptation of exiled German author Erich Maria Remarque's fourth novel Flotsam, screenwriter Talbot Jennings adapted the story from a series of magazine articles even before it came out as a novel in 1941. Producers David Loew and Albert Lewin cast Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan and Glenn Ford as three desperate German exiles trapped and on the run after being deprived of their citizenship and passports by the Nazi regime.

Since You Went Away

With war declared on December 7, 1941, Cromwell returned to a bit of on-location swashbuckling with Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942) starring Tyrone Power in one of his many costume roles and paired with rising star Gene Tierney and also featuring Frances Farmer.

But it was the war at home that inspired Cromwell's best-known and most-honoured film, the nearly three-hour-long Since You Went Away (1944) starring Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Robert Walker, and Monty Woolley, with Hattie McDaniel, Agnes Moorehead, Alla Nazimova, Lionel Barrymore and Keenan Wynn; This star-studded film portrayed an American family whose men have gone off to war - their struggles, fears and losses - and arrived in movie theaters when American women had been without their husbands, sons, and sweethearts for more than three years. It was, moreover, producer Selznick's first screen production in four years, and he both wrote the script and lavished attention on every detail, especially on the ingenue, Jennifer Jones, who was to become his second wife. A commercial as well as critical success, the film earned a million in rentals and received nine Oscar nominations - including Best Picture, virtually the entire cast and all technical credits - but winning only one, for Lee Garmes' cinematography.

Cromwell was by now president of the Screen Directors Guild, a tenure which lasted only two years (1944 to 1946) but reflects his stature in the business at the time. His next film, The Enchanted Cottage, from a play by Pinero, is a romantic fantasy, set in England, in which a disfigured war veteran, played by Robert Young, finds love with a shy, plain Dorothy Maguire, helped along by a blind composer, played by Herbert Marshall. This fragile tale was one of Cromwell's favourites, as was his next film Anna and the King of Siam (1946) a black-and-white, non-musical version of the story of the British governess and her arrogant employer, starring Irene Dunne, with a miscast Rex Harrison as the king, along with Linda Darnell, Lee J. Cobb, and Gale Sondergaard. The film won Oscars for black-and-white cinematography by Arthur Miller and again for Lyle Wheeler's art direction.

Film Noir and the Hollywood Blacklist

Cromwell's next picture, Dead Reckoning (1947), came about because Humphrey Bogart, a leading man after his triumph in Casablanca (1942), had his choice of director in his contract and expressly asked for him at Columbia Pictures, possibly because it was Cromwell who had given a very young Bogart his first break with a small stage role back in his salad days on Broadway. The film would become the first of Cromwell's "film noir" canon. Bogie plays a cynical veteran, who, despite his tough guy exterior, may or may not be being hoodwinked by femme fatale Lizabeth Scott in a baffling plot.

Cromwell came back with the harrowing women's prison drama Caged (1950) starring Eleanor Parker—who, like Bette Davis in 1934, was eager to drop her glamorous image for a meatier role. Its bitter depiction of suicide, sadism—in the form of matron Hope Emerson—head shaving, solitary confinement and brutal introduction into the hopeless underworld of women sucked into prison life again brought Oscar nominations for his cast and story. Finally, in 1951, Cromwell had the idea to resurrect the 1928 play which had made him a director and Edward G. Robinson a star, and in doing so created another noir, The Racket (1951) starring Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, and Robert Ryan.

By this point, the House Un-American Activities Committee had begun its investigation of Hollywood writers, actors and directors Communist affiliations.[71] Cromwell was blacklisted[72] in Hollywood from 1951 to 1958 for his political affiliations, which seemed primarily to consist of heading up a small group of Hollywood Democrats supporting FDR's third term - and having directed a famous film of a famous play - Abe Lincoln in Illinois - written by Roosevelt's favorite speechwriter, Robert E. Sherwood. Cromwell had a theater career which he had returned to intermittently during his film directing years, and he returned to the Broadway stage that year, winning the 1952 Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance as John Gray in Point of No Return (1951) starring Henry Fonda.

In 1958, Cromwell was removed from the blacklist and made his return to films with a scathing portrait of Hollywood and its stardom in The Goddess for Columbia. This was the first original screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky whose previous work had been for the stage, as well as the screen debut of Method actress Kim Stanley in the lead. The child star Patti Duke plays a lonely child born in poverty to a mother who doesn't want her; Kim Stanley portrays the still insecure but now alluring girl who shoots to Hollywood stardom only to find its meaningless acclaim and shallow relationships can't heal her inner wounds and in fact render her helpless and drug-dependent in the end.

As soon as it opened, Goddess was said to be based on Marilyn Monroe, then still very much alive, whose troubled on-set behavior, depressions, and drug use were beginning to intrude on her staggering fame as a sex symbol. Playwright Arthur Miller, Monroe's then-husband, objected to critics naming Monroe as the real-life model for 'The Goddess' prompting Chayefsky to insist in interviews that, indeed, she was not. Perhaps not coincidentally, Kim Stanley had, in fact, studied at the Actor's Studio when Marilyn Monroe had famously left Hollywood to study there.

The film was nominated for Original Screenplay, but Cromwell hated what was done in the cutting room, apparently by Chayefsky himself, and walked away from the picture while it was still being cut.

Cromwell's film career came to an end with two lackluster films: The Scavengers (1959), made in the Philippines, and a low-budget drama, A Matter of Morals, made in Sweden in 1961.

Life after Hollywood

Cromwell devoted the rest of his career primarily to the theater where he'd begun it. He wrote three plays, all staged in New York; starred opposite Helen Hayes in a revival of What Every Woman Knows, directed the original Broadway company of Desk Set, and eventually found artistic satisfaction in four seasons at the Tyrone Guthrie theater in Minneapolis, founded by the expatriate British director in 1963 when he, like Cromwell, had grown disenchanted with Broadway's increasing commercialism.

Cromwell was cast by Robert Altman in the role of Mr. Rose for the film 3 Women (1977) starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, and as Bishop Martin in A Wedding (1978) starring Desi Arnaz, Jr., Carol Burnett, Geraldine Chaplin, Mia Farrow, Vittorio Gassman and Lillian Gish. His wife Ruth Nelson also appeared in both those Altman films.

Personal life

Cromwell married four times. His first wife, stage actress Alice Lindahl died of influenza in 1918.[73] He and stage actress Marie Goff divorced. Cromwell next married actress Kay Johnson in 1928, divorcing in 1946). His final marriage, to actress Ruth Nelson (1947–79) lasted to his death.[1][74] Cromwell and Johnson had two sons;[75] one is actor James Cromwell.[76]

Death

He died at age 92 in Santa Barbara, California of a pulmonary embolism.[77]

Filmography
Year Title Credited as
Director Actor Role
1929 The Dummy Yes Walter Babbing (film debut)
Close Harmony Yes
The Dance of Life Yes Yes Doorkeeper
The Mighty Yes Yes Mr. Jamieson
1930 Street of Chance Yes Yes Imbrie
The Texan Yes
For the Defense Yes Yes Second Reporter At Trial
Tom Sawyer Yes
1931 Scandal Sheet Yes
Unfaithful Yes
The Vice Squad Yes
Rich Man's Folly Yes
1932 The World and the Flesh Yes
Hell's Highway Yes
1933 Sweepings Yes
The Silver Cord Yes
Double Harness Yes
Ann Vickers Yes Yes Sad-Faced Doughboy
1934 Spitfire Yes
This Man Is Mine Yes
Of Human Bondage Yes
The Fountain Yes
1935 Village Tale Yes
Jalna Yes
I Dream Too Much Yes
1936 Little Lord Fauntleroy Yes
To Mary - with Love Yes
Banjo on My Knee Yes
1937 The Prisoner of Zenda Yes
1938 Algiers Yes
1939 Made for Each Other Yes
In Name Only Yes
1940 Abe Lincoln in Illinois Yes Yes John Brown
Victory Yes
1941 So Ends Our Night Yes
1942 Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake Yes
1944 Since You Went Away Yes
1945 The Enchanted Cottage Yes
1946 Anna and the King of Siam Yes
1947 Dead Reckoning Yes
1948 Night Song Yes
1950 Caged Yes
1951 The Company She Keeps Yes Yes Policeman
The Racket Yes
1954 Producers' Showcase Yes Jim Conover
1955 Ponds Theater Yes Mr. Lattimer
1956 Studio One in Hollywood Yes Senator Harvey Rogers
1957 Top Secret Affair Yes General Daniel A. Grimshaw
1958 The Goddess Yes
1959 The Scavengers Yes
1961 A Matter of Morals Yes
1977 3 Women Yes Mr. Rose
1978 A Wedding Yes Bishop Martin (final film)

Footnotes
  1. Walling, Paula (September 7, 1947). "Sweden Can Keep Sex Films Clean". The Brisbane Sunday Mail. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  2. Canham, 1976 p. 60: Given name, stage name
    Barson, Britannica: Barson reports that Cronwell’s “original name [was] Elwood Dager Cromwell”
    LoBianco, TMC: LoBianco lists his birth name as Elwood Dager John Cromwell.
  3. Canham, 1976 p. 60: Graduated from “Howe School in 1905.”
  4. Canham, 1976 p. 60: “changed his name to John Cromwell…”
  5. See IMBd
  6. LoBianco, TMC: Cromwell “worked as a theater director for the great William Brady.”
  7. Imdb Cromwell: Other Works
  8. Imdb, Other Works: The work was adapted to film in 1917 as The Slave Market
  9. LoBianco, TMC
  10. Canham, 1976 p. 60-61
  11. LoBianco, TMC: “Cromwell made history by starring as Charles Lomax in the first Broadway performance of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (1915).”
  12. Canham, 1976 p. 60-61
  13. Canham, 1976 p. 61
  14. Baxter, 1968 p. 8: The studios were hiring “playwrights...directors from New York ...all brought in to satisfy the demand for sophisticated feeling of the stage which [movie] producers imagined” film audiences would demand.
  15. Canham, 1976, p. 58-59: During the conversion to sound films “studios hired stage directors” to direct sound films, however “many [of these] new directors turned out static stage-[influenced] material that soured audiences…” And p. 116: See Cromwell roles in these films. Sutherland uncredited.
  16. Canham, 1976, p. 60
  17. Canham, 1976, p. 62
  18. Canham, 1976, p. 61: Cromwell: “David and I found we hit it off very well together. I was always a great admirer of David...” And p. 62-63: Film was a success according to Cromwell, causing “quite a stir” And Selznick’s first project.
  19. Canham, 1976, p. 117: The film today is credited to Richard Wallace (director)
  20. Canham, 1976, p.62
  21. Canham, 1976, p.63
  22. Canham, 1976, p.118
  23. Canham, 1976, p.63-64
  24. Canham, 1976, p.64
  25. Canham, 1976, p.64
  26. LoBianco, TMC: “As DeWitt Bodeen wrote in his profile of Cromwell, ‘He believed in full rehearsals with camera before any shooting took place. "For every day of full rehearsal you give me,’ he was fond of saying, ‘I'll knock off a day on the shooting schedule.’ At RKO they gave him three days for rehearsal, and he obligingly came in three days early.”
  27. Canham, 1976, p.62
  28. Canham, 1976, p.65: The film version, The Silver Cord. “...the dialogue is forceful, but not pedantic, and while one is aware of the stage origin of the material, it is not distracting…Cromwell welcomed the assignment...and felt he could pull it off better than any other director.” And: “...attacked one of the sacred cows: motherhood.”
  29. Canham, 1976, p.65
  30. Hopwood: Ann Vickers “...ran into censorship trouble…[the film] featured Irene Dunne as a reformer and birth control advocate who has a torrid extramarital affair. The novel had been condemned by the Catholic Church, and the proposed movie adaptation proved controversial. The Studio Relations Committee, headed by James Wingate (whose deputy was future Production Code Administration head Joseph Breen, a Roman Catholic intellectual) condemned the script as ‘vulgarly offensive’ before production began. The SRC, which oversaw the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's Production Code, refused to approve the script without major modifications, but RKO production chief Merian C. Cooper balked over its excessive demands. Though studio head B.B. Kahane protested the SRC's actions to MPPDA President Will Hays, the studio agreed to make "Ann Vickers' ' an unmarried woman at the time of her affair, thus eliminating adultery as an issue, and the film received a Seal of Approval. The battle over "Ann Vickers was one of the reasons the more powerful PCA was created in 1934 to take the place of the SRC.”
  31. Barson: “Sinclair Lewis’s novel about a prison reformer (Dunne) who falls in love with a progressive judge (Walter Huston),”
  32. Barson, 2019
  33. Canham, 1976, p.65-66: Canham’s description of her screen character. And: Cromwell started with the conviction that “Hepburn was totally unsuited to the part.” And: Hepburn plays a “witch-healer cum outcast.” And: p. 67 “The narrative is unimportant.”
  34. Canham, 1976, p.65-68: See thumbnail sketch on Spitfire regarding Hepburn character and Cromwell. And: “...an eccentric and likeable film.”
  35. Barson, 2019: This Man of Mine “...a soap opera…”
    Canham, 1976, p.121: This Man Is Mine “a romantic comedy-drama with [Dunne] winning back philandering husband [Bellamy] from seductress.”
    Hopwood, IMBd: Ann Vickers and Of Human Bondage controversy and success discussed at length by Hopwood. See link in Sources
  36. Baxter, 1970
  37. Hopwood, IMBd
  38. Canham, 1976, p. 68: ...”various forms of tyranny…” And p.72-73: On film technique. And p. 74: Philip’s “obsession with Mildred…”
  39. Canham, 1976, p.73
  40. Barston, 2019: “The acclaimed drama was especially notable for a breakthrough performance by Bette Davis.”
    LoBianca, TMC “Of Human Bondage gave Bette Davis her first truly great film role and cemented her reputation as a powerful actress.
    Canham, 1976, p. 75: On “vulgarity” And p.122: “...one of Bette Davis’ first important roles…”
    TSPDT: “It was [Cromwell] who gave Bette Davis her first meaty part in Of Human Bondage…” Quoting Ronald Bergan (A-Z of Movie Directors, 1983)
  41. Hopwood, IMBd: “Joseph Breen, now head of the PCA, warned that the script for W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage" was "highly offensive" because the prostitute "Mildred"... comes down with syphilis. Breen demanded that Mildred be turned into less of a tramp, that she be afflicted with tuberculosis rather than syphilis and that she be married to Carey's friend whom she cheats on him with. RKO gave in on every point, as the PCA, unlike the SRC, had the ability to levy a $25,000 fine for violations of the Production Code.
  42. Canham, 1976, p. 122: “...slatternly waitress...”
  43. Hopwood, IMDb: “...chapters of the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency condemned the film in Chicago, Detroit, Omaha and Pittsburgh. Despite a picket line manned by local priests in Chicago, Cromwell's film broke all records at the [Chicago] Hippodrome Theater when it played there in August 1934. Five hundred people had to be turned away opening night. It seemed that wherever the Legion of Decency had condemned the film, it played to capacity crowds.”
  44. LoBianca, TMC: “The film was a smash at the box office, which was helped along by Davis' performance, the censors who objected to the risqué storyline and the priests who picketed the film outside the theaters where it was shown.
  45. LoBianco, TMC: “Unlike many directors who worked well with women, he was not stereotyped as a 'woman's director...[d]uring the 1930s Cromwell's films were highly successful in part because of his ability to get great performances out of actresses.”
  46. TSPDT: “...as an actor himself, [Cromwell] developed a reputation in the 1930s as one of Hollywood's finest and most sympathetic women's directors.”
  47. TSPDT, Date Unk.
  48. Canham, 1976, p. 122
  49. Canham, 1976, p. 68-69: “The sensitivity and low-keyed nature of the direction and the leading performances are aided by some beautifully composed soft-focus photography and a surprisingly non-verbal script...”
  50. Canham, 1976 p. 72
  51. Canham, 1976, p. 122
  52. Canham, 1976, p. 75-76, p. 122
  53. Canham, 1976, p. 76, p. 123-125
  54. Canham, 1976, p. 76
  55. Barson, 2019: “David O. Selznick, who had formed his own production company, hired Cromwell to direct Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), a tasteful treatment of the popular novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett; the family drama starred Freddie Bartholomew and Mickey Rooney.”
  56. Canham, 1976 p. 76-77: Cromwell’s “eye for correct casting” and the English Colony” providing a “strong presence” in the film. And: “Cromwell’s...success in obtaining such a winning and confident performance from young Freddie Bartholomew…” And p. 78: “...a well-balanced, unsophisticated work [with] a fluid camera style…”
  57. Canham, 1976 p. 123
  58. Canham, 1976 p. 78: The film “...displaying a strong visual likeness to several number in Show Boat with the staging…”
  59. Canham, 1976 p. 79-80: “The river people are caricatures in the scenes depicting their distrust of land folk, and their cabaret appearances come over as freak shows rather than an expression of any genuine feeling for them. Camera movement is inhibited apart from an occasional pan or tracking shot...Pearl [Stanwyck] is confined to suffering [and her acting] falls in line with other Cromwell heroines who are losers...Ernie [McCrea] [expresses] a strong bull-headed male chauvinism…”
  60. Canham, 1976 p. 78-79: “The leisurely plot development offers ample scope to the comic antics of Walter Brennan.” And p. 80: “...Brennan steals the honors..” in the film.
  61. Canham, 1976 p. 80: Selznick would not have made the film without Colman.
  62. Canham, 1976 p. 80: That Cromwell worked within budget “endeared him to Selznick.”
  63. Canham, 1976 p. 80: The conflict exacerbated as already “strained” relationship between Cromwell and Carroll.
  64. Canham, 1976 p. 80-81
  65. Canham, 1976 p. 82: “The action scenes raise the question of authorship.” And: See Cukor’s handling of Carroll that “not in keeping with her gentle tone” under Cromwell’s direction. And see p. 82-84 on descriptions of Cromwell’s scenes that belie Selznick’s view, and more on Cromwell’s “elegance and style…”
  66. Canham, 1976 p. 125: “George Cukor and Woody van Dyke uncredited...”
  67. Barson, 2019
  68. LoBianca, TMC
  69. Behlmer, Rudy, ed. (1972). Memo From David O. Selznick. New York: Viking Press. p. 115.
  70. Thomas, Bob (1970). Selznick. Garden City NY: Doubleday & Company. p. 112.
  71. Robert E. Sherwood - the playwright in Peace and War, by Harriet Alonso, U. of Mass. Press, 2007, pp. 301-308
  72. "John Cromwell - Director - Films as Director:, Other Films:, Publications". filmreference.com.
  73. "Ban Is Lifted - - Theaters Re-Open This Week in Dayton to Stay Open". Dayton Daily News. November 3, 1918. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  74. "Obituaries: John Cromwell". Variety. October 3, 1979. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  75. Moore, Charles R. (October 9, 1941). "Hollywood Film Shop". The Clinton Journal and Public. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  76. Lumenick, Lou (February 22, 2007). "Father's Footsteps". New York Post. Archived from the original on August 3, 2019. Retrieved May 26, 2020. [Actor James] Cromwell's mother, Kay Johnson, was a star of early talkies.... His father, John Cromwell, directed such Golden Age classics as Of Human Bondage....
  77. http://projects.latimes.com/hollywood/star-walk/john-cromwell/

References
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.