Crossfire
1947
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Edward Dmytryk (September 4, 1908 – July 1, 1999) was a Canadian-born American film director and editor. He was known for his 1940s noir films and received an Oscar nomination for Best Director for Crossfire (1947).
A lifelong political leftist who had been a Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result.
- January 1, 1
- Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada
- January 1, 1
- Encino, California, USA
Edward Dmytryk. Director: The Caine Mutiny. Edward Dmytryk grew up in San Francisco, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. After his mother died when he was 6, his strict disciplinarian father beat the boy frequently, and the child began running away while in his early teens.
- September 4, 1908
- July 1, 1999
- Overview
- Early work
- Golden era
- Blacklist and return to directing
- Later work
Edward Dmytryk, (born September 4, 1908, Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada—died July 1, 1999, Encino, California, U.S.), American motion-picture director whose notable films include Murder, My Sweet (1944), Crossfire (1947), The Caine Mutiny (1954), and The Young Lions (1958). He was one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film-industry individuals blacklisted for their alleged communist affiliations, and was its only member to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
Dmytryk was born in Canada, the son of Ukrainian immigrants. The family later moved to California, and Dmytryk became a U.S. citizen in 1939. He began his cinema career as a messenger boy at the Famous Players–Lasky studios (later Paramount) when he was 15, and with Only Saps Work (1930), he edited his first of more than 15 films. During this time ...
After Counter-Espionage (1942), his second entry in the Lone Wolf franchise, Dmytryk moved to RKO, where he would do much of his best work. Seven Miles from Alcatraz (1942) was an entertaining prison-break drama set during World War II, and The Falcon Strikes Back (1943) offered Tom Conway as an urbane detective known as the Falcon. In 1943 Dmytryk directed the propaganda pieces Hitler’s Children, a surprise box-office hit, and Behind the Rising Sun. That year he also made the cult favourite Captive Wild Woman, which featured John Carradine as a scientist trying to turn a gorilla into a woman (Acquanetta).
After proving himself in low-budget films, Dmytryk was assigned “A” productions, beginning with the sentimental Tender Comrade (1943). The drama starred Ginger Rogers as a pregnant woman whose husband (Robert Ryan) is away at war, and she and her coworkers share a communal house in an effort to conserve their resources. Although a commercial success, it was one of the pictures that HUAC later cited as evidence of Dmytryk’s and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo’s communist leanings. Next, however, the director made the acclaimed Murder, My Sweet (1944), a faithful adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely. The film noir—which starred Dick Powell as the cynical world-weary detective Philip Marlowe—is considered a classic. Dmytryk added another notable entry to the genre with Cornered (1945), in which Powell portrayed an ex-serviceman looking for his wife’s killer in Buenos Aires.
Dmytryk then helmed Back to Bataan (1945), which featured John Wayne as a U.S. Army colonel leading Filipino guerrillas during World War II, and Till the End of Time (1946), a well-acted drama starring Robert Mitchum, Guy Madison, and Bill Williams as war veterans who have trouble readjusting to life at home. In 1947 the director made what may be his best work, the noir landmark Crossfire (1947), which focused on anti-Semitism. The taut adaptation of Richard Brooks’s novel The Brick Foxhole featured Ryan as a violent bully whose impulsive murder of a Jewish civilian sets off a manhunt. Mitchum and Robert Young also starred in the drama, which received an Academy Award nomination for best picture. In addition, Dmytryk earned his first and only Oscar nod for directing.
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Dmytryk received a summons from HUAC following Crossfire’s release. After refusing to answer charges that he was a communist, he was cited for contempt of Congress and was blacklisted in 1947. The following year Dmytryk went to England and made two films there—notably Give Us This Day (1949)—before being ordered to return to the United States to renew his passport. In 1951 he served several months in prison for contempt of Congress and then made the controversial decision to cooperate with HUAC, becoming the only one of the Hollywood Ten to do so. Dmytryk admitted that he had been a member of the American Communist Party, and he gave HUAC the names of other members. Thereafter he was allowed to return to Hollywood, but his recantation was denounced by many of his colleagues.
Dmytryk’s first film after being removed from the blacklist was Mutiny (1952), a drama set during the War of 1812. Producer and director Stanley Kramer then gave him a series of low-budget productions that included The Sniper (1952); Eight Iron Men (1952), an efficient World War II tale with Arthur Franz, Lee Marvin, and Richard Kiley; and The Juggler (1953), which featured Kirk Douglas as a concentration-camp survivor who struggles with the past. Kramer then handed Dmytryk the highly desirable assignment of adapting Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize-winning best seller, The Caine Mutiny. An all-star production with Humphrey Bogart as the unstable Captain Queeg, the movie received an Oscar nomination for best picture. Dmytryk also earned praise for the western Broken Lance (1954), which starred Spencer Tracy as the megalomaniacal patriarch who finds his cattle empire and his family (Richard Widmark, Robert Wagner) disintegrating before his eyes.
With these successes, Dmytryk became a sought-after director, though little of the work that followed over the next 20 years matched what had preceded it. The End of the Affair (1955) was a middling adaptation of the Graham Greene novel, with Van Johnson and Deborah Kerr. More successful were Soldier of Fortune (1955), starring Clark Gable and Susan Hayward, and the World War II drama The Left Hand of God (1955), with Bogart as a downed American pilot impersonating a priest to escape from China and with Gene Tierney as a nurse. The disappointing The Mountain (1956) miscast Tracy with Wagner—who was some 30 years younger than his costar—as brothers.
Raintree County (1957), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, was a rambling epic about the antebellum South, and it was perhaps best remembered for a troubled production that included Clift’s being seriously injured in a car accident. In 1958, however, Dmytryk directed one of the year’s biggest hits, The Young Lions, based on Irwin Shaw’s best-selling World War II novel. Its strong cast included Marlon Brando as a sensitive Nazi officer and Dean Martin and Clift as American soldiers. The director also had success with Warlock (1959), a taut western starring Henry Fonda, Widmark, and Dorothy Malone. However, his 1959 remake of The Blue Angel, the Josef von Sternberg classic from 1930, was a critical and commercial disappointment.
In 1964 Dmytryk directed The Carpetbaggers and Where Love Has Gone, both based on unapologetically trashy best sellers by Harold Robbins. Despite all-star casts, the productions received mixed reviews, though The Carpetbaggers was a huge hit at the box office. Mirage (1965) was a respectable Hitchcockian thriller, with Gregory Peck as an amnesia victim. Less successful was Alvarez Kelly (1966), starring William Holden and Widmark as foes during the Civil War. Dmytryk’s subsequent films were largely forgettable, including Shalako (1968), a western with Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot; Anzio (1968), a World War II epic, with Ryan and Mitchum teaming for Dmytryk once again; and Bluebeard (1972; codirected with Luciano Sacripanti), a thriller starring Richard Burton. In 1975 Dmytryk directed his last feature film, The Human Factor.
Dmytryk then taught filmmaking at the University of Texas and at the University of Southern California, and he wrote On Screen Directing (1984). His other books include the autobiographies It’s a Hell of a Life, but Not a Bad Living (1978) and Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten (1996), in which Dmytryk recounted his involvement in the Communist Party and his role in the HUAC hearings.
- Michael Barson
Jul 3, 1999 · Edward Dmytryk, the versatile director whose best films were taut, realistic and at times explosive and who, as one of the ''Hollywood 10,'' was jailed for refusing to tell a Congressional...
Edward Dmytryk (September 4, 1908 – July 1, 1999) was an American film director who was amongst the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy-era 'red scare'.
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Jul 2, 1999 · Edward Dmytryk, film director: born Grand Forks, British Columbia 4 September 1908; twice married (one son, two daughters); died Los Angeles 1 July 1999.
