Edward Dmytryk

A teen runaway who got a job at Famous Players-Lasky through a boys' club he belonged to, Edward Dmytryk began in the film industry as an office boy, learned film splicing and also worked as a projectionist. A very bright boy, he left film to attend Cal Tech, but dropped out after a year and returned to his old studio, now Paramount Pictures, and before long became an editor there. Between 1930 and 1940 Dmytryk edited such well-remembered efforts as "Million Dollar Legs" (1932), "Belle of the Nineties" (1934), "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1935) and "Love Affair" (1939). Despite a one-shot try at directing in 1935 with the independently made "The Hawk", done as a favor for a friend, Dmytryk stayed primarily in the cutting room until 1939, when he completed another "Million Dollar Legs" (no relation to the earlier film) for Paramount when the studio was unhappy with the way production was going. The eager young helmer finished on schedule and was rewarded with a handful of B-films including "Television Spy" (1939) and "Golden Gloves" (1940). Dmytryk next signed with Columbia, where he cranked out seven B-pictures and programmers in a year's time, including a very solid entry in the "Boston Blackie" series,...

A teen runaway who got a job at Famous Players-Lasky through a boys' club he belonged to, Edward Dmytryk began in the film industry as an office boy, learned film splicing and also worked as a projectionist. A very bright boy, he left film to attend Cal Tech, but dropped out after a year and returned to his old studio, now Paramount Pictures, and before long became an editor there. Between 1930 and 1940 Dmytryk edited such well-remembered efforts as "Million Dollar Legs" (1932), "Belle of the Nineties" (1934), "Ruggles of Red Gap" (1935) and "Love Affair" (1939).

Despite a one-shot try at directing in 1935 with the independently made "The Hawk", done as a favor for a friend, Dmytryk stayed primarily in the cutting room until 1939, when he completed another "Million Dollar Legs" (no relation to the earlier film) for Paramount when the studio was unhappy with the way production was going. The eager young helmer finished on schedule and was rewarded with a handful of B-films including "Television Spy" (1939) and "Golden Gloves" (1940). Dmytryk next signed with Columbia, where he cranked out seven B-pictures and programmers in a year's time, including a very solid entry in the "Boston Blackie" series, "Confessions of Boston Blackie" and an atmospheric horror film with Boris Karloff, "The Devil Commands" (both 1941). Although Dmytryk has invariably been considered a smart and highly talented craftsmen rather than a bona fide "auteur", the latter film does reflect a recurring thematic preoccupation in his intriguing if highly variable output over the next 35 years: a concern with how power and hatred corrupt men and lead them to madness and self-destruction.

Dmytryk's fortunes really took an upswing when he moved to RKO in 1942 and for a time he specialized in action thrillers, typically his best genre. "Seven Miles from Alcatraz" (1942) was a taut tale of two escaped convicts, and Dmytryk enjoyed his first boxoffice smashes with two modestly budgeted potboilers, "Hitler's Children" and "Behind the Rising Sun" (both 1943). Vivid but shamelessly propagandistic exploitation fare about how Nazi Germany and Japan, respectively, abused human rights, these undeniably zippy pieces of sensationalism struck a popular chord. He continued his boxoffice if not critical success with his first A-picture, "Tender Comrade" (1943), a lachrymose Ginger Rogers vehicle about war wives with mild whiffs of the leftist rhetoric which would soon get Dmytryk into a great deal of trouble in a reactionary postwar America.

Dmytryk had entered his peak period as a filmmaker; it would prove to be brief, but memorable. He collaborated on four key films with producer Adrian Scott and screenwriter John Paxton, beginning with the marvelous "Murder, My Sweet" (1944). One of the finest and most important of film noirs, it was also a sterling adaptation of Raymond Chandler's original novel and revitalized Dick Powell's starring career. Dmytryk reteamed with Scott, Paxton and Powell for a second film that was almost as terrific, the hair-trigger thriller "Cornered" (1945), another study of deceptive surfaces and shifting loyalties, all filtered through a cynical sensibility and sharp visuals. Even Dmytryk's more routine assignments during this time came off pretty well: "Back to Bataan" (1945) was a good wartime saga, "Till the End of Time" (1946) a well-acted study of returning war veterans, and "So Well Remembered" (1947), prophetically made in England, a sincere piece of humanist socialism about a newspaper editor who helps a strike-torn town. The acclaim and popularity attending Dmytryk's every effort peaked with the award-winning "Crossfire" (1947). Along with Scott and Paxton he revamped Richard Brooks' novel "The Brick Foxhole" about a murder motivated by homophobia into one driven by anti-Semitism (to satisfy Hollywood's Production Code). Although the film's overtly didactic liberalism may seem more obvious and less impressive today, the film was especially potent for its time, a mature, skillfully shot and well-acted noir about a relevant social problem.

Dmytryk's success, however, came to an abrupt halt when hawkish fellow director Sam Wood named Dmytryk a Communist before Congress' House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Standing on his supposed Constitutional rights, he refused to answer the Committee's intrusive questions, was cited for contempt of Congress and soon found himself among the "Hollywood Ten", the first film figures blacklisted from working in their industry. Dmytryk promptly returned to England to make "Obsession" (1949), a scary psychological noir, and "Give Us This Day" (1949), one of his most personal films, a touching story of immigrants living in the tenement slums of New York in the 1920s and the price they pay while trying to achieve the "American Dream".

Ordered back to the US to renew his passport, Dmytryk was arrested and served six months in prison before he agreed to testify before HUAC and "name names". Doing so freed him and made him eligible to work again in Hollywood, though many were critical of Dmytryk for what seemed like "selling out". Although Dmytryk's actions were questionable, it should be noted that he did have a family to support and that he had long since been alienated from his Communist affiliations. The American Communist Party had of course long been a leader in the fight for unions and civil rights, but it had also turned an often blind eye toward Stalinist atrocities, and Dmytryk saw himself as suffering for a cause he no longer believed in. Producer Stanley Kramer gave him a new lease on his career with "The "The Sniper" (1952), a gripping noir about a misogynistic killer and a police lieutenant who is gradually won over to preventive social policies. Dmytryk also made the study of a Holocaust survivor, "The Juggler" (1953), the first Hollywood film shot in Israel, and capped his association with Kramer via "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), a fine, popular study of a naval officer's mental disintegration and his crew's rebellion.

Dmytryk had re-established himself and would work for another 20 years, but his track record became much more erratic, his credits alternating between adventure sagas done in by their scripts ("The Mountain" 1956; "Shalako" 1968) and overblown melodramas based on fine and trashy novels alike. "Raintree County" (1957) was splashy fun and gave Elizabeth Taylor a juicy role as a Southern belle who goes insane, but the film's length and lavishness swamped its vitality. Excess length also hurt "The Young Lions" (1958) a bit, but it was still one of the finest character studies of US and German soldiers in wartime, with Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin all in excellent form. Dmytryk briefly scored with the clever "Mirage" (1965) but he also provided memorable entertainment in a completely different way via a trilogy of camp classics: "Walk on the Wild Side" (1962), a lurid view of brothel life; "The Carpetbaggers" (1963), a Hollywood expose; and "Where Love Has Gone" (1964), a Susan Hayward-Bette Davis bitchfest. "Bluebeard" (1972), though, wasn't even good camp, and no one saw Dmytryk's last effort, "He Is My Brother" (1976).

The seasoned veteran, though, proved to be an articulate and interesting interviewee for documentary films including "Hollywood on Trial" (1976) and "50 Years of Action!" (1986) and TV documentaries including "Hollywood: The Golden Years" (1988) and "When America Trembled--Murrow/McCarthy" (1994). Dmytryk also spent time in his later years teaching at the University of Texas and published a series of books on film, including "Cinema: Concept and Practice" (1988), "On Directing" (1984) and "On Screenwriting" (1985).

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