Born on July 24, 1904 in San Francisco, CA, two years before the disastrous 1906 earthquake, Delmer Daves studied law at Stanford University before becoming interested in the nascent American film industry. He first worked as a prop boy on director James Cruze's The Covered Wagon (1923). After finishing his education in law and living for awhile among Hopi and Navajo Indians, Daves continued his Hollywood apprenticeship by migrating to MGM where he spent several years working as a technical advisor on films with a college setting and as an actor in The Duke Steps Out (1929), The Bishop Murder Case (1930) and others. He also began to pen screenplays and spent the majority of his career in the 1930s as a studio contract screenwriter. Daves drafted the scripts for several films, including Dames (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Professor Beware (1938), and Love Affair (1939). Almost twenty years later Leo McCarey, director of Love Affair, would helm the nearly identical An Affair to Remember (1957), using Daves' script.

Daves penned his directorial debut in 1943 at Warner Bros. with Destination Tokyo, starring Cary Grant and John Garfield. Daves continued to cover the war with films such as The Very Thought of You (1944), Hollywood Canteen (1944) and Pride of the Marines (1945), all of which took a unique look at the war from outside the battle zone. He also made Task Force (1949), starring Gary Cooper as a naval officer trying to develop the aircraft carrier as a viable means of warfare. This solid collaboration was followed up ten years later when Daves directed Cooper in The Hanging Tree (1959). During his time at Warner Bros., Daves continued to write many of the films he directed and began to serve as a producer on some of his films through his own production company. Other notable films made during this time include perhaps his best known film, Dark Passage (1947), a Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall film noir which utilized a first-person approach much more successfully than Robert Montgomery did in Lady in the Lake (1947).

Moving to 20th Century-Fox, Daves turned a corner in 1950 by tackling the Western, a genre in which he would demonstrate his gift for emphasizing dramatic landscape with elaborate crane shots, and one that he would return to several times during his career. The critically acclaimed Broken Arrow (1950), a James Stewart Western about race relations between the Apaches and the white settlers, was a film ahead of its time because it took the point of view of the Native Americans. However, any momentum Daves earned with Broken Arrow was stalled when Fox gave him projects that did not bring out his unique talents. Films like Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953) and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) fell upon Daves' reluctant shoulders, while his contemporaries such as Anthony Mann were experiencing a new found freedom as independent producer-directors.

After Daves went freelance by the mid-1950s, he found his footing again, usually in the Western. He followed Drum Beat (1954), Jubal (1956) and The Last Wagon (1956) with perhaps his best-known Western, 3:10 to Yuma (1957), starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. (It was remade in 2007 with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale.) This suspenseful variation on High Noon (1952) is generally considered one of Daves' best films. Ironically, 3:10 to Yuma was not written by Daves; it was penned by Halsted Welles, based on a story by Elmore Leonard. Daves directed Glenn Ford again in Cowboy (1958) as a grizzled mentor to tenderfoot Jack Lemmon.

By the late 1950s, Daves had seemingly switched gears and turned his attention to soap operas. The first one, A Summer Place (1959), turned out to be the biggest hit of his career, and the beginning of not two, not three, but four pictures in a row with star Troy Donahue. The other less-successful films were Parrish (1961), Susan Slade (1961) and Rome Adventure (1962). Film historians and critics who were at least impressed with Daves' career became mystified as to why he would turn his back on Westerns, a genre he obviously excelled at, and start making romantic melodramas that were better served by directors like Douglas Sirk. Some even wondered if he was committing some form of artistic suicide. According to his son Michael Daves, Daves was suffering major heart trouble, a health problem that began in the fifties. Because of his physical maladies, Daves was forced to abandon strenuous productions, such as Westerns, and focus his attention on domestic dramas. Daves would later direct Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Hara in Spencer's Mountain (1963), which he wrote, directed, and produced. The film was based upon Earl Hamner's auto-biographical novel of the same name, and served as the basis for the popular television series The Waltons.

Daves was married to actress Mary Lawrence from 1938 through his death on August 17, 1977.

by Scott McGee