Delmer Daves

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Delmer Daves (July 24, 1904 – August 17, 1977) was an American screenwriter, director, and producer.

[edit] Life and career

Born in San Francisco two years before the 1906 earthquake, Delmer Daves first pursued a career as a lawyer. While attending Stanford University he became interested in the burgeoning film industry, first working as a prop boy on the 1923 western The Covered Wagon and serving as a technical advisor on a number of films. After finishing his education in law, he continued his career in Hollywood.

After moving to Hollywood in 1928, he began his career as a screenwriter, his first credit being the "talkie" comedy So This Is College released by MGM. Through the 1930s he made a name as a successful screenplay and story writer, while moonlighting as an actor in bit parts and uncredited roles. He penned the successful Dick Powell musicals Dames, Flirtation Walk, and Page Miss Glory between 1934 and 1935. Daves largest successes of the period, however, came with 1936's The Petrified Forest 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 made his directorial debut in the Cary Grant wartime adventure Destination Tokyo in 1943. Over the course of Daves' twenty-two year career, Daves cultivated an unpretentious style, taking a relaxed approach to filming and letting its actors and screenplay drive the film. His most notable films include Dark Passage (1947), which utilized a first-person approach to great effect, the critically acclaimed Broken Arrow (1950), the taut western 3:10 to Yuma (1957), and the melodramatic A Summer Place (1959). Daves garnered a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for his work on 1958's Cowboy. Spencer's Mountain (1963), which he wrote, directed, and produced, served as the basis for the popular television series The Waltons.