John Cromwell (director)

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John Cromwell
Birth name Elwood Dager Cromwell
Born December 23, 1887
Toledo, Ohio, USA
Died September 26, 1979 (aged 91)
Santa Barbara, California, USA
Spouse(s) Kay Johnson (m. 1928 div. 1940s)
Alice Lindahl (m. ? div. ?)
Marie Goff (m. ? div. ?)
Ruth Nelson (m. ? div. Sep. 26, 1979)

John Cromwell (December 23, 1887 – September 26, 1979) was an American actor, producer and director.

Contents

[edit] Early Life

Born Elwood Dager Cromwell in Toledo, Ohio, he made his New York stage debut in Marian De Forest's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1912) on Broadway. It was a hit and ran for 184 performances. He then directed the play The Painted Woman (1913), which failed. Next he acted in and co-directed with Frank Craven the hit show Too Many Cooks (1914), which ran for 223 performances.

Cromwell played Charles Lomax in the original Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara (1915), about a woman of The Salvation Army, and he played the role as Capt. Kearney in the revival of Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1916). Among others, he also had a role in The Racket (1927), which ran for 119 performances. The following year while the Broadway company was playing The Racket in Los Angeles, Cromwell was signed to a Paramount Pictures contract as an actor and student director.

[edit] Career

He made his motion picture debut playing Walter Babbing in the comedy The Dummy (1929), a talkie starring Ruth Chatterton and Fredric March, with Jack Oakie, and Zasu Pitts. His work as co-director with Edward Sutherland on the musical/romance Close Harmony starring Buddy Rogers, Nancy Carroll, Harry Green, and Jack Oakie, and the musical/drama The Dance of Life (both released in 1929), was so skillful he was allowed to begin directing without collaboration, beginning with The Mighty that same year starring George Bancroft, in which he also played the part of Mr. Jamieson.

He directed Tom Sawyer (1930) starring Jackie Coogan in the title role; Sinclair Lewis's Ann Vickers (1933) starring Irene Dunne, Walter Huston, Conrad Nagel, Bruce Cabot, and Edna May Oliver; and Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (1934) starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Frances Dee.

The latter two movies were at RKO and both had censorship trouble. In the novel by Lewis, Ann Vickers is a birth control advocate and reformer who has an extramarital affair. The screenplay was finally approved by the Production Code when the studio agreed to make Vickers an unmarried woman at the time of her affair, thus eliminating the issue of adultery. The screenplay for Maugham's Of Human Bondage was unacceptable because the prostitute, Mildred Rogers (played by Davis), whom the club-footed medical student, Philip Carey (played by Howard), falls in love with, comes down with syphilis. Will Hays's office demanded that Mildred be made a waitress who comes down with TB, and that she be married to Carey's friend she cheats on him with. RKO agreed to everything to keep from having to pay a $25,000 fine.

[edit] Personal Life

Cromwell had four wives: actress Kay Johnson (married 1928-divorced); actress Alice Lindahl (divorced); actress Marie Goff (divorced); and actress Ruth Nelson (married 1946-his death 1979).

He and Kay Johnson had two sons, one of which is James Oliver Cromwell (actor James Cromwell).

[edit] Broadway

Of his Shakespearean roles on Broadway, Cromwell played the role as Paris, kinsman to the prince, in Romeo and Juliet (1935) starring Katharine Cornell, who also produced the play, and Maurice Evans, in the title roles; the role of Rosencrantz in Hamlet (1936), which was staged and produced by Guthrie McClintic (Cornell's husband, who had been married to Estelle Winwood), starring John Gielgud in the title role, Judith Anderson as Gertrude, and Lillian Gish as Ophelia; and the role of Lennox in the revival of Macbeth (1948) starring Michael Redgrave in the title role and Flora Robson as Lady Macbeth, with Julie Harris as a witch, Martin Balsam as one of the three murderers, and Beatrice Straight as Lady MacDuff.

Cromwell also appeared on Broadway in the role of Brother Martin Ladvenu in Katharine Cornell's revival of Saint Joan (1936), which was directed by Guthrie McClintic; and as Freddy Eynsford Hill in Cedric Hardwicke's revival of Pygmalion (1945) starring Gertrude Lawrence as Eliza Doolittle and Raymond Massey as Henry Higgins.

Among the other movies Cromwell directed are Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) starring Freddie Bartholomew and Dolores Costello; The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) starring Ronald Colman and Madeleine Carroll, with Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, David Niven, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; Algiers (1938) starring Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr; Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) starring Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, and Ruth Gordon; Since You Went Away (1944) starring Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, and Lionel Barrymore, with Hattie McDaniel, Agnes Moorehead, Alla Nazimova, and Keenan Wynn; Anna and the King of Siam (1946) starring Irene Dunne, Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Lee J. Cobb, and Gale Sondergaard; the film noir Dead Reckoning (1947) starring Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott; the prison drama Caged (1950) starring Eleanor Parker and Agnes Moorehead, with Ellen Corby; and the noir crime/drama The Racket (1951) starring Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, and Robert Ryan, which, incidentally, Cromwell had appeared in on Broadway and on tour.

Cromwell was president of the Screen Directors Guild from 1944 to 1946. He was blacklisted in Hollywood as a Communist from 1951 to 1958.

He was cast by Robert Altman in the role as Mr. Rose in the movie 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.

[edit] Death

John Cromwell died at age ninety-one in Santa Barbara, California. He was cremated.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] Director

[edit] Actor

[edit] Awards

[edit] Venice Film Festival

Year Result Award Category/Recipient(s)
1950 Nominated Golden Lion Award For Caged

[edit] Walk of Fame

Year Result Award Category/Recipient(s)
Unknown - Star on the Walk of Fame Motion Picture
At 6555 Hollywood Blvd.

[edit] External links

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Jack Benny
16th Academy Awards		 Oscars host
17th Academy Awards (with Bob Hope)		 Succeeded by
Bob Hope and James Stewart
18th Academy Awards
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