[1] He worked in many genres, including film noir and warfare, but he is best known for his Western movies, especially Broken Arrow (1950), The Last Wagon (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Hanging Tree (1959).

Daves worked with some of the best known players of his time including established stars like Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford, James Stewart and Richard Widmark.

[3] He tried his hand at acting and appeared in more than ten movies including The Night Flyer (1928) (produced by Cruze), The Duke Steps Out (1929) and Good News (1930).

[4] In 1943, Warner Bros asked Daves to direct Destination Tokyo, a wartime adventure film starring Cary Grant and John Garfield.

[6] After the war, Daves turned to film noir and made The Red House (1947), starring Edward G. Robinson, for Sol Lesser at United Artists.

[8] He began by directing his first Western, the critically acclaimed Broken Arrow (1950) which starred James Stewart, Debra Paget and Jeff Chandler.

[10] Newman points out that the film inspired goodwill to other Native American chiefs such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Geronimo – as a result, "it became fashionable for Westerns to be pro-Indian".

[13] Daves became a freelance director in 1954 and returned to Warners to work on Drum Beat (1954), which he wrote, directed and also co-produced with Alan Ladd, who starred in the movie.

[1][14] By this time, Daves was fed up of the "pro-Indian" fashion that he had begun, and Drum Beat was "pro-settler" with the hanging of Bronson's character in the final scene "restoring the balance".

According to one review, 3:10 to Yuma was a variation on High Noon (1952) as it "pits a farmer (Heflin) in a battle of wits with a captured killer" (Ford, cast against type as a villain) – it is a "psychological Western" that is generally considered a classic of the genre.

[1] Daves then made his last Western, The Hanging Tree (1959) starring Gary Cooper, Maria Schell and Karl Malden, with George C. Scott making his debut.

[17] He wrote, produced and directed a series of romantic dramas at Warners which all starred Troy Donahue: A Summer Place (1959), Parrish (1961), Susan Slade (1961) and Rome Adventure (1962).

[19] Kim Newman says of Daves and Anthony Mann that they were able to "ring changes" on seemingly familiar Western storylines by "playing up the psychologically acute reflections of their characters" in relation to the landscape as well as to each other.

[17] Kehr views Daves' late period romances as sharing the same virtues as his earlier action films: "characters composed with the utmost integrity and respect; a gift for creating a detailed and convincing social background; and a strong, clear narrative style that allowed him to manage a large cast of characters and several simultaneous levels of dramatic events".