John Cromwell (director)
[2] Born as Elwood Dager in Toledo, Ohio to an affluent Anglo-Scottish family, executives in the steel and iron industry, Cromwell graduated from private high school at Howe Military Academy in 1905, but never pursued higher education.
[9] In 1915, he joined the New York Repertory Company and performed in the American premieres of two George Bernard Shaw plays: Major Barbara in 1916, as character "Charles Lomax", and in a revival of Captain Brassbound's Conversion.
[13] Paramount Famous Lasky film producer B. P. Schulberg signed the 42-year-old Cromwell as a screen actor in October 1928 at the time of the industry-wide transition from silent productions to the new sound technology.
After a satisfactory début performance in the 1929 early talkie The Dummy which featured Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, Jack Oakie and ZaSu Pitts, Cromwell was invited to share directorial duties with Edward Sutherland, an experienced filmmaker.
[14][15] In a 1973 interview with Leonard Maltin, Cromwell offered a frank assessment of his difficulties adapting to the new medium as a movie director: I never got accustomed to the terrific range of the camera and what the choice of a shot can do to a scene...[though] I was always very aware of composition.
The Bancroft films include Scandal Sheet, with co-star Clive Brook, Rich Man's Folly (both 1931), an adaption of Dickens' Dombey and Son and The World and the Flesh (also 1931), a romance set in revolutionary Russia.
To him it was always just another part to play in the same old manner...[20]Cromwell made three more pictures for Paramount-Publix, all released in 1931: Scandal Sheet, with Bancroft, Unfaithful, with Ruth Chatterton and The Vice Squad with Paul Lukas and Kay Francis.
Nonetheless, Cromwell's visual compositions, along with the work of his cinematographer Edward Cronjager showcase Hepburn's "exuberant" performance, in which "her physical celebrations of the joys of life make this an eccentric and likeable film."
[33] Although film historian John Baxter considers Cromwell's adaption of W. Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage "overrated", critic Jon Hopwood posited that the director "made his name" in Hollywood with this picture.
[34][35] The film dramatizes forms of personal tyranny and obsession, in which an unsophisticated and heartless waitress, Mildred (Bette Davis) employs low-cunning to win the affection of a club-footed and self-effacing young medical student, Philip (Leslie Howard).
"—Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) [45] The last film released in 1934 directed by Cromwell was a post-WWI romantic drama The Fountain concerning an Englishwoman who must tell her devoted German husband returning from the war that she has fallen in love with her childhood sweetheart.
[47] The "restlessness and soul searching" of the expatriate wife Julie (Ann Harding) and her lover interned British flyer Lewis (Brian Aherne) is conveyed through camera movements, and with a minimum of dialogue.
[50] After his recent collaborations with Pandro S. Berman and other producers, Cromwell reunited with David O. Selznick, following him to United Artists and 20th Century Fox to make five films: Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), To Mary – with Love (1936), Banjo on My Knee (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and Algiers (1938).
But recent assessments of his work, notably such bitter late films as Caged and The Goddess, have established him as a director of substance as well as style, not merely the hired litteratuer of Paramount, RKO, or Selznick."
– Biographer Richard Koszarski from Hollywood Directors: 1914-1940[55] Selznick tasked Cromwell with filming "another marital drama" released by 20th Century Fox studios with Claire Trevor the interloper and Myrna Loy and Warner Baxter as the happy couple.
[58] Walter Brennan, was cast as the rural patriarch Newt Holley, who emerges as welcome comedy relief in a picture writes Canham where "nothing ever comes easily to the people in Cromwell's films and ambition often cloaks failure or death for commoners or even Ruritanian royalty.
Selznick was adamant about engaging directors George Cukor and Woody van Dyke to instill a sharper expressive element into the acting or to provide a more graphic presentation of the action episodes.
[67][68] Algiers (1938), Cromwell's re-make of director Julien Duvivier's French thriller Pepe Le Moko (1936), launched the Hollywood careers of two European actors: Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr.
Cromwell elicited a fine performance from Boyer as an international thief who matches wits with the local police inspector played by Joseph Calleia, attempting to lure the French fugitive from his refuge in the "Casbah", the native quarter of Algiers.
Cromwell personally contacted Conrad shortly after publication of Victory to obtain production and dramatic rights to the work, only to discover that permission had been bestowed on producer Laurence Irving and McDonald Hastings, respectively.
[86] Twenty years later, Cromwell filmed his screen version, Victory (1940), for Paramount with Fredrick March as the recluse Hendrik Heyst and Betty Field as Alma, and Cedric Hardwicke as the pathological Mr. Jones (also serving as narrator).
"[97] Selznick, dissatisfied with the screenplay written by author Margaret Buell Wilder, overhauled it to create a celebration of the American homefront as an “impregnable fortress” sustaining the US war effort.
Cromwell returned to RKO to make one of his most personally gratifying pictures, The Enchanted Cottage (1945), a remake of director John S. Robertson's 1924 silent film production, both based on Arthur Wing Pinero's 1921 play of the same name.
[104] A romantic fantasy, “handled with perception and feeling” by Cromwell, tells the story (presented in flashbacks) of a disfigured combat veteran Robert Young returning from the Second World War and an "ugly duckling" maiden Dorothy McGuire, who marry and together discover the transformative power of love.
[109][110] RKO assigned Cromwell the drama Night Song (1948) starring Dana Andrews and Merle Oberon concerning a wealthy society woman who strives to advance the career of a blind pianist.
Men are seen as woman's downfall; harsh treatment in prison brutalizes them; official indifference and chicanery prevents liberal aid; and their corruption is completed by their contact with the hardened criminals who are themselves victims.
[130][131] At the center of Cromwell's work—and “casting against type”—are the strong performances by Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Hope Emerson, Betty Garde and Lee Patrick, through whom he “makes his case”.
[132][133] Cromwell returned to RKO (with John Houseman producing) in the studios’ bid to duplicate the success of Caged, again a crime drama, where Dennis O'Keefe is the love object of Jane Greer and Lizabeth Scott: The Company She Keeps (1951).
[137] Cromwell's film version is a dark and pessimistic noir that parades the gangsterism of "the business corporation structure…the brainless thugs...the crooked bail bondsmen and cops and corrupt judges to the unseen 'Man' at the top."
[138] During the years of forced studio inactivity beginning in 1952, Cromwell's only engagement in Hollywood was a small acting role in Top Secret Affair (1957), directed by H.C. Potter and starring Kirk Douglas and Susan Hayward.
