John Farrow

Filmmakers

John Villiers Farrow, KGCHS (February 10, 1904 – January 12, 1963) was an Australian-born American film director, producer and screenwriter. In 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Wake Island, and in 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days. He had seven children by his wife, actress Maureen O’Sullivan, including actress Mia Farrow. His early writing credits include Three Weekends (1928), with Clara Bow; The Woman from Moscow (1928) with Pola Negri; The First Kiss (1928), with Fay Wray and Gary Cooper, Ladies of the Mob (1929) with Bow, Richard Arlen, Mary Alden, and Helen Lynch, The Showdown (1928), with Evelyn Brent; The Four Feathers (1929), with William Powell, Richard Arlen, Clive Brook, and Wray; The Wheel of Life (1929), A Dangerous Woman (1929), with Olga Baclanova and Clive Brook; and Wolf Song (1929) with Cooper.

He made his directorial debut with Men in Exile (1937), with Dick Purcell. His other films during this period include West of Shanghai (1937) with Boris Karloff; She Loved a Fireman (1937) with Dick Foran and Ann Sheridan; The Invisible Menace (1938), with Karloff; Little Miss Thoroughbred (1938) with John Litel and Sheridan, Peggy Ann Garner; Full Confession (1939), with Victor McLaglen, Sally Eilers, Barry Fitzgerald, and Joseph Calleia; Five Came Back (1939), with Chester Morris, Lucille Ball, Wendy Barrie, John Carradine, C. Aubrey Smith, Kent Taylor, and Patric Knowles.

Films in the 1940s include A Bill of Divorcement (1940), with Maureen O’Hara, Adolphe Menjou, and Fay Bainter; Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942), with Paul Muni, Anna Lee, Lillian Gish, Cedric Hardwicke and Robert Coote; Wake Island (1942), with Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, Macdonald Carey, Albert Dekker, Barbara Britton, and William Bendix; China (1943), with Loretta Young and Alan Ladd; You Came Along (1945), with Robert Cummings, Lizabeth Scott, and Don DeFore; California (1947), with Ray Milland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Fitzgerald; Blaze of Noon (1947), with Anne Baxter, William Holden, Sonny Tufts and Bendix; Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), with Edward G. Robinson; Beyond Glory (1948), with Ladd and Donna Reed; The Big Clock (1948), with Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, O’Sullivan, Elsa Lanchester, and Harry Morgan; Red, Hot and Blue (1949), with Betty Hutton and Victor Mature; and Alias Nick Beal (1949), with Milland, Audrey Totter, and Thomas Mitchell.

Films in the 1950s include Copper Canyon (1950), with Milland and Hedy Lamarr; Hondo (1953), with John Wayne and Geraldine Page; Plunder in the Sun (1953), with Glenn Ford, Diana Lynn, Patricia Medina, and Francis L. Sullivan; Ride, Vaquero! (1953), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Anthony Quinn, Howard Keel with Kurt Kasznar, Ted de Corsia, and Jack Elam; Botany Bay (1953), with Ladd, James Mason, and Patricia Medina; A Bullet Is Waiting (1954), with Jean Simmons, Rory Calhoun, Stephen McNally, and Brian Aherne.

His later films included The Sea Chase (1955), with Wayne, Lana Turner, David Farrar, Lyle Bettger, and Tab Hunter; Back from Eternity (1955), with Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger, Anita Ekberg, and Gene Barry; The Unholy Wife (1957), with Diana Dors, Steiger, Tom Tryon and Beulah Bondi; and John Paul Jones (1959), with Robert Stack, Marisa Pavan, Charles Coburn, Macdonald Carey, Jean-Pierre Aumont, David Farrar, Peter Cushing, Basil Sydney, and Thomas Gomez.

Each review will be linked to the title below.

(*seen originally in theaters)

(**seen rereleased in theaters)

Writer

  • White Gold (1927) – directed by William K. Howard – titles
  • The Wreck of the Hesperus (1927) – directed by Elmer Clifton – story – lost
  • A Sailor’s Sweetheart (1927) – directed by Lloyd Bacon – partially lost
  • Three Weekends (1928) – directed by Clarence G. Badger – lost
  • The Woman From Moscow (1928) – directed by Ludwig Berger – partially lost
  • The First Kiss (1928) – directed by Rowland V. Lee – lost
  • Ladies of the Mob (1928) – directed by William A. Wellman – lost
  • The Blue Danube (1928) – directed by Paul Sloane – story
  • The Showdown (1928) – directed by Victor Schertzinger – titles
  • The Bride of the Colorado (1928) – directed by Elmer Clifton – story
  • The Four Feathers (1929) – directed by Merian C. Cooper – titles
  • The Wheel of Life (1929) – directed by Victor Schertzinger – adaptation
  • A Dangerous Woman (1929) – directed by Gerald Grove & Rowland V. Lee
  • Wolf Song (1929) – directed by Victor Fleming
  • Inside the Lines (1930) – directed by Roy Pomeroy – dialogue
  • Shadow of the Law (1930) – directed by Louis J. Gasnier
  • The Bad One (1930) – directed by George Fitzmaurice – story
  • Seven Days’ Leave (1930) – directed by Richard Wallace – continuity & dialogue
  • The Common Law (1931) – directed by Paul L. Stein
  • A Woman of Experience (1931) – directed by Harry Joe Brown – dialogue & screenplay, based on his play ‘A Registered Woman’
  • The Impassive Footman (1932) – directed by Basil Dean
  • Adventures of Don Quixote (1933) – directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst – English version
  • Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – directed by Frank Lloyd – uncredited
  • Last of the Pagans (1935) – directed by Richard Thorpe – original story
  • Around the World in 80 Days (1956) – directed by Michael Anderson – co-writer

Director

  • The Spectacle Maker (1934) – also writer – short
  • Tarzan Escapes (1936) – directing credit given to Richard Thorpe – other uncredited directors: James C. McKay, George B. Seitz, & William A. Wellman
  • Men in Exile (1937)
  • She Loved a Fireman (1937)
  • West of Shanghai (1937)
  • Comet Over Broadway (1938) – directed by Bubsy Berkeley – uncredited co-director
  • Broadway Musketeers (1938)
  • My Bill (1938)
  • Little Miss Thoroughbred (1938)
  • The Invisible Menace (1938)
  • Reno (1939)
  • Full Confession (1939)
  • Five Came Back (1939)
  • Sorority House (1939)
  • Women in the Wind (1939)
  • The Saint Strikes Back (1939)
  • A Bill of Divorcement (1940)
  • Married and in Love (1940)
  • Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) – also uncredited actor
  • Wake Island (1942)
  • China (1943)
  • The Hitler Gang (1944)
  • You Came Along (1945)
  • Two Years Before the Mast (1946)
  • California (1947)
  • Blaze of Noon (1947)
  • Calcutta (1947)
  • Easy Come, Easy Go (1947)
  • Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)
  • Beyond Glory (1948)
  • The Big Clock (1948) – also producer
  • Red, Hot and Blue (1949) – also writer
  • Alias Nick Beal (1949)
  • Copper Canyon (1950)
  • Where Danger Lives (1950)
  • Red Mountain (1951) – directed by William Dieterle – uncredited assistance
  • Submarine Command (1951) – also producer
  • His Kind of Woman (1951)
  • Hondo (1953)
  • Plunder of the Sun (1953)
  • Ride, Vaquero! (1953)
  • Botany Bay (1953)
  • A Bullet Is Waiting (1954)
  • The Sea Chase (1955) – also producer
  • The Shrike (1955) – Englishman (uncredited)
  • Back from Eternity (1956) – also producer
  • The Unholy Wife (1957) – also writer, producer
  • John Paul Jones (1959) – also writer

Actor

  • King of Khyber Rifles (1953) – directed by Henry King
  • The Shrike (1955) – directed by José Ferrer
  • Forbidden Island (1959) – directed by Charles B. Griffith