John Farrow

This article is about film director. For other uses, see John Farrow (disambiguation).

John Farrow
Born	John Villiers Farrow 10 February 1904(1904-02-10) Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Died	27 January 1963(1963-01-27) (aged 58) Beverly Hills, California, United States
Occupation	Actor director, producer and screenwriter
Years active	1927-62
Spouse	Felice Lewin Maureen O'Sullivan (1936-1963) (his death) 7 children

John Villiers Farrow, CBE KGCHS (10 February 1904 – 27 January 1963) was an Australian-born American film director, producer and screenwriter. In 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Writing/Best Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days and in 1942 he was nominated as Best Director for Wake Island.

Biography

Early Life

Farrow was born in Sydney, Australia, the son of Lucy Villiers (née Savage), a dressmaker, and Joseph Farrow, a tailor's trimmer. He was educated at Newtown Public School and Fort Street Boys' High School, then passed the exams to get into the Australian Naval College at aged 12. However Farrow claims the Navy was downsizing and demobilising so decided to join the Merchant Service as a cadet instead. He travelled throughout the Pacific, including New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii and Canada. He later claimed to have fought in battles in Nicaragua and Mexico. He studied at St Ignatius College at the University of San Francisco in 1923 for one month, and resumed his travels.

Writing Career

Farrow started writing while working as a sailor and became interested in screenwriting after meeting Robert Flaherty. In 1927 it was reported he was working on a story called The Blue Danube, set in Austria.

Farrow returned to the US in 1927 and began working in Hollywood as a technical adviser on ship-related movies. He soon established himself as a notable screenwriter. He worked for DeMille Productions, Paramount Pictures Inc. and RKO Radio Pictures Inc. He also compiled an English-French-Tahitian dictionary and wrote a novel, Laughter Ends (1933), In 1932 he went to England where he worked as a writer and assistant director on a film of Don Quixote, and briefly visited Tahiti again.

Farrow returned to Hollywood and re-established himself as a screenwriter. On 27 January 1933 he was arrested while dancing at the Coconut Grove nightclub for breach of his visa. This was part of a general crackdown against illegal immigrants in the film industry. Farrow was charge with making a false statement while entering the US, claiming he was Romanian. Although threatened with deportation in the end he was only given five years probation, before being acquitted in 1934.

Farrow received a plumb appointment to work on Tarzan Escapes (1936) but the film wound up being rewritten and reshot.

Film Director

In 1930 it was announced Farrow would direct his own story First Love but this did not eventuate. He signed to Warner Bros in 1936 looking to direct and was linked with a number of projects, including a foreign legion story and an adaptation of The Pit and the Pendulum. Farrow finally made his directorial debut in 1937 with Men in Exile. Following this, he accompanied his wife to Europe, where she was making A Yank at Oxford (1938), lecturing on Damien of Molokai on whom Farrow had written a book, and receiving a Papal knighthood.

On his return to Hollywood, Farrow resumed working as a director for Warners. He made several movies with Kay Francis and discovered a young Peggy Ann Garner. Farrow left his contract for a number of months, ostensibly to finish a book he was writing on the history of the papacy, but soon re-emerged as a contract director for RKO. While there he made a number of highly successful B movies, notably The Saint Strikes Back (1939) and Five Came Back (1939).

War Service

Despite his flourishing career and recently having become a father for the first time, Farrow was keen to be involved in World War II. He went to Vancouver in November 1939 and and enlisted in the Canadian Navy. Farrow was appointed lieutenant in March 1940 and assigned to Naval History and the Controller of Information Unit. He worked on anti-submarine patrols and in April 1941 was loaned to the Royal Navy and appointed to HMS Goshawk naval base in Trinidad, and served as assistant to the Senior British Naval Officer, Curacao. He contracted typhus fever and returned to Naval Headquarters, Ottawa, in late 1941. It was announced he would direct a Canadian war film starring O'Sullivan while on leave but this did not eventuate.

Farrow was invalided out of the Canadian Navy in January 1942 at the rank of Commander but remained in the naval reserve. In July 1943 he served as technical consultant for the proposed Royal Canadian Navy show. In May 1945 he was briefly recalled to active duty, travelling to Britain for work in connection with the Director of Special Services.

Return to Directing

Farrow resumed his directing career with Paramount for whom he made Wake Island (1942), which earned him an Oscar nomination. He went on to become one of the leading filmmakers for Paramount Pictures, working several times with Alan Ladd.

Farrow became an American citizen in July 1947.

Later Years

Farrow's films became less distinguished towards the end of the 1950s. He received an offer from Samuel Bronston to make two films, a biography of John Paul Jones and a story of the life of Jesus Christ, which Farrow had been trying to make for years. He only made the first one and was replaced as director on the second - which became King of Kings (1961) - by Nicholas Ray.

Personal Life

Farrow was a notorious playboy in his youth, being linked to Dolores Del Rio and Diana Churchill among others. In 1934 he became engaged to actress Maureen O'Sullivan and they married on 12 September 1936. Farrow and O'Sullivan had four daughters: actresses Mia, Prudence, Stephanie, Tisa; three sons: Michael Namien (1939–1958), Patrick Joseph (1942–2009), John Charles (born 1946). Maureen O'Sullivan was his second wife, after he converted to Catholicism and she received a papal dispensation to marry a divorcee.

Death

Farrow died from a heart attack in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 58 and was buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City.

Awards and honors

• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre by Pope Pius XI in 1937.
• Oscar nomination and New York Film Critics Circle Award for directing Wake Island (1942).
• Order of St John of Jerusalem 1951
• Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1953.
• Oscar and Writers Guild of America Award for his adapted screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).
• His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6304 Hollywood Blvd.

Australian Connection

As one of the few high-profile Australians in Hollywood during the 1930s, Farrow's activities were well covered by the Australian media. He accepted the Oscar won by the Australian documentary Kokoda Front Line (1943), met Australian Senator Keane when he visited Hollywood during the war and offered to assist in the establishment of an Australian information service in the US. He also often expressed a desire to make a film back in Australia and later made two films with Australian connections, Botany Bay (1953) and The Sea Chase (1955).

Filmography

• White Gold (1927) - titles
• The Wreck of the Hesperus (1927) - story
• A Sailor's Sweetheart (1927) - writer
• Three Weekends (1928) - writer
• The Woman From Moscow (1928) - writer
• The First Kiss (1928) - writer
• Ladies of the Mob (1928) - writer
• The Blue Danube (1928) - story
• The Showdown (1928) - titles
• The Bride of the Colorado (1928) - story
• The Four Feathers (1929) - titles
• The Wheel of Life (1929) - adaptation
• A Dangerous Woman (1929) - writer
• The Wolf Song (1929) - writer
• Inside the Lines (1930) - dialogue
• Shadow of the Law (1930) - writer
• The Bad One (1930) - story
• Seven Days' Leave (1930) - continuity and dialogue
• The Common Law (1931) - screenplay
• A Woman of Experience (1931) - dialogue & screenplay, based on his play 'A Registered Woman'
• The Impassive Footman (1932)
• Don Quixote (1933) - screenplay for English version
• The Spectacle Maker (1934) - writer, director
• Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) - uncredited writer
• Last of the Pagans (1935) - original story and screenplay
• Tarzan Escapes (1936) - writer, uncredited director
• Men in Exile (1937) - director
• She Loved a Fireman (1937) - director
• West of Shanghai (1937) - director
• Comet Over Broadway (1938) - uncredited director
• Broadway Musketeers (1938) - director
• My Bill (1938) - director
• Little Miss Thoroughbred (1938) - director
• The Invisible Menace (1938) - director
• Reno (1939) - director
• Full Confession (1939) - director
• Five Came Back (1939) - director
• Sorority House (1939) - director
• Women in the Wind (1939) - director
• The Saint Strikes Back (1939) - director
• A Bill of Divorcement (1940) - director
• Married and in Love (1940) - director
• Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) - director
• Wake Island (1942) - director
• China (1943) - director
• The Hitler Gang (1944) - director
• You Came Along (1945) - director
• California (1946) - director
• Two Years Before the Mast (1946) - director
• Blaze of Noon (1947) - director
• Calcutta (1947) - director
• Easy Come, Easy Go (1947) - director
• Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948) - director
• Beyond Glory (1948) - director
• The Big Clock (1948) - producer, director
• Red, Hot and Blue (1949) - writer, director
• Alias Nick Beal (1949) - director
• Copper Canyon (1950) - director
• Where Danger Lives (1950) - director
• Submarine Command (1951) - producer, director
• His Kind of Woman (1951) - director
• Hondo (1953) - director
• Plunder of the Sun (1953) - director
• Ride Vaquero! (1953) - director
• Botany Bay (1953) - director
• A Bullet Is Waiting (1954) - director
• The Sea Chase (1955) - producer, director
• Back from Eternity (1956) - producer, director
• Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) - writer
• The Unholy Wife (1957) - producer, writer
• John Paul Jones (1959) - writer, director

Books

• The Bad Ones (1930) - novel
• Laughter Ends (1933) - novel
• Damien the Leper (1937) - biography of Damien of Molokai
• The Royal Canadian Navy 1908-1940 (1940) - history
• Pageant of the Popes (1943) - history of the papacy
• Seven Poems in Pattern (1955) - collection of poetry
• Story of Sir Thomas More (1956) - biography of Thomas More

Play

• A Registered Woman (1931)

External links

• http://www.farrow-osullivan.com
• John Farrow at the Internet Movie Database
• John Farrow at Find a Grave
• Australian Dictionary of Biography
• Complete text of The Story of Sir Thomas More
• An inventory of the John Villiers Farrow Papers at The American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives