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Edward Dmytryk

Edward Dmytryk was a film director whose career was heavily curtailed due to the blacklist of the 1940s/1950s & HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities).

He was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada on 4 September 1908. His parents were both Ukranian & settled in Grand Forks - a few miles north of the American border. When WWI erupted, the Canadian government began interning all immigrants who had been citizens of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As a result his family moved across the border from Canada to the United States to Northport, Washington. They lived there until 1917 when Dmytryk's mother died at the age of 33. His father then moved with his four sons to San Francisco for 2 years. After that his father remarried & they all moved to a suburb of Los Angeles, now called West Hollywood. Dmytryk became a naturalised American citizen in 1939 - the year before he became a "full-fledged film director".

He is known because he is/was one of the "Hollywood Ten". The Hollywood Ten were 7 screenwriters, 2 directors and 1 producer. All of whom were cited for contempt of Congress (they would not 'name names' of other supposed 'communists') as a result of the HUAC (House Committee on Un-American Activities) investigations & all served 1 year federal prison sentences in 1950.

He is best known for his film noir works - Crossfire (1947), Murder my Sweet (US)/Farewell my Lovely (UK) (1944), But prior to them, he made numerous 'B' movies including 'Hitler's Children', which, according to Dymtryk himself in his book Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten, was his "passport to fame and fortune". He also made Tender Comrade (1943) which starred Ginger Rogers and was aimed at the wives & women workers of the American wartime economy.

He received his subpoena from HUAC in September 1947. He refused to name names when put in front of the committee & went to prison as a result - just as the other 9 of the Hollywood Ten did. After he served his sentence, however, he went back in front of the committee & did name names (names that were already known, but names nonetheless) so that he could work again. His career as a director never rebounded to its former glory, but he did teach at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) & at the University of Texas at Austin. He died in 1999.

What members say | Filmography

Edward Dmytryk - what members say

Obsession review by from Leeds, West Yorkshire

Excellent British Film Noir 20 December 2007
...Edward Dmytryk's excellent film of a book by Alec Coppel (who worked with Hitchcock on a number of projects) exacts precise and macabre revenge on his wife's lover in only th... Read customer review

Murder, My Sweet. Farewell, My Lovely review by A customer from Doncaster

Danger Hides in the Shadows 25 October 2010
...or, with Anne Shirley and Miles Mander. Well served by intelligent direction by Edward Dmytryk this is one of the earliest 'film noir'.... Read customer review

Edward Dmytryk - filmography

The Human Factor on DVD (1975)
Starring: George Kennedy, John Mills, Raf Vallone
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
George Kennedy stars in this 1970s revenge film as John Kinsdale, a military employee stationed in Naples who uses state-of-the-art (for the time) computer technology to track down the terrorists who killed his family. Local police inspector Dr. Lupo (Raf Vallone) and Kinsdale’s commander (Arthur ..read more »

54% from 40 members

Shalako on DVD (1969)
Starring: Sean Connery, Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
In late-19th-century New Mexico, a hunting party of decadent European aristocrats wanders onto the reservation of some angry Apaches, and it's up to the mysterious wanderer, Shalako (Sean Connery), to save them from getting slaughtered. The group includes Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore in GOLDFINGER) ..read more »

57% from 328 members

Anzio on DVD (1968)
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Peter Falk, Arthur Kennedy
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Classic World War II story of the Allied landing at Anzio Beach in Italy, the first and most costly battle of the Italian Campaign. Robert Mitchum stars as an American news correspondent covering the landing, under fire, of British and American troops. Based on a novel by Wynford Vaughan-Thomas.

60% from 850 members

Alvarez Kelly on DVD (1966)
Starring: William Holden, Victoria Shaw, Janice Rule
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
William Holden (NETWORK, SUNSET BOULEVARD) stars in this rugged Western--based on an actual incident--as a Mexican-Irish rancher who sells his herd to the Union army during the Civil War. An eye-patch-wearing Confederate colonel (Richard Widmark) tries to buy the cattle, but apolitical Kelly doesn'..read more »

58% from 224 members

Mirage (1965)
Starring: Gregory Peck, Diane Baker, Walter Matthau
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
A New York man suffers amnesia. He soon learns that he's mixed up in a life-and-death situation, but what exactly is it?

60% from 12 members
Currently unavailable

The Carpetbaggers (1964)
Starring: George Peppard, Carroll Baker, Alan Ladd
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
George Peppard plays a hard-driven industrialist more than a little reminiscent of Howard Hughes.

57% from 17 members
Currently unavailable

Walk On The Wild Side (1962)
Starring: Laurence Harvey, Capucine, Jane Fonda
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
At the Dolls House, a 1930's bordello, Hallie is the main attraction for both the clients and for Jo, the Madame. Her comfortable if not tedious existence is disrupted by the arrival in town of Dove Linkhorn, her true love of 3 years before who has been searching for her. When Linkhorn learns the ..read more »

43% from 14 members
Currently unavailable

Warlock (1959)
Starring: Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Watch now: Included in all packages with LOVEFiLM Instant
The town of Warlock is plagued by a gang of thugs, leading the inhabitants to hire Clay Blaisdell, a famous gunman, to act as Marshal. Various townspeople, concerned by the illegality of Blaisdell's position, induce one of the thugs, who has reformed, to accept the post of Sheriff in rivalry to the ..read more »

66% from 293 members
Currently unavailable

The Young Lions on DVD (1958)
Starring: Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin
Director: Henry Koster, Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Classic war film staring a young Marlon Brando

63% from 499 members

The End Of The Affair on DVD (1955)
Starring: Deborah Kerr, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Recently freed from his MGM contract, Van Johnson headed to England to star in a series of pictures, the first of which was The End of the Affair. Adapted by Lenore Coffee from the novel by Graham Greene, the film casts Johnson as Maurice Bendrix, the clandestine lover of married Briton Sarah Miles ..read more »

64% from 141 members

Broken Lance on DVD (1954)
Starring: Spencer Tracy, Robert Wagner, Jean Peters
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Cattle baron Matt Devereaux raids a copper smelter that is polluting his water. When questioned about the raid, to spare his father, his son, Joe takes responsibility and is sentenced to three years in prison. Matt dies from a stroke, and so when Joe is released, he plans his revenge.

62% from 173 members

The Caine Mutiny - Blu-ray (1954)
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Jose Ferrer
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
In director Edward Dmytryk's classic seafaring drama, privileged mama's boy Ensign Keith (Robert Francis) gets assigned to the Caine, a rusty old minesweeper with a haggard, undisciplined crew during the latter days of WWII. Soon the paranoid, strawberry-loving Captain Queeg (Humprey Bogart) takes ..read more »

65% from 4 members
Due for release on 2nd July 2012

The Caine Mutiny on DVD (1954)
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Jose Ferrer
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Robert Francis is at the center of the story as Willis Keith, a newly minted ensign assigned to the U.S.S. Caine. Keith has an uneasy relationship with his skipper, Lt. Comdr. DeVries (Tom Tully), partly through his own ineptitude and as a result of his disapproval of the slovenly way DeVries seems ..read more »

69% from 802 members

Mutiny on DVD (1952)
Starring: Mark Stevens, Angela Lansbury, Patric Knowles
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Director Edward Dmytryk returned from a few unhappy years on the Blacklist in the early 1950s, to direct a handful of programmers before being restored to A pictures. Dmytrk's Mutiny is set during the War of 1812. Mark Stevens, captain of the American ship Concord, finds himself at the mercy of ..read more »

30% from 2 members

Obsession on DVD (1948)
Starring: Sally Gray, Phil Brown, Robert Newton
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
In the thriller Obsession, Robert Newton stars as a possessed doctor humilitaed by his faithless wife's love for a younger man. He plans to rid himself of her lover by means of an acid bath murder...

69% from 297 members

Crossfire on DVD (1947)
Starring: Robert Young, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Years of police work have taught Detective Finlay that where there's crime, there's motive. But he finds no usual motive when investigating the beating death of a man. The man was killed because he was a Jew. "Hate," Finlay says, "is like a gun." Robert Young portrays Finlay, Robert Mitchum is a ..read more »

68% from 390 members

Cornered on DVD (1945)
Starring: Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Micheline Cheirel
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
The war's over but ex-POW Lt. Lawrence Gerard (Dick Powell) has a score to settle and he doesn't mean to do things by the book. His bride was in the French resistance; she was one of fifty freedom fighters murdered by shadowy Vichy collaborator Marcel Jarnac. People tell him that Jarnac's dead ..read more »

61% from 17 members

Back to Bataan on DVD (1945)
Starring: John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Beulah Bondi
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Guerrillas are trained to go in and fight the Japanese after the fall of Bataan during World War 2.

62% from 375 members

Murder, My Sweet. Farewell, My Lovely on DVD (1944)
Starring: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Moose Malloy, a petty crook just out of prison after a seven-year stretch, hires private eye Philip Marlowe to find his ex-girlfriend, Velma, who has not been seen for six years. The case is tougher than Marlowe expects as his initially promising leads degenerate into a complex web of deceit, ..read more »

73% from 626 members

The Falcon Strikes Back on DVD (1943)
Starring: Tom Conway, Harriet Hilliard, Jane Randolph
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
Accused of stealing war bonds, The Falcon (Tom Conway) flees into the deep countryside. From there he discovers a scheme to produce counterfeit war bonds.

44% from 7 members

The D-Day Sixth Of June on DVD
Starring: Robert Taylor, May Britt, Richard Todd
Director: Henry Koster, Edward Dmytryk
Certificate:
In this electrifying film, Robert Taylor portrays Captain Brad Parker, an American officer on the front lines on June 6. 1944, D-Day, when 3,000,000 men, 11,000 planes and 4,000 ships will come together to invade Normandy and determine the world's future. And since Parker and his commander (Richard ..read more »

57% from 563 members

Edward Dmytryk facts

5 most recent films

The Human Factor - 2.5 stars
Shalako - 3.0 stars
Anzio - 3.0 stars
Alvarez Kelly - 3.0 stars
Mirage - 3.0 stars

5 highest-rated films

Murder, My Sweet. Farewell, My Lovely - 3.5 stars
The Caine Mutiny - 3.5 stars
Obsession - 3.5 stars
Crossfire - 3.5 stars
Warlock - 3.5 stars

5 lowest-rated films

Mutiny - 1.5 stars
Walk On The Wild Side - 2.0 stars
The Falcon Strikes Back - 2.0 stars
The Human Factor - 2.5 stars
Mirage - 3.0 stars

Most frequent co-stars

Richard Widmark - 4 times - show films
Anthony Quinn - 3 times - show films
Van Johnson - 3 times - show films
Marlon Brando - 2 times - show films
Robert Ryan - 2 times - show films

Most frequent directors

Henry Koster - 2 times - show films