John Cromwell Filmography

3 Women

Actors: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert Fortier, Ruth Nelson

Synopsis: Robert Altman's Three Women takes a surreal, improvisational and rather eerie look at the lives of three women in a western desert town. The plot centers around the youngest of the women, Pinky (Sissy Spacek), an eccentric, withdrawn woman trying to begin a new life. She finds work as an attendant Read More

A Matter of Morals

Crew: Director

Actors: Mogens Wieth, Patrick O'Neal, Maj-Britt Nilsson, Eva Dahlbeck

Synopsis: A Matter of Morals is the usual boiling pot of intrigue and double-dealings that reveals how once an imaginary line is crossed, morality can slide inexorably downhill. Alan Kennebeck (Patrick O'Neal) sets off in relative innocence to supervise his bank's million-dollar loan to a Swedish Read More

The Scavengers

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This low-budget Asian-set adventure concerns a reformed smuggler (Vince Edwards of TV's Ben Casey) who finds his missing wife (Carol Ohmart) in Hong Kong. Ohmart has fallen in with a bad crowd and is involved with narcotics and stolen government bonds, requiring Edwards to extricate her from her Read More

The Goddess

Crew: Director

Actors: Kim Stanley, Lloyd Bridges, Steven Hill, Betty Lou Holland, Burt Brinckerhoff

Synopsis: Screenplay writer Paddy Chayefsky, and indeed everyone involved with the film, insisted that The Goddess wasn't really all about Marilyn Monroe. Nawww. Kim Stanley plays a neglected young woman living in poverty who aspires to be a movie star. She gets a few roles here and there on looks alone. Read More

Top Secret Affair

Actors: Susan Hayward, Kirk Douglas, Paul Stewart, Jim Backus, John Cromwell

Synopsis: When an Army general is appointed to the sensitive diplomatic post that the powerful publisher of a prominent news magazine had hoped would go to a particularly qualified civilian, she launches a vitriolic campaign to discredit the general. First the publisher orders one of her cameraman to snap a Read More

The Racket

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Ryan, William Talman, Ray Collins

Synopsis: The Racket was based on a play by Bartlett Cormack, first filmed as a silent in 1928. The storyline was updated to include references to Estes Kefauver's Senate Crime Investigating Committee: otherwise, the plot (and much of the dialogue) was lifted bodily from the Cormack play. Racketeer Robert Ryan Read More

Caged

Crew: Director

Actors: Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Hope Emerson, Betty Garde, Jan Sterling

Synopsis: Caged, considered the best woman's prison film ever made, represents a union between realistic socially conscious drama and the more stylized world of film noir. Marie, (Eleanor Parker), is sentenced to prison for helping her husband in a small robbery. The prison is run by the sadistic matron Read More

The Company She Keeps

Crew: Director

Actors: Lizabeth Scott, Jane Greer, Dennis O'Keefe, Fay Baker, John Hoyt

Synopsis: Jane Greer plays a hard-boiled dame so well in The Company She Keeps that the film's outcome remains in doubt right up to the end. Placed in the custody of parole officer Joan (Lizabeth Scott), Diane (Greer) immediately makes a play for Joan's boyfriend, newspaper columnist Larry (Dennis O'Keefe). Read More

Dead Reckoning

Crew: Director

Actors: James Bell, Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, William Prince, George Chandler, Charles Cane, Wallace Ford, Marvin Miller

Synopsis: In Dead Reckoning, Rip Murdock (Humphrey Bogart) recites the film's plotline to a priest in the confessional. Murdock and Johnny Drake (William Prince) are Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, en route to Washington by train. Drake hops off and disappears, leading Murdock on a hectic manhunt. Read More

Night Song

Crew: Director

Actors: Dana Andrews, Merle Oberon, Ethel Barrymore, Hoagy Carmichael, Jacqueline White

Synopsis: In this melodrama, a brilliant pianist is struck blind in an accident and stops working on his equally brilliant concerto. A wealthy woman pretends to be poor and blind to help him regain his confidence, and holds a contest with a large prize for the best musical composition. She, as the blind Read More

Anna and the King of Siam

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Lee J. Cobb, Gale Sondergaard, John Abbott

Synopsis: More serious and less colorful than The King And I, Anna And The King Of Siam is still a well-crafted and elaborate spectacle. Leonowens (Irene Dunne) and her son travel to the tiny kingdom of Siam, where she has been hired to teach Western ways and culture to the multitudes of children sired by Read More

Watchtower Over Tomorrow

Crew: Director

Actors: Lionel Stander, Grant Mitchell, Jonathan Hale, Miles Mander

Synopsis: Though running a mere 15 minutes, Watchtower Over Tomorrow boasts some very impressive credits. Written by Ben Hecht, this paean to the newly-formed United Nations does its best to explain the importance of the organization and the Dubarton Oaks Conference which preceded it. The film is in the Read More

The Enchanted Cottage

Crew: Director

Actors: Dorothy McGuire, Robert Young, Herbert Marshall, Mildred Natwick, Spring Byington

Synopsis: This romantic fantasy was based on a popular play by Arthur Pinero. Oliver Bradford (Robert Young) is a young man who returned from World War II with severe facial scars; while he was engaged to be married before he left, he believes that no one could love him now, and he lives on the brink of Read More

Since You Went Away

Crew: Director

Actors: Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple, Monty Woolley, Agnes Moorehead

Synopsis: David O. Selznick's first production since 1940's Rebecca, Since You Went Away, based on Margaret Buell Wilder's bestselling novel, is a long but rewarding paean to the World War 2 "home front". Claudette Colbert plays the wife of a businessman who, though well past draft age, volunteered to serve Read More

Son of Fury

Crew: Director

Actors: Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, George Sanders, Frances Farmer, Roddy McDowall

Synopsis: This period swashbuckler film is based on the adventure novel Benjamin Blake by Edison Marshall, who also wrote The Vikings (1958). When his brother dies, scheming Arthur Blake (George Sanders) kidnaps his own nephew, Benjamin (played as a youth by Roddy McDowall and as an adult by Tyrone Power). Read More

So Ends Our Night

Crew: Director

Actors: Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan, Frances Dee, Glenn Ford, Anna Sten

Synopsis: The Nazis are clearly the villains in So Ends Our Night, but since the film was made before America's entry into World War II, Adolph Hitler goes unmentioned (we wouldn't want to lose those foreign markets, would we?) Based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel Flotsam, the film zeroes in on three Read More

Abe Lincoln in Illinois

Crew: Director

Actors: Raymond Massey, Ruth Gordon, Gene Lockhart, Mary Howard, Dorothy Tree

Synopsis: Raymond Massey plays Abe Lincoln in this moving adaptation of Robert Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Expanded a bit for cinematic purposes, the film traces Lincoln's progress from his days of scrambling for a living as a woodsman, to his courtship of the tragic Ann Rutledge (Mary Howard) Read More

Victory

Crew: Director

Actors: Fredric March, Betty Field, Cedric Hardwicke, Jerome Cowan, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: Victory was the first of Joseph Conrad's novels to be adapted to film, way back in 1919. The earliest talkie version, pointlessly retitled Dangerous Paradise, was lensed in 1930. Finally, Victory was given its best screen treatment in 1940 under the sensitive direction of John Cromwell. Fredric March Read More

In Name Only

Crew: Director

Actors: Carole Lombard, Cary Grant, Kay Francis, Charles Coburn, Katherine Alexander, Helen Vinson

Synopsis: Based on Memory of Love, a novel by Bessie Breuer, In Name Only is soap opera par excellence, blessed with a peerless cast. Carole Lombard plays widow Julie Eden, who meets and falls in love with unhappily married Alec Walker (Cary Grant). Having married Alec solely for his wealth and family Read More

Made for Each Other

Crew: Director

Actors: Carole Lombard, James Stewart, Charles Coburn, Lucile Watson, Eddie Quillan

Synopsis: James Stewart and Carole Lombard star in this comedy-drama about the struggles of a young married couple directed by John Cromwell. Stewart and Lombard play a recently married couple, Jane and John Mason. John works as an attorney for the law firm of skinflint Judge Doolittle (Charles Coburn). Read More

Algiers

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Boyer, Hedy Lamarr, Sigrid Gurie, Joseph Calleia, Gene Lockhart

Synopsis: This Hollywood remake of the French Pepe le Moko adheres so slavishly to its source that it utilizes stock footage from the original film, and even picked its actors on the basis of their resemblance to the French cast. Contrary to legend, star Charles Boyer never says "Come wizz me to zee Read More

The Prisoner of Zenda

Crew: Director

Actors: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Mary Astor, David Niven, C. Aubrey Smith

Synopsis: Ronald Colman stars in David O. Selznick's classic production of Anthony Hope's swashbuckling adventure. The film takes place in a mythical Central European kingdom with Colman in a dual role as King Rudolf V and Rudolph Rassendyl, a visitor from England who's a distant cousin to the prince. Read More

Banjo on My Knee

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Walter Brennan, Buddy Ebsen, Helen Westley

Synopsis: This lively riverboat musical shows off the vocal and terpsichorean talents of former Ziegfeld Follies star Barbara Stanwyck as it tells the tale of two newlyweds who must postpone their honeymoon when the groom gets in a fight with a villain, decks him and, believing he has killed him, flees upon Read More

To Mary - with Love

Crew: Director

Actors: Warner Baxter, Myrna Loy, Ian Hunter, Claire Trevor, Jean Dixon

Synopsis: Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy star as a husband and wife who've been married ten years...but they might not make it to eleven. The husband is a businessman who has rebuilt his fortune after the 1929 crash. The wife has stood by her man through thick and thin, rich and poor. Now it's 1935, and the Read More

Little Lord Fauntleroy

Crew: Director

Actors: C. Aubrey Smith, Freddie Bartholomew, Dolores Costello, Guy Kibbee, Henry Stephenson

Synopsis: David O. Selznick's first independent production upheld the producer's tradition, established at Paramount, RKO and MGM, of bringing the "classics" to the screen. Adapted by Hugh Walpole from the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little Lord Fauntleroy is set in the late 19th century. After Read More

Jalna

Crew: Director

Actors: Kay Johnson, Ian Hunter, C. Aubrey Smith, Nigel Bruce, David Manners

Synopsis: In this adaptation of author de la Roche's chronicle of the passionate lives of the strange Whiteoaks of Jalna, their beautiful family estate located in souther Ontario. The story begins as a young Whiteoak, a novelist travels to New York where he encounters a charming woman, marries her, and Read More

Village Tale

Crew: Director

Actors: Randolph Scott, Kay Johnson, Arthur Hohl, Robert H. Barrat, Janet Beecher

Synopsis: This drama presents a dim view of life in a small town populated by back-stabbing, narrow-minded, hypocritical and maliciously gossipy bigots who meet at the town general store to spread their vicious lies. The current slander centers upon a young man who has an innocent crush on another man's Read More

I Dream Too Much

Crew: Director

Actors: Lily Pons, Henry Fonda, Eric Blore, Osgood Perkins, Lucien Littlefield

Synopsis: If Columbia could make an acceptable movie star out of opera-diva Grace Moore, then RKO Radio could do the same with Lily Pons. At least that was producer Pandro S. Berman's reasoning when he cast Pons in the 1935 musical romance I Dream too Much. The actress plays Annette, a rural French musical Read More

Of Human Bondage

Crew: Director

Actors: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Frances Dee, Kay Johnson, Reginald Denny

Synopsis: The first of three film versions of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage stars Leslie Howard as sensitive, clubfooted artist-cum-med student Philip Carey. Despite his yearnings for the finer things in life, Carey cannot extricate himself from a mutually destructive relationship with sluttish Read More

This Man Is Mine

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Constance Cummings, Kay Johnson, Charles Starrett

Synopsis: Jane Mufin's stage play Love Flies in the Window was the basis for the RKO Radio assembly-line romance This Man is Mine. Happily married to dull but dependable Jim Dunlap (Ralph Bellamy), level-headed Toni Dunlap (Irene Dunne) suddenly finds herself forced to fight for her husband's affections. Read More

Spitfire

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Robert Young, Ralph Bellamy, Martha Sleeper, Sidney Toler, Louis Mason

Synopsis: When asked in 1970 to recall his participation in RKO Radio's Spitfire, Ralph Bellamy prefaced his comments with a terse "Why don't we just forget about it?" Based on a play by Lula Vollmer, the film stars Katharine Hepburn, phony Ozark accent and all, as Trigger Hicks, an illiterate hillbilly Read More

The Fountain

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Harding, Brian Aherne, Paul Lukas, Jean Hersholt, Ralph Forbes

Synopsis: In this wartime drama, set during WW I, the adoring wife of a German officer soon finds herself falling for a handsome British soldier while her husband is off to fight the war. Her husband returns. Not only has he inhaled poison gas, he has also lost an arm. His guilt-ridden wife tries to help Read More

Double Harness

Crew: Director

Actors: Ann Harding, William Powell, Henry Stephenson, Lillian Bond, George Meeker

Synopsis: Joan Colby (Ann Harding) is the unmarried older daughter in a once-wealthy family. She's always been the mature, level-headed one among the two sisters, but she is feeling the pressure to find a husband especially strongly these days, as her much more flighty and impetuous younger sister Valerie Read More

Sweepings

Crew: Director

Actors: Lionel Barrymore, Alan Dinehart, Eric Linden, William Gargan, Gloria Stuart

Synopsis: Lionel Barrymore plays a Marshall Field-like Chicago businessman who emerges from the wreckage of the 1871 fire to build a department-store empire. Barrymore is aided by his Jewish manager Gregory Ratoff, who despite his business acumen is never made a full partner. The store magnate's four Read More

Ann Vickers

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Walter Huston, Conrad Nagel, Bruce Cabot, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: This 1933 movie version of Sinclair Lewis's novel Ann Vickers stars Irene Dunne in the title role. Left alone and pregnant by her soldier sweetheart (Bruce Cabot), Ann turns her life around by devoting herself to social work. A frustrating tenure as psychologist in a poorly maintained woman's Read More

The Silver Cord

Crew: Director

Actors: Irene Dunne, Joel McCrea, Frances Dee, Eric Linden, Laura Hope Crewes

Synopsis: Sidney Howard's once-controversial play about the smothering aspects of Mother Love, The Silver Cord was filmed in 1933 with Laura Hope Crews recreating her stage role. Ms. Crews plays the outwardly selfless mother of Joel McCrea and Eric Linden; Irene Dunne and Frances Dee play the younger women Read More

The World and the Flesh

Crew: Director

Actors: George Bancroft, Miriam Hopkins, Alan Mowbray, George E. Stone, Emmett Corrigan

Synopsis: The Russian Revolution provides the backdrop for Paramount's The World and the Flesh. Marked for death by the Bolsheviks, a group of incognito aristocrats try to escape Russia by boxcar. The story focuses on one of these refuges, Maria Yasaka (Miriam Hopkins), the mistress of Grand Duke Dmitri (Alan Mowbray Read More

Scandal Sheet

Crew: Director

Rich Man's Folly

Crew: Director

Actors: George Bancroft, Frances Dee, Robert Ames, Julie Compton, David Durand

Synopsis: Charles Dickens' novel Dombey and Son is set in 1931 America in this interesting drama that centers on an egotistical, over-ambitious owner of a shipbuilding company. So focused is he on succeeding that he forgets his family and their needs. He begins looking for a successor to his wealth and Read More

The Vice Squad

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this crime drama, an ambassador must become a police snitch for a corrupt vice squad and it nearly destroys his career. He survives the incident with reputation intact. But then the cops come 'round again. He is uncooperative until they begin threatening the woman he loves. In the end, the man Read More

Unfaithful

Crew: Director

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Paul Cavanagh, Julie Compton, Donald Cook

Synopsis: A socially prominent wife must choose between avoiding scandal and her own happiness in this British drama. According to social convention, the wife is expected to gracefully ignore her husband's constant philandering, and under no circumstances can she get a divorce. But her husband's actions are Read More

Scandal Sheet

Crew: Director

Actors: George Bancroft, Clive Brook, Kay Francis, Gilbert Emery, Lucien Littlefield

Synopsis: Mark Flint (George Bancroft) is the editor of the titular scandal sheet, possessing all of the gall and none of the ethics of your average big-city journalist. Knowing full well that his wife (Kay Francis) plans to leave him in favor of handsome but unscrupulous banker Noel Adams (Clive Brook) Read More

Tol'able David

Actors: Richard Cromwell, Noah Beery, Sr., Joan Peers, Henry B. Walthall, Tom Keene

Synopsis: This simple tale of peace-loving hillbillies defeating a gang of outlaws was based on a story by Joseph Hergesheimer and was a huge box-office hit when it was first released as a silent film in 1921. This 1930 sound remake closely follows the original story. The Kinemon family, who live in a Read More

Tom Sawyer

Crew: Director

Actors: Jackie Coogan, Junior Durkin, Mitzi Green, Lucien Littlefield, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: Tom Sawyer, Paramount's 1930 Christmas release, was the first talkie version of Mark Twain's beloved novel. A rapidly maturing Jackie Coogan is well cast as Tom, while Junior Durkin is even better as Tom's freewheeling pal Huck Finn. Juvenile impressionist Mitzi Green comes on a bit too strong in Read More

For the Defense

Crew: Director

Actors: William Powell, Kay Francis, Scott Kolk, William B. Davidson

Synopsis: William Powell stars in this drama as William Foster, a gifted defense attorney with a gift for making cases go his way. Foster's winning record in the courtroom has earned him a colorful clientele, including several notorious criminals, but he doubts his abilities when his girlfriend Irene Read More

The Texan

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Fay Wray, Emma Dunn, Oscar Apfel, James Marcus

Synopsis: With a title like The Texan and a star like Gary Cooper, one might assume that this 1930 actioner is a western -- and one would be wrong! Set in 1885, the film stars Gary Cooper as Enrique, alias Quico, alias the Llano Kid. Whatever the name, he's a bold and daring bandit, and after shooting a Read More

Street of Chance

Crew: Director

Actors: William Powell, Jean Arthur, Kay Francis, Regis Toomey, Stanley Fields

Synopsis: This fact-based drama chronicles the events that led to the murder of a notorious gambler. The story begins when a young cardsharp goes to see his brother, whom he believes is a stockbroker. In reality, the brother is a famed gambler who is trying to quit and try to rebuild his marriage. When the Read More

Close Harmony

Crew: Director

Actors: Nancy Carroll, Harry Green, Jack Oakie

Synopsis: This tuneful tale revolves around a shy warehouse clerk who, at the encouragement of his girlfriend finally musters up his courage and decides to break into show business with his little band. The bandleader must work hard to inspire his musicians. He does. Musical numbers abound. Songs include Read More

The Dummy

Actors: Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, John Cromwell, Fred Kohler, Mickey Bennett

Synopsis: The early Paramount talkie The Dummy represented a collaboration of sorts between screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who adapted the play on which the film was based, and Mankiewicz' brother Joseph, who wrote the subtitles for the film's silent version. The title character is office-boy Barney Read More

The Dance of Life

Crew: Director

Actors: Nancy Carroll, Hal Skelly, Dorothy Revier

Synopsis: A vaudevillian working in a third-rate burlesque show suffers marital turmoil when success swells his head in this silent back-stage melodrama. He celebrates his stardom with a few drinks. Unfortunately, this leads to alcoholism and carousing with other women causing his wife to eventually leave Read More

The Mighty

Crew: Director

Actors: George Bancroft, Esther Ralston, Warner Oland, Raymond Hatton, Dorothy Revier

Synopsis: In this melodrama set during WW I, a gangster joins the army and is promoted to major. He then returns from war torn Europe to tell a family that their beloved son had died in his arms during a battle. The major then falls in love with the late soldier's sister and decides to accept a position in Read More