Lewis MilestoneFilmography

Ocean's Eleven

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson

Synopsis: During a Los Angeles Christmas, a group of 82nd Airborne vets assembles under the leadership of gamblin' man Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra) to rip off four Las Vegas casinos just after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day. Playboy Jimmy Foster (Peter Lawford) joins in the scheme because he's sick Read More

Pork Chop Hill

Crew: Director

Actors: Gregory Peck, Harry Guardino, Rip Torn, George Peppard, George Shibata, James Edwards

Synopsis: Pork Chop Hill was based on the eyewitness essays of ex-soldier S. L. A. Marshall. The film is set during the Korean "police action." While diplomats argue pointlessly over the shape of the negotiation tables at Panmunjon, United Nations troops bleed and die. Lieutenant Gregory Peck leads a Read More

Have Gun, Will Travel: Hey Boy's Revenge

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Paladin (Richard Boone) forsakes his usual fee to do a personal favor for San Francisco bellhop Hey Boy (Kam Tong). It seems that the bellhop's brother (Philip Ahn), hired as a railroad laborer in Utah, was mysteriously killed while protesting the brutal working conditions of his fellow Chinese. Read More

Have Gun, Will Travel: The Girl from Piccadilly

Crew: Director

Synopsis: After the death of his son, Wealthy San Franciscan Martin Westropova (Carl Benton Reid) wants to get in touch with his daughter-in-law, whom he has never met. Hired to located the missing girl, Paladin (Richard Boone) finds he has his hands full when two different women step forward and claim to Read More

The Widow

Crew: Director

Synopsis: His last film involving his own writing, Lewis Milestone directs the romantic drama The Widow, based on the novel La Vedova by Susan York. This Italian/French co-production is filmed in black-and-white with English dialogue. Young woman Adriana (Anna-Maria Ferrero) falls in love with race car Read More

They Who Dare

Crew: Director

Actors: Dirk Bogarde, Denholm Elliott, Akim Tamiroff, Gérard Oury, Eric Pohlmann

Synopsis: Filmed in England, They Who Dare is undeservedly the least-known of director Lewis Milestone's sound films. Set in the Aegean sea during World War II, the film recounts the exploits of Britain's Special Boat Squadron. Sent on life-or-death commando missions, the squadron (six English, four Greek) Read More

Melba

Crew: Director

Actors: Patrice Munsel, Robert Morley, John McCallum, John Justin, Alec Clunes

Synopsis: American opera and musical-comedy soprano Patrice Munsel plays the title role in this filmed biography of famed Australian diva Nellie Melba. The story begins on Nellie's father's cattle farm, where she grew up under her given name of Nelly Mitchell. While studying in Paris with the great Madame Read More

Kangaroo

Crew: Director

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, Peter Lawford, Finlay Currie, Richard Boone, Chips Rafferty

Synopsis: Besotted by alcohol, Australian cattle-station owner Michael McGuire (Finlay Currie) is led to believe that crooked gambler Richard Connor (Peter Lawford) is his long-lost son. Connor and his partner-in-crime Gamble (Richard Boone) go along with the gag, convincing McGuire's daughter Dell (Maureen O'Hara Read More

Les Miserables

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Rennie, Debra Paget, Robert Newton, Edmund Gwenn, Sylvia Sidney

Synopsis: Not up to the classic 1935 presentation, this is still an excellent adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic novel. The familiar characters of Valjean and Javert and the agonies of injustice are all portrayed convincingly against a backdrop of 18th century France. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide Read More

Halls of Montezuma

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Widmark, Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Jack Webb, Karl Malden, Reginald Gardiner, Richard Hylton

Synopsis: In Halls of Montezuma, Richard Widmark stars as Lt. Carl Anderson, a former schoolteacher who serves as a no-nonsense Marine officer during WW II. Anderson leads his patrol to a Japanese-controlled island, where the enemy has set up an experimental rocket base. The patrol's mission is to capture Read More

The Red Pony

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, Louis Calhern, Shepperd Strudwick, Gerald Perreau-Saissine

Synopsis: One of themost acclaimed films to emerge from Republic studios, The Red Pony is an adaptation of the John Steinbeck story of the same name. Top billing goes to Myrna Loy and Robert Mitchum, but the film's true star is young Peter Miles as Tom. A lonely farm boy, Tom seeks refuge from his Read More

Ocean Breakers

Crew: Producer

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Sten Lindgren, Tore Svennberg, Carl Strom

Synopsis: The notoriety of the Ingrid Bergman-Roberto Rossellini liaison resulted in the release of several heretofore obscure Swedish Bergman films in the U.S. One of these, originally filmed in 1935 as Ocean Breakers, finally made it to American screens in 1949 as The Surf. In her second screen Read More

Arch of Triumph

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Stephen Bekassy, Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Roman Bohnen, Curt Bois, Charles Laughton, Louis Calhern, Michael Romanoff, J. Edward Bromberg

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph is a complicated war romance directed by Lewis Milestone. Dr. Ravic (Charles Boyer) is a refugee physician practicing medicine illegally in Paris under a false name. He saves Joan Madou (Ingrid Bergman) from committing suicide after the Read More

No Minor Vices

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Dana Andrews, Lilli Palmer, Louis Jourdan, Jane Wyatt, Norman Lloyd

Synopsis: Another interesting effort from independent Enterprise Productions, No Minor Vices stars recent French import Louis Jourdan. Into the staid, conservative lives of pediatrician Perry Ashwell (Dana Andrews) and his wife April (Lilli Palmer) comes the flamboyantly eccentric Greenwich Village artist Read More

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers

Crew: Director

Actors: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Roman Bohnen, Charles D. Brown, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas, Ann Doran, Judith Anderson

Synopsis: In The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, relationships formed in childhood lead to murder and obsessive love. The wealthy Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck) is the prime mover of the small Pennsylvania town of Iverston. Martha lives in a huge mansion with her DA husband, Walter O'Neil (Kirk Douglas), an Read More

A Walk in the Sun

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, John Ireland, Norman Lloyd, George Tyne, Lloyd Bridges, Sterling Holloway

Synopsis: Harry Brown's honest, unsentimental WW2 novel A Walk in the Sun has been effectively adapted for the screen by Robert Rossen. Dana Andrews stars as Sgt. Tyne, a platoon squad leader in Italy who ends up assuming command of his platoon after a series of deaths. As they prepare to attack an isolated Read More

The Purple Heart

Crew: Director

Actors: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, Farley Granger, Sam Levene, Kevin O'Shea, Don "Red" Barry, Tala Birell

Synopsis: The year is 1942: eight American airmen crash-land during the Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo and are taken prisoner. Though slated for execution, the pilots are put through a "show trial" by the military, on a charge of committing war crimes. The Japanese judges promise to be merciful if only the Read More

The North Star

Crew: Director

Actors: Anne Baxter, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, Walter Brennan, Farley Granger, Ann Harding

Synopsis: In this bit of WWII propaganda (designed to boost support of America's alliance with Russia against Germany), Kolya (Dana Andrews), Kurin (Walter Huston), Damian (Farley Granger), and Marina (Anne Baxter) are members of a farming collective in the Ukraine known as the North Star. The hard-working Read More

Edge of Darkness

Crew: Director

Actors: Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston, Tom Fadden, Judith Anderson, Nancy Coleman, Helmut Dantine

Synopsis: The Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation of their country inspired several wartime films from Hollywood, including this Warner Bros. production, filmed in and around Monterey, California. In October 1942, a German observation airplane discovers a seaside village named Trollness where the Read More

My Life with Caroline

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ronald Colman, Anna Lee, Charles Winninger, Reginald Gardiner, Gilbert Roland

Synopsis: My Life with Caroline is a dizzy boy-chases-girl affair with a twist: the girl being chased is the boy's own wife. Wealthy publisher Anthony (Ronald Colman) weds dizzy socialite Caroline (Anna Lee, in her first Hollywood film), who sees nothing wrong with seeking out new boyfriends even after her Read More

Lucky Partners

Crew: Director

Actors: Ronald Colman, Ginger Rogers, Jack Carson, Spring Byington, Cecilia Loftus

Synopsis: Lewis Milestone directs the lightweight romantic comedy Lucky Partners, based on a story by Sacha Guitry. David Grant (Ronald Colman) is an artist in New York's Greenwich Village. After he wishes good luck to passing ingenue Jean Newton (Ginger Rogers), she is immediately offered a beautiful Read More

The Night of Nights

Crew: Director

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Olympe Bradna, Roland Young, Reginald Gardiner, George E. Stone

Synopsis: Directed by Lewis Milestone nine years after taking home the best director Academy Award for All Quiet on the Western Front, this backstage drama stars Pat O'Brien as Dan O'Farrell, a boozy Broadway producer who makes his way back to show-business after a long absence. As a young man, O'Farrell Read More

Of Mice and Men

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney, Jr., Betty Field, Charles Bickford, Roman Bohnen

Synopsis: This 1939 film version of John Steinbeck's classic novel was a surprising choice for comedy producer Hal Roach; in fact, Roach had no intention of filming the property until forced to do so as a result of a lawsuit brought by director Lewis Milestone. Burgess Meredith stars as itinerant farm Read More

The General Died at Dawn

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Akim Tamiroff, Dudley Digges, Porter Hall

Synopsis: General Yang (Akim Tamiroff) is a politically ambitious Chinese bandit who holds the Northern districts in a grip of terror. Yang is opposed by O'Hara (Gary Cooper), an American mercenary who fights on behalf of the peasants. When he is entrusted with a large sum of money to buy guns, O'Hara Read More

Anything Goes

Crew: Director

Actors: Bing Crosby, Ethel Merman, Charlie Ruggles, Ida Lupino, Grace Bradley

Synopsis: Anything Goes is a fun-filled but hardly faithful adaptation of the same-named Cole Porter Broadway musical, with additional songs by Hoagy Carmichael, among many many others. Set on a luxury liner, the story gets under way when Moonface Mullins (Charlie Ruggles), Public Enemy No. 13, slips on Read More

Paris in Spring

Crew: Director

Actors: Mary Ellis, Tullio Carminatti, Ida Lupino, Lynne Overman, Jessie Ralph

Synopsis: Tulio Carminati, who was previously and felicitously teamed with Grace Moore in One Night of Love, co-stars with another splendid operatic singer, Mary Ellis, in Paris in Spring. Ellis plays Simone, who breaks up her long-standing engagement with Paul de Lille (Carminati) because she balks at the Read More

The Captain Hates the Sea

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Victor McLaglen, Helen Vinson, John Gilbert, Alison Skipworth, Wynne Gibson

Synopsis: It's Grand Hotel on the high seas, with a remarkable cast -- particularly for the usually parsimonious Columbia Pictures. As irascible captain Helquist (Walter Connolly) pilots his boat along the Atlantic, an assortment of subplots involving a vast array of characters play themselves out. Among Read More

Hallelujah, I'm a Bum

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Al Jolson, Madge Evans, Frank Morgan, Harry Langdon, Chester Conklin

Synopsis: Al Jolson's "comeback" picture Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is an offbeat Depression-era concoction with script by Ben Hecht and S.N. Behrmann and music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Jolson plays a genial hobo who wanders happily around Central Park, neither seeking nor accepting honest Read More

Rain

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Joan Crawford, Walter Huston, William Gargan, Guy Kibbee, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: The pleasures of the flesh confront the discipline of the Lord's teachings in this screen adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's story Miss Sadie Thompson. Sadie Thompson (Joan Crawford) is a sassy streetwalker who lands in Pago Pago in the South Pacific after an epidemic grounds the ship on which Read More

The Front Page

Crew: Director

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, Mary Brian, Edward Everett Horton, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: This first of four film versions of the Ben Hecht/Charlrd MacArthur Broadway hit stars Adolphe Menjou as explosive Chicago newspaper-editor Walter Burns and Pat O'Brien as his star reporter Hildy Johnson. Hildy is on the verge of getting married and retiring from Burns' dirty little tabloid, but Read More

All Quiet on the Western Front

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Raymond Griffith, George "Slim" Summerville

Synopsis: One of the most powerful anti-war statements ever put on film, this gut-wrenching story concerns a group of friends who join the Army during World War I and are assigned to the Western Front, where their fiery patriotism is quickly turned to horror and misery by the harsh realities of combat. Read More

Betrayal

Crew: Director

Actors: Emil Jannings, Esther Ralston, Gary Cooper, Douglas Haig

Synopsis: Director Lewis Milestone presided over The Betrayal, a part-talkie which represented the only screen teaming of Hollywood's Gary Cooper and Germany's Emil Jannings. Second-billed Esther Ralston stars as Swiss peasant girl Vroni, who enjoys a blissful summertime romance with vacationing Viennese Read More

New York Nights

Crew: Director

Actors: Norma Talmadge, Gilbert Roland, John Wray, Lilyan Tashman, Mary Doran

Synopsis: Terrified at the prospect of making her talking-picture debut, silent-screen queen Norma Talmadge spent several months taking diction lessons before shooting commenced on New York Nights. The results were negligible: though she managed to keep her thick Brooklyn accent in check, Talmadge was Read More

The Racket

Crew: Director

Actors: Thomas Meighan, Marie Prevost, Louis Wolheim, George E. Stone, John Darrow

Synopsis: This solid gangster flick from director Lewis Milestone was based on a stage play and earned a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Louis Wolheim stars as Nick Scarsi, a tough-guy bootlegger with political connections that enrage a local police captain, McQuigg (Thomas Meighan). In order Read More

Garden of Eden

Crew: Director

Actors: Corinne Griffith, Louise Dresser, Lowell Sherman, Maude George, Charles Ray

Synopsis: Having worn out his welcome in country-bumpkin roles, silent film star Charles Ray made an effort to re-establish himself in sophisticated parts. The Garden of Eden finds the dinner-jacketed Ray as a urbane Parisian bachelor, with Corinne Griffith co-starring as a wide-eyed rural lass. While Read More

Two Arabian Knights

Crew: Director

Actors: William "Hopalong" Boyd, Mary Astor, Louis Wolheim

Synopsis: Produced by young aviation mogul Howard Hughes, Two Arabian Nights details the exploits of eternally squabbling sergeant Louis Wolheim and private William Boyd. Captured by the Germans during WWI, our heroes escape by disguising themselves as Arabs. This clever masquerade wins Wolheim and Boyd Read More

The Kid Brother

Crew: Director

Actors: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Walter James, Leo Willis, Olin Francis

Synopsis: Even taking into consideration such worthy candidates as Safety Last and The Freshman, many Harold Lloyd fans regard The Kid Brother as his finest film. A humorous variation on Tol'able David, the film stars Lloyd as Harold Hickory, the youngest member of the rural Hickory family. Though Read More

The New Klondike

Crew: Director

Actors: Thomas Meighan, Lila Lee, Paul Kelly, Hallie Manning, Robert Craig

Synopsis: The New Klondike was a satire of two ripe-for-plucking targets: The national baseball craze and the Florida "land boom" of 1925. Thomas Meighan stars as Tom Kelly, a minor-league player who shows up in Florida for spring training, only to be promptly fired by his jealous manager Joe Cooley (J. W. Johnston Read More

Fine Manners

Crew: Director

Actors: Gloria Swanson, Eugene O'Brien, Helen Dunbar, Walter Goss, John Miltern

Synopsis: With Fine Manners, silent-screen superstar Gloria Swanson ended her association with Paramount Pictures; her subsequent star-vehicle productions would be made independently through Swanson's off-screen romantic interest, financier Joseph P. Kennedy. Scripted by James Ashmore Creelman (of King Kong Read More

The Caveman

Crew: Director

Actors: Matt Moore, Marie Prevost, John Patrick, Myrna Loy, Phyllis Haver

Synopsis: Back in the 1920's, "caveman" was a slang term for a man who treated women rough and made 'em love it. We have other names for this sort of fellow today, but those names couldn't be shown on screen back in 1926. Matt Moore plays a rough-and-tumble coal delivery man who through a fluke finds Read More

Fascinating Youth

Actors: Ivy Harris, Mona Palma

Synopsis: Fascinating Youth was designed as a showcase for the winners of Paramount's Junior Star contest of 1926. Newcomer Charles "Buddy" Rogers heads the cast as Teddy Ward, the son of a wealthy hotelier (Ralph Lewis). Disturbed by Teddy's hedonistic lifestyle, Ward Sr. orders the boy to take over Read More

Dangerous Innocence

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Laura La Plante, Eugene O'Brien, Jean Hersholt, Alfred Allen, Milla Davenport

Synopsis: After being raised in England, Ann Church (Laura La Plante) sails back to her parents in Bombay. She meets Major Anthony Seymour, a British officer (Eugene O'Brien), and falls for him. Years before, Seymour had fallen in love with Ann's mother (Hedda Hopper), not realizing she was married. The Read More

Seven Sinners

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Marie Prevost, Clive Brook, John Patrick, Charles "Heinie" Conklin, Claude Gillingwater

Synopsis: This hilariously convoluted comedy was Lewis Milestone's first film as a director. He's also responsible for the screenplay, along with future film mogul Darryl F. Zanuck. There is a strike amongst private detectives, so the Vickers mansion on Long Island is left unguarded. Molly Brian (Marie Read More

Bobbed Hair

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Marie Prevost, Kenneth Harlan, Louise Fazenda, John Roche, Emily Fitzroy

Synopsis: This mystery was based on a novel written by 20 popular authors, each of whom contributed a chapter. The point of each chapter was to put the characters in such a tight predicament that the next writer would have to be exceptionally clever to get them out of it. As can be imagined, the film that Read More

Teaser

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Laura La Plante, Pat O'Malley, Hedda Hopper, Walter McGrail, Byron Munson

Synopsis: Laura La Plante stars in this light comedy, directed by her future husband, William Seiter (the couple were wed in 1927 and divorced in 1933). Ann Barton (La Plante) is working at a cigar store when she is adopted by her aunt, Margaret Wyndham (Hedda Hopper). Margaret moves Ann to New York with Read More

Yankee Consul

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Douglas MacLean, Patsy Ruth Miller, Arthur Stuart Hull, Stanhope Wheatcroft, Eulalie Jensen

Synopsis: This farce starring Douglas MacLean was based on an old musical comedy by Henry Blossom, Jr. and Alfred G. Robyn. The wealthy Dudley Ainsworth (MacLean) is bored with life, and when he has an attack of "nerves," his doctor suggests that he needs some excitement in his life. Ainsworth doesn't think Read More

Up and at 'em

Crew: Screen Story

Actors: Doris May

Synopsis: Minor screen comedienne Doris May has the lead in this routine farce. Barbara Jackson (May) dresses up in the chauffeur's uniform to drive her father's car. She picks up a passenger who turns out to be a crook who is off to rob Bob Everett (Hallam Cooley), a rival of her father (Otis Harlan), and Read More

The Home Stretch

Crew: Editor

Actors: Walt Whitman, Margaret Livingston, Wade Boteler

Synopsis: Johnny Hardwick (Douglas MacLean) is the owner of the fastest horse in the next race. Although it's almost guaranteed that he will win big, Hardwick ruins his chance by saving a little girl who has run out onto the track. The child's father shows his gratitude later on when he offers Hardwick a Read More