Film director Edward Dmytryk
By BOB THOMAS, AP
July 1999
Controversial Director Dies at 90
LOS ANGELES (AP), Film director Edward Dmytryk, a member of the Hollywood Ten
who served prison time during the Red Scare-era witch hunts of the 1940s and was
blacklisted until named names of his communist comrades, died Thursday night. He was 90.
Dmytryk, who worked with some of Hollywood's biggest stars, had been ill for a
year and succumbed to heart and kidney failure, said his wife, Jean Porter. He died in his
Encino home.
Dmytryk was a rising young director at RKO Pictures in 1945 when he joined the
Communist Party. He said he stayed ``only a few months,'' but two years later the House
Committee on Un-American Activities called him and nine other Hollywood figures to a
Washington hearing.
All refused to answer questions about party membership. They were convicted of
contempt and sentenced to a year in federal prison. When Dmytryk finished his sentence, he
admitted that he had been a party member. He hadn't done it before, he remarked in 1988,
``because they would call me a coward; they'd say I was doing it simply to stay out of
jail.''
In 1951, Dmytryk returned to the House committee and identified 26 people as
communists.
``I didn't feel guilty about talking,'' he said later. ``I knew (the accused)
would call me a rat. But I did what I wanted to do. I have never regretted.''
Dmytryk directed ``The Caine Mutiny,'' ``Raintree County,'' ``The Young Lions,''
``The Carpetbaggers'' and other films starring some of Hollywood's biggest names.
Like Elia Kazan, the recent recipient of a controversial honorary Oscar, Dmytryk
was never forgiven for naming names by others who had been blacklisted. In 1988, the
Barcelona Film Festival organized a symposium about Hollywood's blacklist, inviting
Dmytryk and three others who had been blacklisted but never recanted.
The trio would not share the same platform with Dmytryk and he was forced to sit
in the audience. His onetime comrades excoriated him as ``scum,'' ``Judas'' and
``informer.''
Dmytryk replied: ``I didn't give any names that weren't known by the FBI.''
After the event, Dmytryk said: ``When I die, I know the obits will first read
`one of Hollywood's Unfriendly 10,' not `director of `The Caine Mutiny,' `The Young
Lions,' `Raintree County' and other films.'''
Dmytryk was born Sept. 4, 1908, of Ukrainian immigrant parents. After his
mother died, his father remarried and moved to San Francisco, where the neglected and
abused boy sold newspapers to help support the family.
At 15, he found work as a messenger at Paramount Studios in Hollywood and rose
through the ranks to become a film editor. He began directing low-budget movies at
neighboring RKO and drew notice for ``Murder My Sweet,'' which started the hardboiled
private eye cycle and rescued Dick Powell from musicals, and ``Crossfire,'' an indictment
of anti-Semitism long a taboo subject in films.
After leaving prison, Dmytryk directed three films in England, then returned to
Washington to recant and name names. Only then did he find work in Hollywood.
After making a string of well-crafted, low-budget films for Stanley Kramer, the
producer assigned him to the 1954 World War II drama, ``The Caine Mutiny.'' The film's
success made Dmytryk an in-demand director.
Small, tough and muscular, the director became noted for being able to deal with
stars in dramas, Westerns or war movies. Among his films were ``The Broken Lance''
(Spencer Tracy), ``Soldier of Fortune'' (Clark Gable), ``The Left Hand of God'' (Humphrey
Bogart, Gene Tierney), ``Raintree County'' (Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift) and ``The
Young Lions'' (Marlon Brando, Clift, Dean Martin).
Others included ``A Walk on the Wild Side'' (Jane Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck),
``The Carpetbaggers'' (George Peppard, Alan Ladd), ``Where Love Has Gone'' (Bette Davis,
Susan Hayward), ``Mirage'' (Gregory Peck) and ``Anzio'' (Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan).
Dmytryk later taught film at the University of Southern California, wrote
manuals on filmmaking and two autobiographies, ``It's a Hell of a Life but Not a Bad
Living'' and ``Odd Man Out, A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten.''
In addition to his wife, survivors include a son by a first marriage, Michael,
two daughters, Rebecca and Victoria, and three grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements were pending.
