John Cromwell, actor, director, and producer, is well known for his extensive work in films, on Broadway, and in regional theater.
He was born Elwood Dager in Toledo, Ohio on December 23, 1887. After graduation from the Howe School in Indiana in 1905, he immediately began his stage career, acting with touring and stock companies. He was billed as Elwood Dager until a New York appearance in 1912, when he changed his name to John Cromwell. In 1913, he received his first assignment as a director for the production of The Painted Woman. From 1915 to 1919, he worked as an actor and director for the New York Repertory Company and appeared in the American premieres of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (Playhouse, December 9, 1915) and Captain Brassbound's Conversion (Playhouse, March 29, 1916). His career was briefly interrupted by service in the U.S. Army during World War I. After the war, he continued to act and direct and also to produce on Broadway and for various regional theaters in the United States and in Great Britain. From 1929 until the early 1950s, he worked primarily as a film director, but frequently appeared in and directed plays on Broadway.
With the introduction of sound to motion pictures, Cromwell was one of many stage directors invited to join Hollywood production teams. In 1929, he worked for Paramount and in 1933 went to RKO. He made over 40 films, most for RKO, although he also directed for a number of independent producers such as David O. Selznick, Walter Wanger, and Samuel Goldwyn. His films include Tom Sawyer (Paramount, 1930), Of Human Bondage (RKO, 1934), Little Lord Fauntleroy (United Artists, 1936), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (RKO, 1940), and Anna and the King of Siam (Fox, 1946). In the 1940s, he was twice president of the Director's Guild of America. Appalled by the House Un-American Activities Committee investigations into alleged communist infiltration into the film industry, Cromwell gradually broke away from films. From this period of disengagement, however, come two of his better films, Caged (United Artists, 1950), for which Eleanor Parker won an Academy Award nomination, and The Goddess (Independent, 1956), for which Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screenplay.
In 1951, his contract with RKO expired and Cromwell was only too happy to accept a part in Point of No Return, which opened on Broadway at the Alvin on December 13, 1951. He won an Antoinette Perry Award for his portrayal of John Gray in that play. He subsequently appeared in or directed a number of Broadway plays, including Mary, Mary (Helen Hayes, March 8, 1961). Increasingly disenchanted with Broadway's commercialism, he became involved in regional theater, where he felt plays were more likely to be judged for their artistic merit. With his wife Ruth Nelson, Cromwell played in the first four seasons of Tyrone Guthrie's Minnesota Theatre Company (1963-1966). He has also worked with the Cleveland Play House, the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, and other regional theaters.
Cromwell married four times and had one son. At the time these papers were processed, he was working on his autobiography.
