OBITUARY: Edward Dmytryk, Hollywood film director (08/15/99)

OBITUARY: Edward Dmytryk, Hollywood film director

ENCINO, Calif. - Edward Dmytryk, a versatile film director who worked with some of Hollywood's biggest stars to create an array of memorable movies, and whose film legacy was overshadowed by his decision to ultimately cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation into Communist infiltration of the film industry in the 1940s, died at his home on July 1 at the age of 90.

As one of the "Hollywood 10," a group of screenwriters, directors and producers who were cited for contempt of Congress by the HUAC for refusing to acknowledge a Communist affiliation - he served a four-and-a-half-month sentence at a Federal prison camp in West Virginia.

"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 Country' and other films,'" he was quoted by The New York Times as having said a decade ago.

Mr. Dmytryk was a rising young director at RKO Pictures when he joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUS) in 1944, using the name Michael Edward. When the party changed its name to the Communist Political Association he joined again - this time under his own name.

Mr. Dmytryk was subpoenaed by the HUAC in 1947. Believing that the committee was unconstitutional, he refused to tell the committee whether he was a Communist during his initial HUAC testimony.

After his release from prison he was blacklisted by the major studios and unable to find work.

In 1951 he reappeared before the panel, acknowledged that he had been a Communist Party member from 1944 to 1945 and confirmed other witnesses' party membership.

The motivation for his decision to reappear before the panel continues to be variously ascribed by different newspapers.

Citing his 1978 autobiography, "It's a Hell of a Life, but Not a Bad Living," The New York Times noted that in looking for a way to break the blacklist, Mr. Dmytryk concluded: "I had to purge myself: Hollywood's right wing had to have its pound of flesh. They were riding high now, and there was no way they were going to let anyone off the hook. It was an eye-for-eye attitude, but who could blame them?"

On the other hand, the Associated Press reported that Mr. Dmytryk acknowledged a Communist affiliation and "named names" only after he finished his jail term, quoting him as having remarked in 1988 that he hadn't done so before "because they would call me a coward; they'd say I was doing it simply to stay out of jail.

"I had long been convinced that the fight of the Hollywood 10 was political, that the battle for freedom of thought, in which I believed completely, had been twisted into a conspiracy of silence. I was being forced to sacrifice my family and my career in defense of the Communist Party, from which I had long been separated and which I had grown to dislike and distrust.

"My decision was made easier," he continued, because "my experience as an actual party member had been rather meager, and I couldn't name anybody who hadn't already been identified."

Dr. Myron Kuropas in a column titled "Hollywood Reds" (The Ukrainian Weekly, April 18), refers to the book "Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten," where Mr. Dmytyrk describes how he came to his agonizing decision. "You know they talk democracy but prepare the way for the most inhuman autocracy in human history ... why are you still protecting them? Could you still be searching for utopia? Or could you still believe there is a possibility of a decent world through Stalinism?"

Controversy continued to surround Mr. Dmytryk for the remainder of his career. In 1988 the Barcelona Film Festival organized a symposium about the Hollywood blacklisting of the 1950s at which Mr. Dmytryk was publicly denounced by three of the original "Hollywood 10."

Mr. Dmytryk's early films included "Hitler's Children," "Behind the Rising Sun," anti-Fascist melodramas; the thrillers "Murder, My Sweet?" (1944) and "Cornered" (1945); "Back to Bataan" with John Wayne, and "Till the End of Time," a drama of returning soldiers.

In the period of the Red Scare, he had been nominated for an Academy Award as best director for "Crossfire," a powerful film about anti-Semitism starring Robery Ryan, Robert Mitchum and Robert Young.

After recanting, he returned to a successful career directing "The Caine Mutiny" with Humphrey Bogart in 1954. In the mid-1950s and '60s he directed major films including "The Broken Lance" with Spencer Tracy; Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" with Deborah Kerr; "The Left Hand of God" with Bogart and Gene Tierney; "Soldier of Fortune" with Clark Gable; "Raintree County" with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift; and "The Young Lions" with Marlon Brando, Mr. Clift and Dean Martin.

He continued to make films with big stars until his career waned in the '70s. These movies included "Warlock" with Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda; "A Walk on the Wild Side" with Jane Fonda, Barbara Stanwyck and Laurence Harvey; "The Carpetbaggers" with George Peppard and Alan Ladd; "Where Love Has Gone" with Bette Davis and Susan Hayward; and "Bluebeard" with Richard Burton.

Edward Dmytryk was born on September 4, 1908, in Grand Forks, British Columbia, the second of four sons of Ukrainian immigrant parents. His father, Michael, succeeded in slipping the family into the U.S. to avoid being interned by the Canadian government during World War I for having immigrated from Austro-Hungary. The family first lived in San Francisco and then in Los Angeles.

Edward began selling and delivering newspapers at age 6 and left home at 14, becoming a messenger at Paramount Pictures for $6 a week while attending Hollywood High School. He rose to projectionist at 19, film editor at 21 and director at 31. He studied at the California Institute of Technology for a year, but dropped out to learn about movie-making.

As noted in The New York Times obituary, he said his most valuable training was tightening scripts for maximum effect and minimum dialogue. As for directing, he believed "the hand on the tiller" should be "gentle, but firm - and undivided." He said a director should also be a film's producer; the dual assignment "eliminated the need for compromise," which he deplored as "the single most difficult problem facing any creator."

In later years Mr. Dmytryk taught film theory and production, first at the University of Texas in Austin, then at the University of Southern California. He also wrote several books on filmmaking, among them "On Screen Directing."

Mr. Dmytryk's first marriage, to Madeleine Robinson, ended in divorce in 1948. The director is survived by his wife, Jean Porter, an actress whom he married in 1948; two sons, Richard and Michael; two daughters, Victoria and Rebecca; and three grandchildren.

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