Edward Dmytryk(1908-1999)
- Director
- Editor
- Editorial Department
Edward Dmytryk grew up in San Francisco, the son of Ukrainian
immigrants. After his mother died when he was 6, his strict
disciplinarian father beat the boy frequently, and the child began
running away while in his early teens. Eventually, juvenile authorities
allowed him to live alone at the age of 15 and helped him find
part-time work as a film studio messenger. Dmytryk was an outstanding
student in physics and mathematics and gained a scholarship to the
California Institute of Technology. However, he dropped out after one
year to return to movies, eventually working his way up from film
editor to director. By the late 1940s, he was considered one of
Hollywood's rising young directing talents, but his career was
interrupted by the activities of the House Un-American Activities
Committee (HUAC), a congressional committee that employed ruthless
tactics aimed at rooting out and destroying what it saw as Communist
influence in Hollywood. A lifelong political leftist who had been a
Communist Party member briefly during World War II, Dmytryk was one of
the so-called "Hollywood Ten" who refused to cooperate with HUAC and
had their careers disrupted or ruined as a result. The committee threw
him in prison for refusing to cooperate, and after having spent several
months behind bars, Dmytryk decided to cooperate after all, and
testified again before the committee, this time giving the names of
people he said were Communists. He claimed to believe he had done the
right thing, but many in the Hollywood community--even those who came
along long after the committee was finally disbanded--never forgave
him, and that action overshadowed his career the rest of his life. In
the 1970s, as his directing career ground to a halt, Dmytryk recalled
some advice once given him by Garson Kanin, and returned to academic life,
this time as a teacher. From 1976 to 1981 he was a professor of film
theory and production at the University of Texas at Austin, and in
1981, was appointed to a chair in filmmaking at the University of
Southern California, a position he held until about two years before
his death. During his teaching career, he also authored several books
on various aspects of filmmaking, as well as two volumes of
memoirs.
