Trivia

At one time a member of the Communist party, he later renounced and denounced Communism.

He directed six different performers in Oscar-nominated performances: Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Tom Tully, Humphrey Bogart, Katy Jurado and Elizabeth Taylor.

Became U.S. citizen at age 31.

Although Dmytryk's films for RKO in the 1940s were very profitable and elicited much favorable comment, he was generally treated like a B director by his home studio. The only film for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination - "Crossfire" (1947) - was shot in 24 days on a paltry budget of $250,000.

Last name properly pronounced "Dah-METT-trick."

When his British passport expired, Dmytryk returned to the United States, where he was arrested and imprisoned. He served four months and 17 days in Millspoint Prison, West Virginia.

On April 25, 1951, Dmytryk appeared before HUAC for the second time and answered all questions. He spoke of his own brief party membership in 1945 and named party members, including seven film directors: Arnold Manoff, Frank Tuttle, Herbert Biberman, Jack Berry, Bernard Vorhaus, Jules Dassin, and Michael Gordon, and 15 others. He said that he was prompted to change his mind by the Alger Hiss case, the discovery of spies in the U.S. and Canada, and the invasion of South Korea. He said that John Howard Lawson, Adrian Scott, Albert Maltz, and others had pressured him to include communist elements in his films. His testimony damaged several court cases that others of the "Ten" had filed.

In the 1980s, Dmytryk entered academic life. He taught about film and directing at the University of Texas at Austin and at the University of Southern California film school.

He recounted his experiences of the period in his 1996 book, Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten.

Father of Michael J. Dmytryk with Madeleine Robinson.

Father of son Richard and daughters Victoria and Rebecca with Jean Porter.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 251-257. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Was originally (in 1954) assigned to direct 20th Century-Fox's Seven Cities of Gold (1955), but eventually Robert D. Webb directed the picture.

He was a liberal Democrat.

Dmytryk worked as a messenger at Famous Players-Lasky (forerunner of Paramount Pictures) for $6 per week while attending Hollywood High School. He progressed to projectionist, film editor, and by age 31, a director and a naturalized citizen of the United States.

He wrote several books on the art of film-making (such as On Film Editing and On Screenwriting). He also appeared on the lecture circuit, speaking at various colleges and theaters, such as the Orson Welles Cinema.

After the war, many Americans were alarmed by Soviet actions in Europe and by reports of covert communist activity in the U.S. The period has been dubbed the Second Red Scare. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigated Communist Party influence in the film industry, and Dmytryk was among those called to testify about it before HUAC in 1947. Dmytryk briefly had been a Communist Party member in 1944 and 1945. He was persuaded by his former party associates to join nine other Hollywood figures in a public refusal to testify. The Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison terms. Dmytryk was fired from RKO. Dmytryk fled to England and unofficially was ostracized.[when?] In England, he made two films for producer Nat Bronstein: a thriller Obsession (1949), and Give Us This Day (1949), a neo-realistic movie sympathetic to the working man, based on the novel Christ in Concrete.

In 1947, he was named as one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their investigations during the McCarthy-era Red Scare. They all served time in prison for contempt of Congress. In 1951, however, Dmytryk testified to the HUAC and named individuals, including Arnold Manoff, whose careers were then destroyed for many years, to rehabilitate his own career.

He was a Canadian-born American film director and editor.

In 2002 he was profiled in "Film Noir Reader 3" by Robert Porfirio (Limelight Editions).

One of Turner Classic Movies in-house "original productions" promotions has one about the career of Edward Dmytryk----it just played again on 7-29-17---that the first film Mr. Dmytryk was in 1939. It appears that TMC's research staff is a tad bit incorrect as the first film he directed was "The Hawk (1939)", a poverty-row B-western. In 1949, "Ramblin' Tommy Scott acquired this film, probably from a Astor film exchange in Dallas or Atlanta, shot some footage featuring himself, his wife and his traveling medicine show, edited in some new footage and changed the name of the film to "Trail of the Hawk" and it was shown in theatres, primarily in the southern states, where the Scott troupe also made a live, on-stage, performance. 16 mm prints still exist of both films; the 1935 original-release film "The Hawk", sans Tommy Scott and troupe, and the 1949 version "The Trail of the Hawk" containing the edited-into of Tommy Scott and company. It appears that the TCM researchers didn't bother checking the IMDb filmography of Edward Dmytryk.

He was known for his 1940s noir films and received an Oscar nomination for Best Director for Crossfire (1947).

Dmytryk did some uncredited directing on Million Dollar Legs (1939) with Betty Grable. This encouraged Paramount to allow him to direct Television Spy (1939).

His Ukrainian immigrant parents were Frances (Berezowski) and Michael Dmytryk, a severe disciplinarian who bounced among jobs as truck driver, smelter worker, and motorman.