30 Years of Brilliance: 1930-1959
The life of Edward Dmytryk is a testament to the redemptive power of the movies. Born in Canada to abusive Ukranian immigrant parents, his hardscrabble youth was as Dickensian as they come. Instead of ending in juvenile hall, however, it ended in the employment office of a movie studio.
By the 1940's, Dmytryk was a fast rising star as a director, specializing in tough dramas-'Murder, My Sweet' in 1944, 'Cornered' in 1945, and 'Crossfire' in 1947, chief among them. And then came the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), keen to root out all subversive elements from Hollywood. Dmytryk, like many other honorable Americans, had joined the Communist Party in the years leadiing up to World War II as the only organized force in the United States then opposing Adolf Hitler's evil. That same moral sense led Dmytryk to resist HUAC's unconstitutional questioning of his political beliefs.
Such bullying had a name, the'blacklist', a mechanism by which Hollywood appeared to purge itself of leftist influences. Dmytryk railed against the blacklist, helming a daring production in England-'Give Us This Day' in 1949-with other blacklisted actors and craftspeople working proudly under their own names. It backfired:'Give Us This Day' won accolades across Europe but was essentially banned in the United States and Dmytryk was imprisoned. Months in jail changed his mind and Dmytryk opted to name names. It won him his freedom and a place in Hollywood once again, but it left a lasting stigma that haunted him to the grave. In the second period of his career, Dmytryk lacked the brash energy of his youth and in 1976 he left filmmaking to teach and write about the craft. He died in 1999, a controversial figure to the end.
