Actors - John Cromwell

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	Actors - John Cromwell

John Cromwell (December 23, 1887 – September 26, 1979) was an American actor, producer and director.

Born Elwood Dager Cromwell in Toledo, Ohio, he made his New York stage debut in Marian De Forest's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1912) on Broadway. It was a hit and ran for 184 performances. He then directed the play The Painted Woman (1913), which failed. Next he acted in and co-directed with Frank Craven the hit show Too Many Cooks (1914), which ran for 223 performances.

Cromwell played Charles Lomax in the original Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara (1915), about a woman of The Salvation Army, and he played the role as Capt. Kearney in the revival of Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1916). Among others, he also had a role in The Racket (1927), which ran for 119 performances. The following year while the Broadway company was playing The Racket in Los Angeles, Cromwell was signed to a Paramount Pictures contract as an actor and student director.

He made his motion picture debut playing Walter Babbing in the comedy The Dummy (1929), a talkie starring Ruth Chatterton and Fredric March, with Jack Oakie, and Zasu Pitts. His work as co-director with Edward Sutherland on the musical/romance Close Harmony starring Buddy Rogers, Nancy Carroll, Harry Green, and Jack Oakie, and the musical/drama The Dance of Life (both released in 1929), was so skillful he was allowed to begin directing without collaboration, beginning with The Mighty that same year starring George Bancroft, in which he also played the part of Mr. Jamieson.

He directed Tom Sawyer (1930) starring Jackie Coogan in the title role; Sinclair Lewis's Ann Vickers (1933) starring Irene Dunne, Walter Huston, Conrad Nagel, Bruce Cabot, and Edna May Oliver; and Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage
(1934) starring Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and Frances Dee.

The latter two movies were at RKO and both had censorship trouble. In the novel by Lewis, Ann Vickers is a birth control advocate and reformer who has an extramarital affair. The screenplay was finally approved by the Production Code when the studio agreed to make Vickers an unmarried woman at the time of her affair, thus eliminating the issue of adultery. The screenplay for Maugham's Of Human Bondage was unacceptable because the prostitute, Mildred Rogers (played by Davis), whom the club-footed medical student, Philip Carey (played by Howard), falls in love with, comes down with syphilis. Will Hays's office demanded that Mildred be made a waitress who comes down with TB, and that she be married to Carey's friend she cheats on him with. RKO agreed to everything to keep from having to pay a $25,000 fine.

Cromwell had four wives: actress Kay Johnson (married 1928-divorced); actress Alice Lindahl (divorced); actress Marie Goff (divorced); and actress Ruth Nelson (married 1946-his death 1979).

He and Kay Johnson had one adopted son, John Oliver Cromwell (actor James Cromwell).

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