Delmer Daves — His Hobby is Real Work (1951) 🇺🇸

Veteran director Delmer Daves, with a long list of hits to his credit, is going around the world for more ideas

by Paul Manning

For a motion picture director to have the unusual hobby of forgery detection may seem rather far fetched but in the case of Delmer Daves it appears to have served a good purpose. Taking literary license for stretching the imagination, I would venture to say that this adherence to the study of forgery detection has enabled him to detect any subtle forgery in story plot, in artistic ability, or in production design. Forgery has been practiced in this movie town, and these forgeries, masquerading under the cloak of the real thing, may be responsible for many former patrons now gracing the fireside and watching the wavering video screen instead of going to the movies.

Daves, returned from Honolulu, where he directed Bird of Paradise, for 20th Century-Fox, says that under the spell of the authentic backgrounds, his players responded like people hypnotized by the spell of the Islands and the charm and simplicity of the beautiful story. This may seem a bit airy for some down-to-earth people, but where have great films like Seventh Heaven, The Kid, A Star is Born, etc., been born if not in the fertile minds of artists who dared to let their thoughts get a bit airy.

“Give me the real locales on a story,” says Daves, “and I’ll show you actors who will react as they should, resulting in a picture which will bear the true brand of realism.” This is showmanship, this quest for quality. Showmanship on the legitimate stage is not expected to contain any such physical realism, it could not be humanly expected, but when it comes to movies, we can, and should, deliver the real thing. Never pass a forgery, or you will be branded as such.

Daves as a person is most colorful. His 21 hobbies, which qualify him as Hollywood’s “most hobbied director,” include carving, minerology, lapidary work, photography, painting, etching, miniature furniture making, and collecting books on arts and crafts. He still insists that picture making is a hobby with him, claiming that a man works better at hobbies than at anything else. This is a labor of love. The money he gets for this particular hobby helps him go along with this and other hobbies. At least that’s his story, and we’re stuck with it.

Daves was born in San Francisco, moving to Los Angeles a few years later. After attending the lower grade schools, he returned to Northern California, where he obtained a law degree at Stanford. In 1927, he returned to Los Angeles, but instead of going into the legal business he reverted to his basic love for the arts, and took a job with James Cruze as assistant prop boy. After a year or so, he was finally raised to head prop boy. Branching into acting, he played a small role in The Duke Steps Out, which starred Joan Crawford and the reigning favorite, William Haines. From this he became technical adviser on a film with a college background being made by Sam Wood. This gave him solid entry to the ranks of film writers, as in those days the job of technical adviser required the writing of practically an entire script on the subject being filmed before accepted for the berth. His 20 pages to Wood on college life were perhaps the most important 20 pages of Daves’ life, and he knows it.

After five years of writing and acting, Daves chucked it all to make a one-year bicycle tour of Europe. Returning to Hollywood, he went to Warners, where he wrote screen plays for Flirtation Walk, Shipmates Forever, The Petrified Forest, and other hits. He followed these, after a period of freelancing, with Destination Tokyo, Hollywood Canteen, Dark Passage, The Pride of the Marines, and Task Force. With Destination Tokyo, Daves started to combine writing with directing.

In 1949, Daves was hailed by Darryl Zanuck [Darryl F. Zanuck], 20th Century-Fox, and was handed Broken Arrow as his first directorial assignment. It is now motion picture history that he turned in one of the most sensitive jobs of his career. After the film was completed, Zanuck handed Daves a long-term ticket, and shipped him to Honolulu to do a job with Bird of Paradise, a tender love story of the islands.

Today, off on another of his annual wanderings about the world, Daves is no doubt gathering more fuel for the fires of Hollywood. When he returns to his desk at 20th Century-Fox, it will be with eyes clear with new ideas, still seeing new and interesting people whom he encountered on his travels, and with the virile energy of a man who intends to stay perennially young. — P. M.

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Debra Paget and Louis Jourdan are glimpsed above in a scene from 20th-Fox’s Technicolor Bird of Paradise, filmed in Hawaii under Daves’ direction, and slated for release in the near future.

James Stewart and Jeff Chandler starred in Broken Arrow, directed by Daves for 20th-Fox,

Collection: Exhibitor Magazine (Studio Survey), February 1951