Even among classic film buffs, Clarence Brown seldom comes to mind. In discussions of great directors, Brown is a footnote for his work with Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina (1935). Also acknowledged: he directed Elizabeth Taylor in her breakthrough movie, National Velvet (1944). As biographer Gwenda Young readily admits in Clarence Brown: Hollywood’s Forgotten Master, her subject’s career was spent mostly at MGM, whose high-gloss productions haven’t been fashionable for half a century; he went unnoticed by early film historians who pursued the auteur theory; he was neither hero nor villain during the Hollywood Black List. Young even admits that some of Brown’s movies were “hokey and sentimental.”
And yet he went to work for 30 years and did a good job when possible. Young makes a credible case for Brown’s skillful craft and even artistry in the silent era. Mentored by Maurice Tourneur , the pioneering French expatriate director (and father of Cat People’s Jacques Tourneur), his earliest years open a window to the just-before Hollywood movie industry operating on the East Coast. Brown was at the center of moviemaking after the industry moved west, directing Rudolph Valentino, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy, among other stars.
Brown will probably remain a second-tier figure in film history but he was considered first class in Hollywood’s golden years. Young tells his story well.
Clarence Brown: Hollywood’s Forgotten Master is published by University Press of Kentucky.
