John Villiers Farrow, KGCHS (10 February 190427 January 1963) was an Australian film director, producer, and screenwriter. Spending a considerable amount of his career in the United States, in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Wake Island, and in 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days. He had seven children by his wife, actress Maureen O'Sullivan, including actress Mia Farrow.
Early life
Farrow was born in Marrickville, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, the son of Lucy Villiers (née Savage; 1881–1907), a dressmaker, and Joseph Farrow (1880–1925), a tailor's trimmer. His parents were both of English descent. Farrow was educated at Newtown Public School and Fort Street Boys' High School and then started a career in accountancy.
He claimed to have run away to sea in an American barquentine, sailed "all over the Pacific," and fought in revolts in Nicaragua and Mexico. Reaching California, he enrolled at St. Ignatius College (later known as the University of San Francisco) in 1923, but left after one month.
He traveled throughout the Pacific, including Fiji, Hawaii and Guam. On arrival in Hollywood, Farrow fabricated his education, saying he had attended Newington College in Sydney, Australia (he lived in a street below its ovals), Winchester College in England and the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Many publications and websites still contain this information.
Writer
Farrow started writing while working as a sailor and became interested in screenwriting after a chance voyage in the South Seas with the film-maker Robert J. Flaherty. Re-entering the United States, allegedly by jumping ship at San Francisco, he found his way to Hollywood where from 1927, his nautical expertise brought him work as a script consultant and technical adviser. He had already earned minor recognition as a poet and writer of short stories.
He soon established himself as a notable screenwriter. He worked for DeMille Productions, doing titles for White Gold (1927) and The Wreck of the Hesperus (1927).
He adapted Richard Connell's 1923 short story "A Friend of Napoleon" but it does not appear to have been made. He also wrote the original story for The Blue Danube (1928) and the script for The Bride of the Colorado (1929). At Warner Bros he wrote A Sailor's Sweetheart (1927) for director Lloyd Bacon.
Paramount and RKO
At Paramount Farrow worked a series of "woman's pictures" Three Weekends (1928), with Clara Bow; The Woman from Moscow (1928) for Pola Negri; The First Kiss (1928), with Fay Wray and Gary Cooper, and Ladies of the Mob (1929) with Bow. At that studio he also made The Showdown (1928), The Four Feathers (1929), The Wheel of Life (1929), A Dangerous Woman (1929) and Wolf Song (1929) with Gary Cooper.
He wrote The Bad One (1930) for United Artists. Shadow of the Law (1930) and Seven Days' Leave (1930) (with Cooper) were for Paramount.
Farrow began to work increasingly at RKO: Inside the Lines (1930); The Common Law (1931), with Constance Bennett, and a big hit; A Woman of Experience (1931) with Helen Twelvetrees.
Britain
He compiled an English-French-Tahitian dictionary and wrote a novel, Laughter Ends (1933). In 1932 he went to England where he wrote The Impassive Footman (1932) for Basil Dean. He worked as a writer and assistant director on G. W. Pabst's film Don Quixote (1933), and briefly visited Tahiti again.
Return to Hollywood and arrest
Farrow returned to Hollywood and re-established himself as a screenwriter. On 27 January 1933, while dancing at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, he was arrested for breach of his visa, as part of a general crackdown against illegal immigrants in the film industry. Farrow was charged with making a false statement while entering the US, having claimed he was Romanian. Although threatened with deportation, eventually he was given five years' probation, before being acquitted of the charges the following year.
At MGM Farrow wrote Last of the Pagans (1935), partly set in Tahiti, and directed a short, The Spectacle Maker (1934). He received a plum appointment to work on Tarzan Escapes (1936) but the film was subsequently rewritten and reshot.
Film director
Warner Bros. In 1930, it was announced that Farrow would direct his own story First Love but this did not materialize. He signed to Warner Bros. in 1936 looking to direct and was linked with a number of projects, including a Foreign Legion story and an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story "The Pit and the Pendulum". Farrow finally made his directorial debut in 1937 with Men in Exile, a remake of Safe in Hell (1931).