Background
Donald Crisp was born on 27July 1880 in Aberfeldy, Perth and Kinross, United Kingdom.
Donald Crisp was born on 27July 1880 in Aberfeldy, Perth and Kinross, United Kingdom.
After Eton and Oxford, he served in the Boer War.
In 1906 he went to America as an actor. Bv 1910, he had joined D. W. Griffith at Biograph: (The Two Paths 10); Fate’s Turning (10); The Battle (11); The Battle of the Sexes (14); The Escape (14); Home Sweet Home (14); as Grant in The Birth of a Nation (15); Intolerance (16); and Battling Burrows in Broken Blossoms (19). As well as acting for the master. Crisp apparently worked for the British secret service during the First World War and began directing himself, for Reliance-Majestic and Mutual: The Dawn (14); Ramona (16); The Countess Charming (17); Under the Top (18); It Pays to Advertise (19); Too Much Johnson ( 19); and The Six Best Cellars (20). He worked steadily as a director throughout the 1920s, though no more than an enthusiastic recorder of such stars as Douglas Fairbanks and Keaton. Indeed, Keaton hired him for The Navigator (24) and found that Crisp's experience with drama so swiftly adapted to gags that the Scot had to be restrained—there is something verv appealing in “old stoneface” having to tell the eager Crisp to calm down.
In addition, Crisp directed Appearances (21); The Barbarian (21); The Bonnie Brier Bush (21), in which he acted; The Princess of New York (21); Ponjola (23); Don Q, Son of Zorro (25), in which he acted; Man Bait (26); Sunny Side Up (26); Young April (26); Dress Parade (27): The Fighting Eagle (27); Nobody’s Widow (27); Vanity (27); The Cop (28); Stand and Deliver (28); and The Runaway Bride (30).
That was the last film he directed. With sound, perhaps, lie found direction too complex—he was almost fifty. Thereafter, he concentrated on acting: The River Pirate (28, William K. Howard); The Pagan (29, W. S. Van Dyke); as Sigsbee Man- derson in Trent’s Last Case (29, Howard Hawks); as Leif Ericsson in The Viking (29, Roy William Neill); Scotland Yard (30, Howard); Svengali (31. Archie Mayo); A Passport to Hell (32, Frank Lloyd); Red Dust (32, Victor Fleming); What Every Woman Knows (34, Gregory La Cava); The Little Minister (34, Richard Wallace); Laddie (35, George Stevens); Oil for the Lamps of China (35, Mervyn Le Rov); Mutiny on the Bounty (35, Lloyd); Mary of Scotland (36, John Ford); The Charge of the Light Brigade (36. Michael Curtiz); A Woman Rebels (36, Mark Sandrich); Parnell (37, John M. Stahl); The Life of Emile Zola (37, William Dieterle): Jezebel (38, William Wyler); The Amazing Dr. Clitterhou.se (38, Anatole Litvak); Wuthenng Heights (39. Wyler); as Bacon in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (39, Curtiz); Juarez (39, Dieterle); The Sea Hawk (40, Curtiz); Brother Orchid (40, Lloyd Bacon); Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (41, Fleming); as the father in How Green Was My Valley (41, Ford), winning the supporting actor Oscar; The Gay Sisters (42, Irving Rapper); Lassie Come Home (43, Fred McLeod Wilcox); National Velvet (44, Clarence Brown); The Uninvited (44, Lewis Allen); The Adventures of Mark Twain (44, Rapper); Son of Lassie (45, Sylvan Simon); Valley of Decision (45, Tay Garnett); Ramrod (47, André de Toth); Challenge to Lassie (49, Richard Thorpe); Blight Leaf (50, Curtiz); Prince Valiant (54, Henry Hathaway); The Long Groty Line (55, Ford); in his best performance, as the Lear-like father in The Man from Laramie (55, Anthony Mann); Drango (57, Hall Bartlett); Saddle the Wind (58, Robert Parrish); The Last Hurrah (58, Ford); Pollyanna (60, David Swift); and Spencer's Mountain (63, Delrner Daves).
Donald Crisp was a grand old man of the cinema who became increasingly endearing the more he tried to be a stern Scot. Although retired for his last ten years—since the age of eighty-three—his span was remarkable.