BIO

Clarence Brown was born Clarence Leon Brown in Clinton, Massachusetts, in 1890.   His father manufactured cotton and the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1901.   Brown graduated from the University of Tennessee with a degree in engineering.

He began his career working for a car manufacturer and then opened his own auto dealership in Alabama.   By the time he was 23, he had given up that vocation and headed to Fort Lee, New Jersey, an early center of the U.S. film industry, to work with film director Maurice Tourneur.

After working with Tourneur for 3 years, Brown began getting assistant director credits, between 1915 and 1917, after which he enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Service as a fighter pilot during World War I.

After being discharged in 1920, Brown again teamed up with Tourneur, this time as co-director, before leaving for a director position at Universal Pictures in 1923.   In 1926, Brown joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and remained there until his retirement in 1952.

A frequent director of Greta Garbo, he received his first two Academy Award nominations for two of her films released in 1930: Anna Christie and Romance.   Brown received his next two Oscar nominations for The Human Comedy (1943) and National Velvet (1944), both starring Mickey Rooney.   His last director nomination was for The Yearling (1946).

He married four times:

1. Paula Pratt, 1913-1920, divorced, one child;
2. Ona Wilson, 1922-1927, divorced;
3. Alice Joyce, actress, 1933-1945, divorced;
4. Marian Spies, 1946-1987;

Brown died of kidney failure in Santa Monica, California, in 1987, at the age of 97.

Additional biographical information is available at:

NOTED FILMS