Biography

Clarence Brown

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Clarence Leon Brown was the son of Larkin Harry and Catherine Ann (Gaw) Brown of Clinton, Massachusetts. His family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, when he was 12 years old. He graduated from Knoxville High School in 1905 and from the University of Tennessee with a B.A. in mechanical and electrical engineering in 1912. After graduation Brown settled in Alabama, where he operated a Stevens Duryea dealership called the Brown Motor Car Co. He soon tired of the car business and, fascinated by the movies, moved to New Jersey to study with French director Maurice Tourneur at Peerless Productions in Fort Lee.

During his career Brown directed or produced more than 50 widely-acclaimed full-length films--many during his long association with prestigious MGM--and worked with many of the industry's most illustrious performers. He also maintained close ties with the University of Tennessee, donating the money necessary to construct the institution's Clarence Brown Theatre during the 1970s and an additional $12 million after his death.
- IMDb mini biography by: EGD (qv's & corrections by A. Nonymous)

Directed 10 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore, Norma Shearer, Marie Dressler, Beulah Bondi, Charles Boyer, Mickey Rooney, Anne Revere, Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman. Barrymore and Revere won Oscars for their performances in one of Brown's movies.
At six, he holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations for Best Director without a win. He was nominated for Anna Christie (1930), Romance (1930), A Free Soul (1931), The Human Comedy (1943), National Velvet (1944) and The Yearling (1946).
Was a fighter pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War I.
Brown is on record as stating that the happiest working conditions of his career were at 20th Century-Fox where he made the only non-MGM picture during the last 25 years of his career on double loan-out with Myrna Loy.
The governor of Tennessee declared May 27, 1970, as Clarence Brown Day with the start of the inaugural film festival in the 626 Clarence Brown Theater on the campus of the University of Tennessee.

A star is when someone says, "To hell with it, let's leave the dishes in the sink and go see Joan Crawford in a movie".
First I want everything an actress knows. I get her interpretation, then we talk.
Maurice Tourneur was my god. I owe him everything I've got in the world. For me, he was the greatest man who ever lived. If it hadn't been for him, I'd still be selling automobiles.
[on Greta Garbo] She has this great appeal to the world because she expresses her emotions by thinking them. Garbo does not need gestures and movements to convey happiness, despair, hope and disappointment, joy or tragedy. She registers her feelings literally by radiating her thoughts to you.
Working with [Greta Garbo] Garbo was easy because she trusted me. I never directed her in anything above a whisper. She was very shy, so we'd go through the changes I wanted in a little quiet whisper off in the corner, without letting others know what I was telling her. I learned through experience that Garbo had something behind the eyes that told the whole story that I couldn't see from my distance. Sometimes I would be dissatisfied with a take, but would go ahead and print it anyway. On the screen Garbo multiplied the effect of the scene I had taken. It was something that no one else ever had.