Born June 13, 1894 in Santa Ana, California, William Taylor Garnett, known professionally as Tay Garnett, was one of the most prolific writer-directors of films and TV dramas from 1920 through 1975.
Although he was never nominated for an Oscar, Garnett worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood, directing a couple of them to Oscar nominations while receiving recognition for his work from other awards bodes.
Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Garnett graduated from Los Angeles High School after which he studied commercial art at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to California to open an art agency. In 1917, he joined the U.S. Navy’s Aviation Corps and trained soldiers to fly at California air bases during World War I.
After the war, Garnett entered the film industry as a gagwriter for Nack Sennett, Hal Roach and others. His first credit as a writer was for the 1920 short, The Quack Doctor. His first credit as a director was for the 1924 short, Fast Black. His first direction of a feature length film was for 1928’s Celebrity. In 1929, he married the first of his three actress wives, Patsy Ruth Miller, best remembered for 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame opposite Lon Chaney.
Garnett won acclaim for two early 1930s films, 1930’s Her Man with Helen Twelvetrees and Phillips Holmes, and 1932’s One Way Passage with William Powell and Kay Francis. Garnett and Miller divorced in 1933.
Garnett’s next big hit would be 1935’s China Seas with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. That same year, he married his second wife, minor actress and later novelist, Helga Moray whose novels included Untamed which became a hit film for Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward.
A high-profile director now, Garnett directed such hits as 1937’s Stand-In with Leslie Howard and Joan Blondell, 1938’s Joy of Living with Irene Dunne and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., 1938’s Trade Winds with Fredric March and Joan Bennett, 1939’s Slightly Honorable with Pat O’Brien and Edward Arnold, 1940’s Seven Sinners with Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne, and 1941’s Cheers for Miss Bishop with Martha Scott and William Gargan. He and Moray, with whom he had a son, divorced in 1942.
1943’s Bataan with Robert Taylor and George Murphy and The Cross of Lorraine with Jean-Pierre Aumont and Gene Kelly brought Garnett a Best Director award from the National Board of Review shared with Michael Curtiz for Casablanca and This Is the Army and William A. Wellman for The Ox-Bow Incident.
Garnett then directed the three biggest hits of his career in succession: 1944’s Mrs. Parkington with Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon, 1945’s The Valley of Decision with Garson and Gregory Peck, and 1946’s The Postman Always Rings Twice with Lana Turner and John Garfield.
Later successes included 1949’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with Bing Crosby and Rhonda Fleming, 1951’s Cause for Alarm with Loretta Young and Barry Sullivan, and 1954’s The Black Knight with Alan Ladd and Patricia Medina. He married third wife, actress Mari Aldon, in 1953. They had a daughter and remained married for the rest of Garnett’s life.
Directing for TV for most of his remaining career, Garnett’s last film in 1975 was the barely released Challenge to Be Free with Mike Mazurki and Jimmy Kane.
Tay Garnett died October 3, 1977 at 83.
ESSENTIAL FILMS
ONE WAY PASSAGE (1932)
An Oscar winner for Best original Story for Robert Lord, this four-handkerchief melodrama with comic undertones stars 1930s screen legends William Powell and Kay Francis as doomed lovers traveling from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Neither one knows the other one’s secret. She is terminally ill, and he is a convicted murderer facing execution at San Quentin as soon as he disembarks. The film is given extra heft by the supporting performances of Aline MacMahon, Warren Hymer, and Frank McHugh. MacMahon is especially memorable as a phony countess. It was remade in 1940 as ‘Til We Meet Again with Merle Oberon and George Brent.
CHINA SEAS (1935)
This was one of 47 films nominated for the Mussolini Cup for Best Foreign Film at the 1935 Venice Film Festival, it lost to Clarence Brown’s Anna Karenina. The high seas adventure was a major box-office success featuring an all-star cast led by Clark Gable and Jean Harlow pretty much reprising their roles in 1932’s Red Dust with Wallace Beery pretty much reprising his antagonism toward Harlow from Dinner at Eight. Rosalind Russell, Lewis Stone, Dudley Digges, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Benchley, William Henry, Edward Brophy, Akim Tamiroff, Hattie McDaniel, and Donald Meek are also in it.
MRS. PARKINGTON (1944)
This popular film received Oscar nominations for Greer Garson and Agnes Moorehead. This is the one in which Garson in the title role ages from a naïve teenager to a savvy 83-year-old matriarch as the widow of philandering Walter Pidgeon. Moorehead plays Pidgeon’s French mistress forced to teach the young Garson how to act in high society. To me, the only really good performance in the film is that of Gladys Cooper, sixteen years older than Garson in real life, playing her boozy daughter. Also in the cast are Edward Arnold, Lee Patrick, Frances Rafferty, Tom Drake, Petr Lawford, Dan Duryea, Hugh Marlowe, and Cecil Kellaway.
THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945)
The film version of Marcia Davenport’s bestseller was the highest grossing film of 1945. Oscar nominated Greer Garson was at her best here as an Irish maid who falls in love with the son of her employer played by Gregory Peck. Donald Crisp is Peck’s father, Gladys Cooper his mother, Dan Duryea, Marsha Hunt, and Marshall Thompson his siblings. Garson leaves the household after her crazy father (Lionel Barrymore) shoots and kills Crisp, only to return for the film’s terrific last third which also features Jessica Tandy as Peck’s nasty wife and Dean Stockwell as their son.
THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946)
This was the third of four versions of James M. Cain’s 1934 novel, the first in English. Lana Turner had her greatest role as the wife of a California roadside restaurant owner who conspires with drifter John Garfield to murder her husband (Cecil Kellaway). Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames, and Audrey Totter co-star. The film suffers somewhat in comparison to Cain’s similarly themed Double Indemnity which he wrote two years after Postman but which was filmed two years earlier by Billy Wilder with a cast headed by Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson. Postman was remade in 1981 with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
TAY GARNETT AND OSCAR
No nominations, no wins.
