Donald Crisp

In the USA from 1906, Donald Crisp was a leading man in silents by 1910 and went on to have a long and varied career as an actor, and until 1930 as a director; later featured as a fatherly character performer in allegedly over 400 movies by 1963. At the Biograph studios, Crisp appeared in numerous D.W. Griffith films, portraying General Grant in "Birth of a Nation" (1915), playing Lillian Gish's brutal father in "Broken Blossoms" (1919) and serving as Griffith's assistant director on both. He also directed a good number of silents including "Don Q, Son of Zorro" (1925) starring Douglas Fairbanks and co-directed "The Navigator" (1924) with Buster Keaton. As a versatile supporting actor, he fought alongside Errol Flynn in "The Charge of the Light Brigade", was a stuffy military man opposite Kay Francis in "The White Angel" (both 1936) and played a judge in "The Oklahoma Kid" (1939); but after winning a supporting Oscar as the head of a Welsh mining family in John Ford's "How Green Was My Valley" (1941), Crisp was typecast as white-haired, crusty but good-hearted fathers or men of the cloth in a slew of sentimental classics ("Lassie Come Home" 1943, "National Velvet" 1944). Married to screenwriter Jane...

In the USA from 1906, Donald Crisp was a leading man in silents by 1910 and went on to have a long and varied career as an actor, and until 1930 as a director; later featured as a fatherly character performer in allegedly over 400 movies by 1963. At the Biograph studios, Crisp appeared in numerous D.W. Griffith films, portraying General Grant in "Birth of a Nation" (1915), playing Lillian Gish's brutal father in "Broken Blossoms" (1919) and serving as Griffith's assistant director on both. He also directed a good number of silents including "Don Q, Son of Zorro" (1925) starring Douglas Fairbanks and co-directed "The Navigator" (1924) with Buster Keaton.

As a versatile supporting actor, he fought alongside Errol Flynn in "The Charge of the Light Brigade", was a stuffy military man opposite Kay Francis in "The White Angel" (both 1936) and played a judge in "The Oklahoma Kid" (1939); but after winning a supporting Oscar as the head of a Welsh mining family in John Ford's "How Green Was My Valley" (1941), Crisp was typecast as white-haired, crusty but good-hearted fathers or men of the cloth in a slew of sentimental classics ("Lassie Come Home" 1943, "National Velvet" 1944). Married to screenwriter Jane Murfin from 1932 to 1944.

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