Biography
Delmer Daves (also credited as Delmer Lawrence Daves) was an American screenwriter, director and producer. Born in San Francisco, he studied law at Stanford University before entering the film industry as a prop boy on The Covered Wagon (1923) and later working as a technical adviser and actor in uncredited roles.
Daves began writing screenplays in the late 1920s and received early credits including the story and screenplay for Flirtation Walk (1934). He went on to write The Petrified Forest (1936), Love Affair (1939) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942). From 1943 he directed films, often also writing or producing them, and became known especially for Westerns such as Broken Arrow (1950), Jubal (1956), The Last Wagon (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Hanging Tree (1959). Later studio-based work included A Summer Place (1959) and Spencer’s Mountain (1963).
