John Villiers Farrow (1904–1963) was an Australian-born, later American film director, screenwriter, producer, and nonfiction writer. After early work at sea and in writing, he entered Hollywood as a screenwriter and developed a directing career that ranged across wartime dramas, thrillers, westerns, and film noir. The Australian Dictionary of Biography identifies him as an American citizen from 1947.
Farrow’s most enduring screen work includes Wake Island, which brought him a Best Director nomination, and the noir films The Big Clock, Where Danger Lives, and His Kind of Woman. He also directed Hondo. Alongside his film work, he wrote books including Damien the Leper, Pageant of the Popes, and a biography of Thomas More, reflecting a sustained interest in Catholic subjects.
He shared the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). His other distinctions included appointment as an honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1953 and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. Farrow received a Motion Pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
This profile is awaiting source review; collected books are already linked below.
