John Farrow wrote short stories and plays during his four-year career in the navy. In the late 1920s he came to Hollywood as a technical advisor for a film about Marines and stayed as a screenwriter, from A Sailor's Sweetheart (1927) through Tarzan s'évade (1936). He married Tarzan's Jane, Maureen O'Sullivan, in 1936. He began directing in 1937 (Men in Exile (1937) and A l'est de Shanghai (1937)). He was injured while serving as a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy in World War II. After that he converted to Catholicism and wrote a biography of Thomas More, a history of the Papacy, a Tahitian/English dictionary and several novels. He collaborated in the writing of several of his films and shared the Academy Award for Le tour du monde en 80 jours (1956).
