Lewis Allen

Lewis Allen (born December 25, 1905, Oakengates, Telford, Shropshire, England—died May 3, 2000, Santa Monica, California, U.S.) was a British-born director whose credits included classic television series and a diverse range of films.

Allen acted and directed onstage in England before moving to the United States to work as an assistant director at Paramount. He made his first feature film in 1944, and many critics held that he never surpassed it. The Uninvited was possibly the best ghost story to come out of Hollywood in the 1940s. The atmospheric tale (adapted from Dorothy Macardle’s novel) was enhanced by Gail Russell’s compelling performance as the haunted girl and by an evocative score that yielded the standard “Stella by Starlight.” Russell was joined by Diana Lynn and Dorothy Gish in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944), a dramatization of actress and screenwriter Cornelia Otis Skinner’s memoir of her travels to Paris in the 1920s. Allen ventured again into the spectral world with The Unseen (1945), about a governess (Russell) who discovers that her predecessor was murdered.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

Those Endearing Young Charms (1945) featured Laraine Day as a young woman who falls in love with a womanizing air force pilot (Robert Young) during World War II, while The Perfect Marriage (1946) was a lightweight marital comedy (based on a Broadway play) starring a perpetually feuding couple portrayed by David Niven and Loretta Young. In 1947 Allen directed The Imperfect Lady, a period drama about a politician (Ray Milland) who falls for a music-hall dancer (Teresa Wright) in 1890s London, and the crime yarn Desert Fury, in which a police officer (Burt Lancaster) wrests his former girlfriend (Lizabeth Scott) away from a compulsive gambler (John Hodiak). The suspenseful So Evil My Love (1948) featured Milland as a con man who seduces a widow (Ann Todd) and manipulates her into assisting him in a scheme involving one of her friends (Geraldine Fitzgerald). Milland also starred in Sealed Verdict (1948), a courtroom melodrama in which he romances a Nazi’s former mistress while preparing to prosecute her. In 1949 Allen helmed Chicago Deadline, a drama featuring Alan Ladd as an investigative reporter delving into the life and death of a prostitute. The two men reteamed for Appointment with Danger (1951), a film noir in which Ladd played a postal inspector who calls on a nun (Phyllis Calvert) to help him infiltrate a mob of airmail crooks.

Allen subsequently left Paramount to freelance. He made Valentino (1951) and At Sword’s Point (1952) before finding success with Suddenly (1954), a gripping drama about a plot to kill the president of the United States in a backwater town. Frank Sinatra, as a professional assassin, gave one of the best performances of his career, and Suddenly ranks among Allen’s best films. The Cold War thriller A Bullet for Joey (1955) followed, with George Raft and Edward G. Robinson as a gangster and an inspector, respectively, who struggle over the fate of an atomic scientist in Canada. Robinson returned in Illegal (1955), portraying a criminal lawyer defending a woman (Nina Foch) accused of murder. In 1958 Allen helmed Another Time, Another Place, in which Lana Turner was cast as a woman suffering a nervous breakdown when her lover (Sean Connery) is killed during World War II. Allen’s last movies were Whirlpool (1959), a British production filmed in West Germany, and Decision at Midnight (1963), a political thriller starring Martin Landau.

When his film career ended, Allen remained busy, directing television series. His TV credits include such classic shows as Perry Mason, The Rifleman, The Big Valley, The Fugitive, Mission Impossible, and Bonanza; for the latter he helmed 42 episodes. Allen retired from directing in the mid-1970s.