Clarence Leon Brown graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1910 with a B.S. degree in mechanical and electrical engineering. After graduation, he worked in the new automobile industry and secured a car dealership in Birmingham, Alabama, until the newest penny-arcade phenomenon turned his inquisitive mind and creative impulses to motion pictures. In 1915, Brown left Birmingham for Ft. Lee, New Jersey, to seek out French director Maurice Tourneur, under whose tutelage he learned the art of directing. Thus began a stellar motion picture career that would span almost forty years and include over fifty films.
Following World War I, Brown made his directorial debut with The Great Redeemer and then codirected The Last of the Mohicans with Tourneur. In Brown's first solo effort, he directed Lon Chaney in The Light in the Dark. Brown built a reputation as "a woman's director." Probably the most famous woman he directed was Greta Garbo, with whom he made seven films. That number includes Garbo's first "talkie," Anna Christie. Brown's films gained a total of thirty-eight Academy Award nominations and earned nine Oscars. Brown himself received six Academy Award nominations and in 1949 won the British Academy Award for the film version of William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust. Brown's other films include National Velvet, The Yearling, Anna Karenina, and Angels in the Outfield. Brown retired from active motion picture work in 1953 and died in 1987.
| 
