Farrow, who moved to the United States in the early 1920s, was a novelist, poet and biographer, but mainly a screenwriter and film director, with award winning films such as Wake Island (1942), Two Years before the Mast (1946) and The Big Clock (1947) to his credit. He was co-writer of the script of Around the World in Eighty Days for which he shared the Oscar for best screenplay in 1956. He was the husband of the actress Maureen O'Sullivan and father of Mia Farrow.