As a versatile supporting actor, he fought alongside Errol Flynn in "The Charge of the Light Brigade", was a stuffy military man opposite Kay Francis in "The White Angel" (both 1936) and played a judge in "The Oklahoma Kid" (1939); but after winning a supporting Oscar as the head of a Welsh mining family in John Ford's "How Green Was My Valley" (1941), Crisp was typecast as white-haired, crusty but good-hearted fathers or men of the cloth in a slew of sentimental classics ("Lassie Come Home" 1943, "National Velvet" 1944). Married to screenwriter Jane Murfin from 1932 to 1944.