Delmer Lawrence Daves (July 24, 1904 – August 17, 1977) was an American screenwriter, film director and film producer. He worked in many genres, including film noir and warfare, but he is best known for his Western movies, especially Broken Arrow (1950), The Last Wagon (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Hanging Tree (1959). He was required to work exclusively on studio-based films after heart trouble in 1959, one of which, A Summer Place (1959), was a huge commercial success.

Daves worked with some of the best known players of his time including established stars like Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford, James Stewart and Richard Widmark. He also helped to develop the careers of up-and-coming players such as Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Felicia Farr and George C. Scott.

Born in San Francisco, Daves graduated from Stanford University. His first job in the film industry was prop boy on the Western The Covered Wagon (1923), directed by James Cruze, and then served as a technical advisor on a number of other films. He tried his hand at acting and appeared in more than ten movies including The Night Flyer (1928) (produced by Cruze), The Duke Steps Out (1929) and Good News (1930).

While he was acting, Daves was given the opportunity by MGM to collaborate on screenplays. He began his career as a screenwriter by contributing to the early sound comedy film So This Is College (MGM; 1929), directed by Sam Wood. Later, working for MGM and other companies, he wrote screenplays for films like Shipmates (MGM; 1931), Dames (Warner Bros; 1934), The Petrified Forest (Warner Bros; 1936), Love Affair (RKO Radio; 1939), and You Were Never Lovelier (Columbia; 1942). Daves was particularly successful with Love Affair which, using his original script, was remade as An Affair to Remember (20th Century Fox; 1957).

In 1943, Warner Bros asked Daves to direct Destination Tokyo, a wartime adventure film starring Cary Grant and John Garfield. Daves assisted with the screenplay and this became normal practice for him as a director. He directed three more films during the Second World War – The Very Thought of You (1944), Hollywood Canteen (1944) and Pride of the Marines (1945), all for Warners. The first two of those were light-hearted but the latter, starring John Garfield and Eleanor Parker, studied the difficulties faced by a US marine who had been blinded at the Battle of Guadalcanal. All four of Daves' wartime films were commercially successful. After the war, Daves turned to film noir and made The Red House (1947), starring Edward G. Robinson, for Sol Lesser at United Artists. He returned to Warners where he wrote and directed Dark Passage (1947), starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Agnes Moorehead. He later directed To the Victor (1948), A Kiss in the Dark (1949) and Task Force (1949). He also wrote the screenplay for Task Force, which starred Gary Cooper.

In February 1949, Daves signed a long-term contract at 20th Century Fox. He began by directing his first Western, the critically acclaimed Broken Arrow (1950) which starred James Stewart, Debra Paget and Jeff Chandler. Chandler played Cochise and the movie's success inspired the making of other films with Native American protagonists. Kim Newman wrote that, by his dignified and heroic performance, Oscar-nominated Chandler established Cochise as "the 1950s model of an Indian hero". Newman points out that the film inspired goodwill to other Native American chiefs such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Geronimo – as a result, "it became fashionable for Westerns to be pro-Indian". Other scholars warned that these "pro-Indian" movies proposed that peaceful co-existence between Natives and whites was achieved only through the loss of Indian identity. "Good" Indians would conform to white society, "bad" Indians would not.

Daves decided to try other genres with the adventure films Bird of Paradise (1951) and Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953), both of which he wrote and directed. As director only, he made Never Let Me Go (1953) for MGM and Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) for Fox. Never Let Me Go, starring Clark Gable and Gene Tierney, was shot entirely in England and featured a supporting cast of well-known British actors.

Daves became a freelance director in 1954 and returned to Warners to work on Drum Beat (1954), which he wrote, directed and also co-produced with Alan Ladd, who starred in the movie. One of Ladd's co-stars was Charles Bronson who, then relatively unknown, gave an impressive performance as the Modoc chief Captain Jack. By this time, Daves was fed up of the "pro-Indian" fashion that he had begun, and Drum Beat was "pro-settler" with the hanging of Bronson's character in the final scene "restoring the balance". Aleiss argued that Drum Beat actually preached the same theme in his previous Westerns of good Indians conforming to white expectations while eliminating the bad Indian (Captain Jack). Daves worked primarily on Westerns for the next five years.