In Remembrance: Stuart Rosenberg

     Stuart Rosenberg, the director of the Paul Newman classic Cool Hand Luke and the creepy The Amityville Horror, has passed away on March 15, 2007 in Beverly Hills, CA. He was 79.

     Born August 11, 1927 in New York, NY, Rosenberg got his start in the late 1950s directing episodic television series such as Decoy, Naked City, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Untouchables, Ben Casey, The Twilight Zone and Rawhide.

     Although he directed two small films – Murder Inc. (1960) and Question 7 (1961), Rosenberg’s made his big-studio directorial debut in 1967 with Cool Hand Luke, which featured Paul Newman as a chain gang inmate who faces off against a sadistic prison guard played by Strother Martin. The film would get four Academy Award nominations with George Kennedy taking home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Although not nominated for an Oscar, Rosenberg did receive a nomination for a Director’s Guild Award, but lost to Mike Nichols and The Graduate. Rosenberg would work again with Newman on the films WUSA (1970), Pocket Money (1972) and The Drowning Pool (1975).

     Rosenberg’s most successful film would be The Amityville Horror (1980). A box office phenomenon, the film would spawn numerous sequels, though Rosenberg would not be involved with any of them. He directed Robert Redford in the prison film Brubaker (1980) and Mickey Rourke in The Pope Of Greenwich Village (1984).

     His final film was 1991’s modern-day western My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.