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In Remembrance: Robert Wise
Nominated for a total of seven Oscars and winning both Best Director and Best Picture honors for the musicals The Sound Of Music and West Side Story, Wise directed 39 films over his 50 year career that spanned numerous genres including horror (Curse Of The Cat People, 1944), film noir (Born To Kill, 1947), war stories (The Desert Rats, 1953), drama (Executive Suite, 1954) and science-fiction (The Andromeda Strain, 1971).
Born on September 10, 1904 in Winchester, Indiana , Wise secured a job at RKO Studios through his brother who worked in the accounting department, dropping out of college to do so. Wise soon found himself working in the sound effects department and worked his way up to the film editing department. Wise’s first on screen credit was for editing Bachelor Mother in 1939. He worked on several other films, including The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1939) and My Favorite Wife (1940), before working on director Orson Welles’ classic Citizen Kane (1941), for which he would receive his first Academy Award nomination. Wise would work with Welles on his Kane follow-up The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).
Wise made the transition from editor to director on the 1944 film Curse Of The Cat People, being assigned to the project after original director Gunther Von Fritsch fell too far behind schedule. Pleased with Wise's work on the film, RKO producer Val Lewton gave Wise his first full directorial assignment, The Body Snatcher with Boris Karloff. Wise worked on several more RKO B-pictures elevating such films as Blood On The Moon (1948) and The Set Up (1949) above their programmer roots.
In 1950, Wise moved to 20th Century Fox, where he directed a variety of films from the noir The House On Telegraph Hill (1951) to the comedy Something For The Birds (1953). His anti-war, Christ-allegory The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) is considered a classic that transcends its science-fiction roots.
As the 1950s progressed and the studio system began to fall apart, Wise left Fox with enough clout to direct films at various studios throughout Hollywood. For MGM he directed the all-star cast of Executive Suite (1954), helping Nina Foch earn a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Wise helped launch Paul Newman’s career by casting the young actor as boxer Rocky Granziano in the bio-pic Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). In 1958’s I Want To Live!, Wise directed Susan Hayward to her only Oscar win.
By filming major sections of West Side Story and The Sound Of Music (1965) on location – The Sound Of Music was shot in Austria and Germany while West Side Story shot on New York City’s upper West Side slums that were subsequently torn down to build Lincoln Center – Wise brought a scope to these films that helped catapult them to being the most critically acclaimed and popular musicals of all time.
Other films directed by Wise include the horror film The Haunting (1963), the war drama The Sand Pebbles (1966), the science-fiction thriller The Andromeda Strain (1971), the disaster film The Hindenburg (1975) and the horror film Audrey Rose (1977). In 1979, Wise oversaw the migration of the television series Star Trek to the big screen, helming Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Wise also served as a producer on several of his films including The Haunting, The Sand Pebbles, The Andromeda Strain and The Hindenburg. Wise’s last film was the 1989 musical Rooftops.
In addition to his four Oscar wins for The Sound Of Music and West Side Story and his Citizen Kane nomination, Wise received nominations for directing I Want To Live! and producing The Sand Pebbles. Wise also received the Academy’s Irving J. Thalberg Award in 1966. He was nominated for six Directors Guild of America awards, winning for The Sound Of Music and West Side Story. Wise served as the president of the Director’s Guild from 1971 to 1975 and as the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1985 to 1988. |
Robert Wise, the four-time Academy Award winning director/producer
responsible for such hits as The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951),
West Side Story (1961) and The Sound Of Music (1965)
has passed away on Wednesday, September 14, 2005 in Los Angeles, CA. He
was 91.