I hate to be a kicker
I always long for peace
But the wheel that squeaks the loudest
Is the one that gets the grease
–Josh Billings (1870)
He struck an impressive chord with his designer frames, tailored button up shirts and v-necked sweaters; his slacks sharply creased, his shoes polished new. If he erred, he erred on the side of class. He was even tempered and sported a businessman hair cut.
Robert Wise grew up in small town, middle America. He grew up loving movies. But it was his older brother that made the foray to Hollywood where he landed a big-shot accounting job at RKO studios.
When the Wise family fell on hard times during the Great Depression, Robert quit college where he was studying journalism. He followed his brother to Hollywood and got a job at RKO sweeping floors, changing light bulbs and running errands.
With a good head on his shoulders and a strong work ethic, Wise caught the attention of the sound effects editor who hired him as his first assistant. From there he worked his way into film editing and became the studio’s premier editor editing two Orson Welles masterpieces, Citizen Kane, earning an Oscar nomination for Best Film Editing and The Magnificent Ambersons.
Robert Wise’s first foray in the director’s chair was with The Curse of the Cat People (1944) where he replaced fired Gunther von Fritsch who was behind schedule. Fittingly, this is where J. R. Jordan’s meticulously researched book, Robert Wise The Motion pictures, kicks in.
Jordan goes behind the scenes and takes us into the machinations of the production. We learn that famed RKO horror producer and script writer Val Lewton was a notoriously cheap and demanding task master. Yet, Wise endured himself to Lewton with his artfully concise and understated style. The Curse of the Cat People earned Wise a directing contract with RKO.
Thus began the long and illustrious career of an artist who would rise from the low budget horror basement of RKO where he directed legends Boris Karloff and Bela Lougosi in the eerie adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher (1945) to the terrific, twisty film noir Born to Kill (1947) with Claire Trevor and Lawrence Tierney.
Wise fondly reminisced about RKO as well as Born to Kill’s clever script. “It was just fine working at RKO,” he said. “It was one of the smaller studios, but very good, and they got some good properties. It all depends on the property and that script. If you’ve got the right script and you cast it right, and you get enough time and money to make it, it’ll turn out…Born to Kill was a step up for me; better script, better picture, better cast…everything was considerably up.”
Robert Wise The motion pictures – pg. 56
Wise carried this humble understated quality with him to the greener and more prestigious pastures of Twentieth Century Fox where studio head Darryl F. Zanuck personally tapped him to direct The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) which would become one of the most acclaimed and influential science fiction films in cinematic history. J.R. Jordan takes the reader onto the iconic set and into the script with a superb interview with Billy Gray, best known as “Bud” on Father Know’s Best, who played Bobby in the film.
Gray tells of experiences working with Lock Martin, the 7 foot 7 giant (his height is disputed; Wise said he was 7 foot 1) who played the immensely powerful Gort. We learn that in life Martin was, sadly, anything but powerful. (Martin died, probably from Marfan syndrome, in 1959 at age 42.)
“He was a big guy but not a very vital person. Actually he was kind of frail. He could only be in the suit for about ten to fifteen minutes. If conditions ever became too hot, he would then request to be released from the suit. The crew had him on a watch list, so to speak, in order to prevent him from fainting and toppling over.”
Billy Gray pgs. 123-24
Robert Wise would famously go onto to win Oscars for Best Direction and Best Picture twice with the films West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). West Side story swept the Oscars with eleven nominations and ten wins, captivating critics and fans alike and The Sound of Music would become an American cultural touchstone, bonding generations of fans swept away by Wise’s inspired direction of panoramic spectacle, song, courage and fidelity earning a jaw dropping 2.5 billion dollars world wide when adjusted for inflation.
Perhaps the most astonishing and defining aspect of Wise’s career was his chameleon directorial style in which he produced critically and commercially successful films in every genre save animation. Paradoxically, this characteristic would be used against him by critics who insist that a directors trademark radiate from every frame.
Wise’s trademark–that of devotion to the script, allegiance to the characters and to the actors who portrayed them, along with a commitment to unembellished realism–binds his films together. His Oscar wins, particularly The Sound of Music, are the films that most define his career, yet, they are the least emblematic of his style.
Take the gritty noir boxing melodrama The Set-Up (1949) for example. Wise researched the subject by hanging out in the dressing rooms of a seedy boxing arena where he observed the mannerisms and rituals of its low rung fighters. He absorbed atmosphere of the arena, the grim pageantry of the fight, the sound of gloves hitting sweat soaked skin and social construct of the crowd, even casting famed crime photographer “Weegee” as the time keeper. Then he painstakingly duplicated his observations on screen in what is considered one of the most realistic depictions of boxing in all of cinema while provoking the best performance of character actor Robert Ryan’s career.
Nine years later, Wise took his commitment to realism leaps and bounds further when he attend an execution in California’s gas chamber while researching the script to I Want to Live! autobiographically based on convicted murderer Barbara Graham.
“There’s an outside section where the witnesses sit, and there’s an inside section where the warden and the doctor and the guys who do the acid are. I was inside with the doctor. I didn’t know if I could watch without getting sick. The prisoner was a young man who’d killed two women in Oakland and, like Barbara in her day, he’d run out of appeals.
Robert Wise – The Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1998
I Want to Live! (1958) earned Robert Wise an Academy Award nomination for Best Director and under his direction Susan Hayward won the award for Best Actress for her portrayal of the condemned party-girl. The final scenes of the on again off again execution as the lawyers lobby for Graham’s life while she, finally, bravely, resigned to her fate, makes her walk into the chamber only to be hurriedly removed and then brought back again, are agonizingly intense. Her final moments, right before and after the pellets are dropped, are even more so.
“After Barbara gets a whiff of the gas,” Wise says, “you presume she doesn’t feel anything anymore. A couple of times I cut to her hands twitching. But in actuality that twisting and fighting the straps goes on for seven or eight minutes. There are so many systems in the body it takes that long for them all to shut down. Terrible to watch. Terrible. After the young man died, I thought to myself, ‘What the hell good is this doing?’ ”
Robert Wise – The Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1998
And yet, for all his success, both commercial and critical, Robert Wise is often herald as the greatest director you’ve never heard of. J.R. Jordan’s compelling filmography, Robert Wise The Motion Pictures, aims to right that miscarriage of anonymity. A must read for the cinematically astute, it is a labor of love, consisting of forty chapters detailing the forty films of a master filmmaker, a humble and elegant artist who approached film-making as a team sport allowing integrity, subtlety and good taste to be his directorial signature.
Robert Wise The Motion Pictures is available for purchase at Amazon.
An excellent review of an interesting book, Pam. It also made me remember just how great Susan Hayward was in ‘I Want To Live’. What a powerful film.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Thanks, Pete. J.R. Jordan compiled a very thoughtful book. I learned a lot reading it. I Want to Live! is very powerful. I watched it again the other night. It’s a melodrama so Hayward’s performance comes off a over the top, but the last quarter of the film her performance is absolutely resolute.
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I haven’t seen it since my teens. I can imagine it may not hold up so well now, but it had a big effect on me 50 years ago.
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Thanks for the introduction…. I must admit I never heard of him before. I thought I knew some about film.
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Yes, he has made some iconic films. Thanks for reading, Max.
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Now I want to watch “The Curse of the Cat People!!
Robert Wise was such a great director,he also directed “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in 1979.
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Indeed he was, Michael. And yes he did; I haven’t seen Star Trek The Motion picture. The Day the Earth Stood Still, is one of the few science fiction films that I have seen and one of the few that I really like. Thanks for reading.
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Great post as usual, Pam. I’d like to read this. I love Robert Wise but no little about the man. I just like his movies. West Side Story is a masterpiece, IMO, but so is Sound of Music. I LOVED The Sand Pebbles with McQueen and the Star Trek movie.
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West Side Story is a masterpiece, no doubt. Few people would disagree with that, I’d gamble. The Sand Pebbles is an excellent film, the only Oscar nomination in Steve McQueen’s career. Wise is an iconic director. His command of genres is amazing. Thanks for reading, Cindy.
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The pleasure is mine. I appreciate your intellect. 🙂
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This Jordan fella gets about a bit don’t he? LOL And that’s a great thing for us movie fans.
Love the way we all tackled it in our own way and styles.
And as per usual Pam you produce a great flowing read.
I’ve been trying to tick off some more Robert Wise films from the list but unfortunately haven’t so far this month… Yet!
I Want to Live! (1958) is the one I’m trying to get to next… Think I will like that one.
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Ha! He does at that, Mikey. He has very good taste in bloggers, I must say. Ha! Good book.
So, about I Want to Live!…I love the film. I first saw it on the late show with my mom when I was about 8 or 9. It threw me for a loop! And I’m a Susan Hayward fan…but it’s a melodrama, in some ways more melodrama than noir, so Hayward’s performance is over-the-top. I love it…she rightfully won an Academy Award for it. Faye Dunaway turned in a similar performance in Mommie Dearest and got panned for it. I happen to think Dunaway was terrific, but I like melodramatic and campy performances under the right cinematic circumstances. Anyway, just want you to know what you’re in for when you see, I Want to Live! There’s a reason there’s an exclamation point in the title and Hayward makes that abundantly clear in her performance.
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Haha yes indeed, a good taste in bloggers 🙂
Oh Pam that’s a great little warm up to “I Want to Live!”. Looking through Susan Hayward’s films I find myself thinking these not many at all that I’ve seen. Every corner I go, I stumble on yet another list of films to add to the pile. They all got great names too. “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” “Garden of Evil” and “Stolen Hours” to name a few. I don’t know if any are any good but they sound it.
Looking into “Mommie Dearest” I really like to see Faye Dunaway play Joan Crawford, from the image shots she does get the look right. And director Frank Perry had me finding two of my early discoveries for my blog “Last Summer” and “David and Lisa”…
Oooooooooooooo the weekend is nearly here. Hope you have a lovely one Pam.
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Hi Pam, I always look forward to your posts and I’m never disappointed when I read them. Once again you are introducing me to new ideas, film history I didn’t know about, and a fascinating artist. Many thanks!
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Thank you so much, DW. I can’t take all the credit here though. J.R. Jordan asked me to review his book on Robert Wise. I knew many of his movies, but I didn’t know who he was. So it was a learning process for me too.
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Great take there on Robert Wise 🙂 When I first saw The Haunting (the 1963 version when I was 12 years old) and revisiting it later on in the mid-2000’s, I knew there was special about that horror film because he started out directing horror films for producer Val Lewton’s horror unit at RKO in the 1940’s. Anyway, keep up the great work as always 🙂
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Thanks John. I just watched The Set-Up again. I was amazed by the fight scenes. Amazingly good. Thanks for reading.
–Pam
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Wonderful review, Pam. I’m not into biographies as a rule (although I should be) but this one sounds fascinating. I love the stories of “starting at the bottom” and how people got to where they got to. I’ve never seen I Want To Live. I looked up Barbara Graham and it’s the usual sad story of a bad childhood that forever haunts some. I mean, she tried. She married the coast guard guy and even was in business college. As for Mr. Wise, though, yeah, those industry stories must be amazing. He was a singular talent.
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Thanks Stacey. My mom always said Barbara Graham was guilty. She liked the movie a lot, though. Wise was a very talented, versatile director. No doubt.
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West Side Story, The Haunting, The Day the Earth Stood Still and so many others. Sounds like a good book to pick up.
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