Robert Aldrich
Robert Aldrich | |
|---|---|
_1962_-_Production_photo._Robert_Aldrich,_Bette_Davis.jpg) Aldrich directing Bette Davis during filming of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) | |
| Born | Robert Burgess Aldrich August 9, 1918 Cranston, Rhode Island, U.S. |
| Died | December 5, 1983 (aged 65) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) |
| Education | University of Virginia |
| Occupations |
|
| Years active | 1945–1981 |
| Spouses | Harriet Foster
(m. 1941; div. 1965)Sibylle Siegfried
(m. 1966–1983) |
| Children | 4 (with Foster) |
| Relatives |
|
| Awards | See below |
| 15th National President of the Directors Guild of America | |
| In office 1975–1979 | |
| Preceded by | Robert Wise |
| Succeeded by | George Schaefer |
Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. An iconoclastic and maverick auteur[1] working in many genres during the Golden Age of Hollywood, he directed mainly films noir, war movies, westerns and dark melodramas with Gothic overtones. His most notable credits include Vera Cruz (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955), Autumn Leaves (1956), Attack (1956), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and The Longest Yard (1974).
Containing a "macho mise-en-scène and resonant reworkings of classic action genres,"[2] Aldrich's films were known for pushing the boundaries of violence in mainstream cinema, as well as for their psychologically complex interpretations of genre film tropes.[3] The British Film Institute wrote that Aldrich's work displays "a subversive sensibility in thrall to the complexities of human behaviour."[4] Several of his films later influenced the French New Wave.[5][6]
Aside from his directorial work, Aldrich was also noted for his advocacy as a member of the Directors Guild of America, serving as its president for two terms (between 1975 and 1979), and becoming the namesake for its Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award.[7]
Early life
[edit]Family
[edit]Robert Burgess Aldrich was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, into a family of wealth and social prominence – "The Aldriches of Rhode Island".[8] His father, Edward Burgess Aldrich (1871–1957) was the publisher of The Times of Pawtucket and an influential operative in state Republican politics. His mother, Lora Elsie (née Lawson) of New Hampshire (1874–1931), died when Aldrich was 13 and was remembered with fondness by her son. Ruth Aldrich Kaufinger (1912–1987) was his elder sister and only sibling.[9]
Among his notable ancestors were the American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene and the theologian Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island Colony.[10]
His grandfather, Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, was a self-made millionaire and art investor. A Republican member of the U.S. Senate for thirty years (1881–1911), he was dubbed "General Manager of the Nation" by the press for his dominant role in framing federal monetary policy.[11][12]
A number of Aldrich's paternal uncles had impressive careers, among them a successful investment banker, an architect and Harvard instructor, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank who also served as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. An aunt, Abigail Greene "Abby" Aldrich married John D. Rockefeller Jr., scion of the Standard Oil fortune, and was a leading figure in the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Nelson Rockefeller, a four-term governor of New York State and U.S. vice-president under Gerald Ford, and Rockefeller's four brothers were the director's first cousins.[13][14]
Education
[edit]As the only male heir to the Lawson-Aldrich family line, Aldrich was under pressure to compete with his numerous cousins in a family of high achievers.[15]
Following family tradition and expectations, Aldrich was educated at Moses Brown School in Providence from 1933 to 1937. There he served as captain of the track and football teams and was elected president of his senior class.
Failing to matriculate to Yale due to mediocre grades, Aldrich attended the University of Virginia from 1937 to 1941, majoring in economics. He continued to excel in sports and played a leading role in campus clubs and fraternities.[16][17]
During the Great Depression, the adolescent Aldrich began to question the justice of his family's "politics and power" which clashed with his growing sympathies with left-wing social and political movements of the 1930s. Aldrich's disaffection from the Aldrich-Rockefeller right-wing social and political orientation contributed to a growing tension between father and son.[18][19]
Having satisfactorily demonstrated his aptitude for a career in finance, Aldrich defied his father by dropping out of college in his senior year without taking a degree.[13]
Aldrich approached his uncle Winthrop W. Aldrich, who got his 23-year-old nephew a job at RKO Studios as a production clerk at $25 a week.[20] For this act of defiance, Aldrich was promptly disinherited. Aldrich reciprocated by expunging public records of his connection with the Aldrich-Rockefeller clan, while stoically accepting the breach. He rarely mentioned or invoked his family thereafter.[21] It has been said that "No American film director was born as wealthy as Aldrich — and then so thoroughly cut off from family money."[22][23]
RKO Pictures: 1941–1943
[edit]At the age of 23, Aldrich began work at RKO Pictures as a production clerk, an entry-level position, after declining an offer through his Rockefeller connections to enter the studio as an associate producer.[24][25]
He married his first wife, Harriet Foster, a childhood sweetheart, shortly before he departed for Hollywood in May 1941.[26][17]
Though the smallest of Hollywood's top studios, RKO could boast an impressive roster of directors (George Cukor, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks) as well as movie stars (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and the Marx Brothers). The 23-year-old Aldrich assumed his duties shortly after Orson Welles, at 26, signed a six-movie contract with RKO after the release of the widely acclaimed Citizen Kane (1941).[27]
When the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, Aldrich was inducted into the Air Force Motion Picture Unit, but was quickly discharged when an old football injury disqualified him for military service. The film studios' manpower shortage allowed Aldrich to win assignments as third- or second-tier director's assistant to learn the basics of filmmaking.[28][29]
Second assistant director
[edit]In just two years he participated on two dozen movies with well-known directors. He was second assistant director on Joan of Paris (1942, directed by Robert Stevenson), The Falcon Takes Over (1942, directed by Irving Reis), The Big Street (1942), directed by Reis, Bombardier (1943, directed by Richard Wallace), Behind the Rising Sun (1943, directed by Edward Dmytryk), A Lady Takes a Chance (1943, directed by William A. Seiter), The Adventures of a Rookie (1943, directed by Leslie Goodwins), Gangway for Tomorrow (1943, directed by John H. Auer), and Rookies in Burma (1943, directed by Goodwins).
First assistant director
[edit]Towards the end of the war, Aldrich had risen to first assistant director making comedy shorts with director Leslie Goodwins.
In 1944, Aldrich departed RKO to begin free-lancing on feature films at other major studios, including Columbia, United Artists, and Paramount.[30][31][32]
Assistant director: 1944–1952
[edit]Aldrich was fortunate to serve as an assistant director to many notable and talented Hollywood filmmakers. During these assignments, which spanned nine years, Aldrich gained both practical and aesthetic fundamentals of filmmaking: "set location and atmosphere" (Jean Renoir, The Southerner, 1945), the "techniques of pre-planning a shot" (Lewis Milestone's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, 1946), "action scenes" (William A. Wellman's The Story of G.I. Joe, 1946), the "importance of communication with actors" (Joseph Losey's The Prowler, 1951), and "establishing visual empathy between camera and audience" (Charlie Chaplin's Limelight, 1952).[33][31][29]
He also worked on Pardon My Past (1945, directed by Leslie Fenton) and The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947, directed by Albert Lewin).
Aldrich approached these projects and directors with a fine discrimination, enabling him to learn from both their strengths and weaknesses.[34]
During these years Aldrich forged lasting professional relationships with talented artists who would serve him throughout his filmmaking career, namely, cinematographer Joseph Biroc, film editor Michael Luciano, music director Frank De Vol, art director William Glasgow and screenwriter Lukas Heller. A troupe of loyal, mostly male, players were enlisted for his film leads and supporting roles: Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance, Lee Marvin, Eddie Albert, Richard Jaeckel, Wesley Addy, Ernest Borgnine and Charles Bronson.[35][36]
Enterprise Productions: 1946–1948
[edit]Aldrich's association with Enterprise Productions marked the most formative period of his apprenticeship.[37][38] While at Enterprise, Aldrich established both a professional and a personal affiliation with screenwriter and director Abraham Polonsky, a major figure in the Popular Front movement of the 1930s. Their respective films addressed the issue of an individual's often desperate struggle to resist destruction by an oppressive society.[39][40]
Enterprise's Body and Soul (1947), written by Polonsky, directed by Robert Rossen, and starring John Garfield, made a deep and lasting impression on the 29-year-old assistant director from both structural and thematic standpoints. Garfield plays a corrupt prizefighter who seeks to redeem himself by defying mobsters who insist he throw a fight or forfeit his life.[41] While the protagonist's personal failings contribute to his own oppression, the film censures capitalism as an unredeemable system.[42] Aldrich would revisit Body and Soul throughout his career when seeking guidance on how to convey the progressive ideals of the 1930s while working in the reactionary political atmosphere of the Cold War era.[43][44]
"I think anybody with any brains in 1936 to '40 would have been a Communist. They were the brightest, they were the quickest, they were the best, and you found working with people of that persuasion more stimulating, more exciting."
Robert Aldrich, recalling the caliber of his associates at The Enterprise Studios just before the Hollywood blacklists.[45][46][47]
In 1948 Aldrich joined Polonsky and Garfield on the noir film Force of Evil. The story concerns a Wall Street attorney turned mob lawyer (Garfield) who informs on his employers when they murder his brother. Force of Evil's cinematically excessive visuals and striking sound would later appear in Aldrich's films Kiss Me Deadly and Twilight's Last Gleaming.[48][49]
A number of Aldrich's associates at Enterprise came under scrutiny by the HUAC in the late 1940s after Enterprise had closed its doors. Among them were Rossen, Polonsky, Garfield, directors John Berry, and Joseph Losey, producer Carl Foreman, and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, some of whom suffered blacklisting and imprisonment. Aldrich was never targeted by the authorities, despite his collaborations with these artists. This was largely due to his post-1930s entry into the film industry when recruitment by Communist and leftist organizations was declining. Nonetheless, Aldrich remained a champion for the victims of the Red Scare.[50][51]
At Enterprise, Aldrich also worked as an assistant director on Arch of Triumph (1948) and No Minor Vices (1948) for Lewis Milestone, So This Is New York (1948) for director Richard Fleischer and producer Stanley Kramer, and Caught (1949) for Max Ophüls.
During his apprenticeship, Aldrich developed an appreciation for autonomous control over production and strict achievement of his creative vision. He would continue to strive for creative control over his films.[52][53]
Freelance assistant director: 1948–1952
[edit]After the demise of Enterprise, Aldrich continued to be in much demand as an assistant director. He worked again for Lewis Milestone on The Red Pony (1949) at Republic and did Red Light (1949) for Roy Del Ruth, A Kiss for Corliss (1949) for Richard Wallace, The White Tower (1950) for Ted Tetzlaff, M (1951) and The Prowler (1951) for