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| William
Wellman |
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| Director
/ Producer |
| 1896 - 1975 |
| Born February 29,
Brookline, Massachusetts, USA |
| Key
Production Country: USA |
| Key Genres: Drama,
Western, Adventure, Action,
Combat Films,
War, Adventure Drama |
| Key
Collaborators:
Cedric Gibbons (Production Designer), Alfred Newman (Composer), Adolphe Menjou (Leading
Player), Dore Schary (Producer), Robert Fellows (Producer), Andy Devine
(Leading Character Player), Joan Blondell (Leading Character Player),
William Mellor (Cinematographer), Archie Stout (Cinematographer), John
Dunning (Editor) |
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Highly Recommended:
The Public Enemy (1931) |
| Recommended:
Beggars of Life (1928), A
Star is Born (1937), Beau Geste (1939), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Magic Town (1947),
Yellow Sky (1948), Battleground (1949), Track of the Cat (1954) |
| Worth
a Look: Wings (1927),
Night Nurse (1931), Heroes for Sale (1933), Wild Boys of the Road
(1933), Nothing Sacred (1937), Roxie Hart (1942), The Story of G.I. Joe
(1945), Across the Wide Missouri (1951), Westward the Women (1951), The
High and the Mighty (1954) |
| Links: [
IMDB ] [
TCMDB ] [
All-Movie
Guide ] [
Film Reference ]
[ Wild Bill:
Hollywood Maverick ] [ The
Wild Man of Hollywood ] [ Film
Comment Article ] [
Cinema-Scope Article (2007)
] |
| Books: [
William
A. Wellman (Filmmakers, No 4) ] [ The
Man and His Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best Picture
] |
| DVD's:
[ Amazon
] |
|
1,000 Greatest Films:
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) |
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"Although
William Wellman's name is most often associated with action
pictures, gaining him a reputation for working mainly with men,
he brought his expertise to bear on a range of genres in the
best Hollywood manner. Wellman earned the nickname "Wild Bill"
for his impatience with actors, his devil-may-care personality,
and his spell as a pilot in World War I." -
Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006) |
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"Wellman was an
efficient, erratic journeyman, as good as his material. Though
praised for his handling of vigorous masculine action in war
movies (Wings, The Story of GI Joe), thrillers (The
Public Enemy), westerns and outdoor adventures (Beggars
of Life, Wild Boys of the Road), he was at his
best with dark satire and melodrama, where his cynicism about
modern mores enhanced sparkling scripts by Dorothy Parker (A
Star is Born), Ben Hecht (Nothing Sacred), and
Nunnally Johnson (Roxie Hart)." -
Geoff
Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999) |
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"With
Wellman, crudity is too often mistaken for sincerity. What is at
issue here is not the large number of bad films he has made, but
a fundamental deficiency in his direction of good projects. On
parallel subjects, he runs a poorer second to good directors
than he should...Wellman, like Wyler,
Huston, and
Zinnemann, is
a recessive director, one whose images tend to recede from the
foreground to the background in the absence of s strong point of
view." - Andrew
Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968) |
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"Expressing themes of courage, loyalty, and rugged individualism
in a stark, semirealist style was the essence of Wellman's
career. He lensed classic crime dramas, Westerns, war films,
social explorations, and comedies with the same hard,
sentimental simplicity." -
William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978) |
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