| Joseph H. Lewis | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 6, 1907 |
| Died | August 30, 2000 (aged 93) |
| Occupation | Film director |
Joseph H. Lewis (April 6, 1907 – August 30, 2000) was an American B-movie film director whose stylish flourishes came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement in 1966. In a 30-year directorial career, he helmed numerous low-budget westerns, action pictures and thrillers and is remembered for original mysteries My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) and So Dark the Night (1946) as well as his most-highly regarded feature, 1949's Gun Crazy, which spotlighted a desperate young couple (Peggy Cummins and John Dall) who embark on a deadly crime spree.
Contents |
Born in Brooklyn, the son of an optometrist, Joseph H. Lewis attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and when his brother, Ben, moved to Hollywood in 1927, decided to follow with hopes of becoming an actor. Ben found him a job as camera assistant and, subsequently, young Joseph became an assistant film editor just as the film industry was converting to sound. At the dawn of his directorial career (1937–40), while turning out low-budget B-Westerns, he earned the derogatory nickname "Wagon-Wheel Joe" from the studio editors, because of his tendency to use wagon-wheels for constructing interesting visual compositions within the frame.
Although known for having directed horror stars Bela Lugosi (The Invisible Ghost) and Lionel Atwill in early 1940s, he is most appreciated for work in film noir during 1940s and early 1950s. Gun Crazy, considered the peak of his career, is a dark romance about gun-obsession, notable for its use of location photography and, for film students and buffs, a particularly arresting shot which lasts for ten minutes, as the audience suddenly becomes a passenger in the getaway car following a bank robbery committed by the young leads. Lewis's offbeat and eye-catching compositions added style and value to inexpensive productions. His 1944 musical Minstrel Man, starring singer Benny Fields, is quite possibly the finest film ever made by low-budget PRC Pictures. Industry insiders noticed, prompting Columbia Pictures to hire Lewis to film the musical sequences for its blockbuster musical The Jolson Story.
Toward the end of Lewis's career, he worked in television, directing mostly westerns: The Rifleman, Bonanza, The Big Valley, Gunsmoke, and the pilot for Branded.
Lewis suffered a major heart attack at the age of 46, but continued working until his 59th birthday in April 1966, at the end of the 1965–66 TV season. Deciding to retire at that point from active work in the entertainment industry, Lewis spent his remaining thirty-four years in leisure pursuits such as duck hunting and deep-sea fishing aboard his 50-foot trawler, "Buena Vista". As appreciation of his career grew in his final years, he fulfilled numerous lecture requests at film schools and fan gatherings as well as at retrospectives such as the Telluride Film Festival, along with European venues in France, Germany and other locations. In 1997 he became the recipient of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Lifetime Achievement Award.
Nearly five months after his 93rd birthday, Joseph H. Lewis died at his home in Los Angeles County's seaside community of Marina del Rey. Active until the end, he made his final public appearance five weeks earlier to introduce a screening of Gun Crazy at the University of California at Los Angeles.[1]