Joseph H. Lewis

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For the Kentucky-born Civil War general, U.S. Representative and jurist (1824–1904), see Joseph Horace Lewis.
Joseph H. Lewis
Born (1907-04-06)April 6, 1907
Died August 30, 2000(2000-08-30) (aged 93)
Occupation Film director
Spouse(s) Buena (?-2000; his death; 1 child)

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.

Life and career

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,[citation needed] 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 the 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. His work includes the 1944 musical Minstrel Man, and the musical sequences for 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. He later lectured 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.[citation needed] In 1997 he became the recipient of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nearly five months after his 93rd birthday, 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]

Films as director include

References

  1. ↑ Van Gelder, Lawrence (September 13, 2000). "Joseph H. Lewis, 93, Director Who Turned B-Movies Into Art". The New York Times. 

External links

Further reading

  • Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia. A Plume Book, 1995. p. 527–8.
  • Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia (fourth edition). New York:HarperResource, 2001, p. 826.
  • Thomson, David. The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (fourth edition). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, October 2002, pp. 521–2.
Films directed by Joseph H. Lewis
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