Oscar Profile #350: Samuel Fuller

Born August 12, 1912 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Samuel Fuller was one of seven siblings, whose life was as interesting as any of the many characters of his long career. One of the best writer-directors never to be nominated for an Oscar, his films which were mostly overlooked during his lifetime, have gained in stature since his death.

His father having died when Fuller was 11, young Sam went to work at the age of 12 as a copy boy on the New York Evening Graphic where his older brother Ving was a staff cartoonist. Mentored by veteran crime report Rhea Gore, the former wife of Walter Huston and mother of John Huston, he became a crime reporter himself at 17, breaking the news of actress Jeanne Eagels’ death in 1929.

Moving to Hollywood, Fuller’s first screenplay was 1936’s Hats Off. With time out for military service during World War II, he became increasingly annoyed with the direction directors were taking with his screenplays and in 1949 signed a three-film contract with independent producer Robert Lippett stipulating that he be allowed to direct as well as write at his writer’s salary. His first film was 1949’s I Shot Jesse James, followed by The Baron of Arizona and the 1951 Korean War film, Steel Helmet for which he won a Writer’s Guild award.

Fuller’s 1944 novel The Dark Page was filmed as Scandal Sheet by Phil Karlson in 1952. It was during this period that Fuller made some of his most interesting films including 1953’s Pickup on South Street, 1954’s Hell and High Water which brought him a Directors Guild nomination, 1955’s House of Bamboo, 1957’s China Gate, Run of the Arrow and Forty Guns and 1959’s Verboten! and The Crimson Kimono.

Fuller began to mix TV work with film work in the 1960s. Despite limited output for the big screen, he did manage to direct two of his most popular films back to back, 1963’s Shock Corridor and 1964’s The Naked Kiss. Having been divorced from first wife Martha Downes Fuller in 1959, he married second wife, actress Christa Lang in 1967. Although he had made cameos appearances on screen as early as 1955, he didn’t have a credited appearance on screen until 1971’s The Last Movie, directed by Dennis Hopper. He subsequently had roles in Wim Wenders’ The American Friend in 1977, Steven Spielberg’s 1941 and his own The Big Red One in 1980 and White Dog in 1982.

The latter film, which was about the de-programming of a while dog trained to viciously attack black people, was released in France in July 1982 and Detroit in November of that year. With protests mounting, Paramount pulled the film from distribution and Fuller never made another one in the U.S., although he did make a few poorly received films in France. White Dog finally opened in New York in 1991 and Los Angeles in 1992. Most audiences didn’t discover the controversial film, co-written by Curtis Hanson, until its DVD release eleven years after Fuller’s death in 2008.

Samuel Fuller died on October 30, 1997 at the age of 85.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)

A cold war spy film extraordinaire, of all his films none ever crystalized Fuller’s feel for society’s downtrodden more than this one. It starred Richard Widmark as a pickpocket, Jean Peters as a thinly disguised prostitute, Richard Kiley as a vicious thug and the great Thelma Ritter as a down-on-her-heels police informant working with local police captain Meryn Vye. The censors objected to the sex and J. Edgar Hoover objected to the portrayal of the FBI, but audiences loved it and so did Oscar voters who gave Ritter her fourth Oscar nomination in a row for what was far and away the best performance of her career.

THE CRIMSON KIMONO (1959)

Not just another film noir, the murder of a stripper is never as important as the relationship between the two detectives on the case (Glenn Corbett and James Shigeta) and the witness they’re protecting (Victoria Shaw). The two detectives met in a foxhole during the Korean War and later became cops in San Francisco who share an apartment into which they invite the witness for her protection. Both are in love with her, but it’s the sensitive Japanese-American Shigeta Shaw falls for, not the heart-on-his-sleeves Caucasian Corbett. It’s all wrapped up neatly with the help of Anna Lee in a rare comedic role as everyone’s friend.

SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963)

Silly, and often ludicrous, but highly watchable, Fuller’s look at a mental institution where the staff is nuttier than the patients beat One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to the screen by a dozen years. Peter Breck, best remembered as Barbara Stanwyck’s middle son in TV’s The Big Valley, stars as a hotshot reporter aiming at a Pulitzer Prize by the getting the scoop on a murder that happened at the institution. With the help of his girlfriend (Constance Towers) and a supportive psychiatrist (Philip Ahn), he fakes insanity and is committed to the institution where he solves the murder, but can he get out safely after doing so?

THE NAKED KISS (1964)

The shocks come early in this one as star Constance Towers’ wig falls off and she is revealed to be bald underneath. This is another bizarre, but oh so watchable film about mental illness. Towers plays a reformed prostitute trying to lead a respectable life as a nurse in a hospital for handicapped children and an engagement to a Korean war hero turned cop with secrets of his own. It twists, it turns, it keeps you riveted to your seat as Fuller continues to push the envelope. The supporting cast includes Anthony Eisley and Michael Dante as the men in Towers’ life and Virginia Grey and Patsy Kelly as the women.

THE BIG RED ONE (1980)

Fuller’s biggest budgeted film and the most critically acclaimed of his career, this rather grim tale of men in war, like most of Fuller’s films, is not for all tastes. Lee Marvin stars as a World War I veteran, now a sergeant, who leads a squad of men in World War II. The film follows them from the Kasserine Pass after the invasion of North Africa through to the invasion of Sicily, D-Day, the Ardennes forest and the liberation of a concentration camp at the end of the war. The four permanent squad members are played by Mark Hamill, Robert Carradine, Bobby di Cicco and Kelly Ward. Stéphane Audran co-stars as an underground fighter.