Robert Aldrich

For the 16th century bishop, see Robert Aldrich (bishop). For the Australian historian, see Robert Aldrich (historian).

Robert Aldrich
Born	Robert Burgess Aldrich August 9, 1918(1918-08-09) Cranston, Rhode Island, United States
Died	December 5, 1983(1983-12-05) (aged 65) Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	filmmaker
Years active	1949 - 1981
Spouse	Harriet Foster (1941-1965) (divorced) Sibylle Siegfried (1966-1983) (his death)

Robert Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, writer and producer, notable for such films as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955), 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).

Biography

Robert Burgess Aldrich was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, the son of Lora Lawson and newspaper publisher Edward B. Aldrich. He was a grandson of U.S. Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and a cousin to Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. He was educated at the Moses Brown School, Providence, Rhode Island, and studied economics at the University of Virginia. In 1941, he left university for a minor job at the RKO Radio Pictures, thus beginning his career as a cinéaste.

He quickly rose in film production as an assistant director, he worked with Jean Renoir, Abraham Polonsky, Joseph Losey and Charlie Chaplin, working with the latter as an assistant on Limelight. He became a television director in the 1950s, directing his first feature film, The Big Leaguer, in 1953. In that time, Aldrich was the rare American example of the auteur film maker^{[citation needed]}, depicting his liberal humanist thematic vision in many genres, in films such as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), today a film noir classic, The Big Knife (1955), a cinematic adaptation of Clifford Odets's play about Hollywood as a business, and Attack (1956), a World War II infantry combat film exploring how U.S. Army careerism determined who attacked and who ordered the attack. During the 1950s, Aldrich directed mostly action stories, including early films like Apache and Vera Cruz, both starred Burt Lancaster. In 1959 he was head of the jury at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival.

In the 1960s he directed several commercially successful films, such as the gothic horror stories What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), featuring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford as spiteful sisters and faded child-actresses, the follow-up Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, with Bette Davis as a Southern woman who lives in a mansion and thinks she is going insane (both Joan Crawford and Davis were to appear, but Crawford left the film); the sexually controversial The Killing of Sister George (1968); and the war film formula template, The Dirty Dozen (1967). The success of The Dirty Dozen allowed him to establish his own film production studio for some time, but several failures forced his professional return to conventionally commercial Hollywood films. Nevertheless, his humanism is thematically evident in The Longest Yard (1974), about the rigged-game politics, and Ulzana's Raid (1972) about the post–Civil War violence against Native (and not only Native) Americans.

From his marriage to Harriet Foster (1941–1965), Robert Aldrich had four children, all of whom work in the film business: Adell, William, Alida and Kelly. In 1966, after divorcing his first wife, Harriet, he married fashion model Sybille Siegfried. On December 5, 1983, he died at the age of 65 from kidney failure in an L.A. Hospital.

Filmography

Film

• Caught (1949) (uncredited director of reshoots)
• Big Leaguer (1953) (director)
• World for Ransom (1954) (uncredited director, producer)
• Apache (1954) (director)
• Vera Cruz (1954) (director)
• Kiss Me Deadly (1955) (director, producer)
• The Big Knife (1955) (director, producer)
• Autumn Leaves (1956) (director)
• Attack (1956) (director, producer)
• The Gamma People (1956) (story)
• The Garment Jungle (1957) (uncredited director)
• Ten Seconds to Hell (1959) (director, writer)
• The Angry Hills (1959) (director)
• The Last Sunset (1961) (director)
• Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) (director)
• What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) (director, producer)
• 4 for Texas (1963) (director, writer, producer)
• Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) (director, producer)
• The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) (director, producer)
• The Dirty Dozen (1967) (director)
• The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) (director, producer)
• The Killing of Sister George (1968) (director, producer)
• The Greatest Mother of Them All (short film) (1969) (director, producer)
• What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) (producer)
• Too Late the Hero (1970) (director, writer, producer)
• The Grissom Gang (1971) (director, producer)
• Ulzana's Raid (1972) (director)
• Emperor of the North (1973) (director)
• The Longest Yard (1974) (director)
• Hustle (1975) (director, producer)
• Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977) (director)
• The Choirboys (1977) (director)
• The Frisco Kid (1979) (director)
• ...All the Marbles (1981) (director)

Television

• Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (1951) (director, 1 episode)
• China Smith (1952) (director, 2 episodes)
• The Doctor (1952) (director, 1 episode)
• Four Star Playhouse (1952) (director, 5 episodes)
• Hotel de Paree (1959) (director, 1 episode)
• Adventures in Paradise (1959) (director, 2 episodes)

External links

• Robert Aldrich at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Aldrich biography and credits at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Robert Aldrich at Find a Grave
• Literature on Robert Aldrich