Robert Wise: Shadowlands

by Wes D. Gehring

Born in Winchester, Indiana, Robert Wise spent much of his youth sitting in darkened movie theaters enthralled by the swashbuckling heroics of screen legend Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Through these viewings, Wise developed a passion for film a passion he followed for the rest of his life, making movies in Hollywood. Nationally known film historian Wes D. Gehring explores Wise s life from his days in the Hoosier State to the beginning of his movie career at RKO studios working as the editor of Orson Welles s classic movie Citizen Kane . Wise is best known for producing and directing two of the most memorable movie musicals in cinema history, West Side Story (co-director Jerome Robbins) and The Sound of Music , for which he won four Academy Awards two Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. But, as Gehring notes, other than Howard Hawks, Wise was arguably Hollywood s most versatile director of various celebrated genre films. For example, his roots in horror go back to a tutelage under the great producer Val Lewton, with Wise directing Boris Karloff s chilling The Body Snatcher (1945) for Lewton. Years late Wise brilliantly adapted a Shirley Jackson novel as a homage to Lewton, The Haunting (1963). No less a horror aficionado than Stephen King later gave both Jackson s novel (originally entitled The Haunting of Hill House ) and the film his highest praise in his nonfiction study of horror, Danse Macabre . In an American Film Institute seminar in 1980 Wise told students, People ask me, do I prefer to do musicals to drama or comedy? I like them all. If it s good, exciting, gripping, original material, that s what s important, what counts. Wise died on September 14, 2005, four days after his ninety-first birthday.

345 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2012

Reviews

[C Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Filmmaker Robert Wise(1914-2005)--perhaps best known for directing big-budget musicals like "The Sound of Music" and "West Side Story"--is not usually associated with Indiana. However, Gehring (Ball State University), the foremost authority on Hoosier entertainers (with previous biographies on James Dean, Carole Lombard, and Red Skelton), ably demonstrates how Wise's mid-western roots influenced his film career. Particularly thorough are the chapters on Wise's early work with Orson Welles and Val Lewton and on Wise's subsequent successes in genres as diverse as science fiction, horror, filmnoir, and war melodrama. Having written or edited more than 30 books on film, Gehring knows much about the Hollywood scene...[and] the book is a welcome addition to the literature, providing greater depth on Wise's character than either Richard Keenan's "The Films of Robert Wise"(CH,Mar'08, 45-3681)or Justin Busch's "Self and Society in the Films of Robert Wise" (CH,Feb'11 48-3166)--J.I. Deutsch, George Washington University, "Choice," the magazine of the American Library Association.

[Nicholas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comprehensive overview of Wise's career, with some excellent insight into the ongoing themes of his work. This book developed a much richer appreciation for a director I already admired greatly.