By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: prolific director Gordon Douglas (centre), who helmed Them!, The Detective, Tony Rome, Chuka and In Like Flint..
In the Unsung Auteurs column, we have oft discussed and debated the term of “journeyman filmmaker”, while also celebrating creatives unfairly and lazily tarred with this largely pejorative brush. The “journeyman” is that filmmaker who appears to take on any job going, creating solid works across genres and budgets that seem to rely more on craft than art. If you dig a little deeper, however, creative throughlines, reoccurring themes and frequent stylistic choices can often be identified in the works of directors dismissed as “journeymen.” The late Gordon Douglas is one such director, whose enormous, decades-spanning resume is so diverse and wide-ranging that it actually features a number of auteurist “streams”, namely clusters of films that have distinct connections, but that exist largely separate from his other works. Rarely celebrated, the incredibly prolific Gordon Douglas is a truly fascinating filmmaker.
Born in New York in 1907, Gordon Douglas Brickner began his film career as a child actor, appearing in a number of early programmers before getting a job as a teenager in the offices of producer Hal Roach. Douglas also featured in minor roles in the producer’s famed Our Gang family films before taking on work as an assistant director to Gus Meins, and eventually becoming a senior director on the Our Gang films himself. These short films featuring the indelible characters of Spanky, Alfalfa, Darla, Porky, Buckwheat, Waldo, Butch and Woim were hugely successful, and it was on these that Douglas showed a flair for light comedy and an ability to get the best out of his child performers. Douglas’ talents saw him tapped to also direct films for comedy legends Laurel & Hardy in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
In the 1940s and 1950s – the era of studio contracts, where creatives would literally become the employees of movie studios – Douglas toiled for RKO Films, Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros., three of the major players of the time. Per his contract, Douglas directed whatever the studios sent his way, but even within these strictures, he delivered many, many excellent films, including 1950’s film noir flicks Between Midnight And Dawn and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (with James Cagney), the 1954 western The Charge At Feather River (which was released in 3D!), 1955’s musicals Young At Heart (with Frank Sinatra and Doris Day) and Sincerely Yours (featuring the first starring role for famed piano man Liberace), and the 1957 war film Bombers B-52 (with Natalie Wood and Karl Malden). Douglas also worked frequently with actor Alan Ladd, first on the 1952 western The Iron Mistress (a biopic of Alamo fighter Jim Bowie), and then on 1955’s The McConnell Story (a biopic of US Air Force pilot Joseph C. McConnell), 1956’s adventure Santiago, and the 1957 western The Big Land.
During this studio contract period, Douglas also directed a couple of utterly essential works. The first was 1951’s I Was A Communist For The FBI, a “red scare” classic that Douglas sensibly crafts into a taut thriller. The second was 1954’s Them!, a bravura sci-fi monster movie that was one of the first of the nuclear age, and featured giant ants affected by radiation terrorising the populace of smalltown America. Douglas worked his skills for taut, economic filmmaking wonderfully here, grounding the fanciful material but also not shying away from it. Exciting, imaginative and finely crafted, Them! is one of the best in the subgenre of “nuclear monster” movies; while well-known and acclaimed, it is the film’s epochal subject matter that usually gets the attention, rather than Douglas’ strong, tonally sure-footed direction.
Though with a much lower profile than I Was A Communist For The FBI and Them!, Douglas also directed a triptych of westerns starring hulking leading man Clint Walker, later famed for his burly turns in 1967’s The Dirty Dozen and the 1974 telemovie Killdozer. Intense but low key, and all made on limited budgets, 1958’s Fort Dobbs, 1959’s Yellowstone Kelly and 1961’s Gold Of The Seven Saints share a terseness of tone and style, and have obvious auteurist qualities. Douglas was wholly adept at economic, unfussy, straight-to-the-punch filmmaking, and that is showcased beautifully in these tough – and now largely forgotten – minimalist westerns.
By the time of the collapse of the studio contract system in the 1960s, Douglas was making it as a freelance director, but he still moved at will between genres. Douglas helmed the 1962 Elvis Presley vehicle Follow That Dream, as well as films starring other icons like Bob Hope (1963’s Call Me Bwana) and Jerry Lewis (1966’s Way…Way Out). And as he had with Alan Ladd and Clint Walker, Douglas formed another tight creative bond with an actor, this time in the considerably more powerful form of Frank Sinatra. Douglas called the (likely nominal) shots on Sinatra’s 1964 Rat Pack flick Robin & The 7 Hoods, and then stuck around for three more films with the famously domineering star. As with his triptych of westerns with Clint Walker, Douglas’ three noirish crime flicks with Sinatra – 1967’s Tony Rome, 1968’s The Detective and Lady In Cement – are all very much united in their style and subject matter.
Though rarely recognised for it, Gordon Douglas was also an excellent director of westerns, as first really evidenced in his Clint Walker films. In the 1960s and 1970s, Douglas made some rich, unusual westerns – 1964’s emotionally and politically complex Rio Conchos, 1967’s Chuka (a pet project for star and uncredited screenwriter Rod Taylor) and 1970’s spaghetti-style Barquero with Lee Van Cleef – that should have garnered him much more credit and recognition. Proving himself a major go-to director for big-name stars (could any other film director boast that they’d worked with Elvis, Sinatra, Liberace, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Laurel & Hardy and Doris Day?), Douglas was also tapped to direct figurehead Sidney Poitier in 1970’s They Call Me Mister Tibbs!, a sequel to the pioneering 1967 classic In The Heat Of The Night, and James Coburn in that same year’s spy parody In Like Flint, a sequel to the 1966 hit Our Man Flint.
For a director as prolific as Gordon Douglas, there are unsurprisingly a few oddities hidden amongst his densely populated resume in the form of 1970’s Skullduggery (a bizarre “missing link” flick starring Burt Reynolds) and 1973’s Blaxploitation belter Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off starring Jim Brown. Douglas’ most peculiar film, however, was also his last. 1977’s Viva Knievel! (Douglas’ third film to end with an exclamation mark…another auteurist touch?) is a fictional mix of action and corny sentimentality in which ludicrously idealised 1970s stuntman legend Evel Knievel (playing himself…badly) visits lonely orphans; pushes his alcoholic mechanic (Gene Kelly) to reconcile with his son; romances a photographer (Lauren Hutton); and battles a corrupt promoter (Leslie Nielsen) who wants to kill him and use his coffin to ship drugs into America! Though now best classified as trashy fun, Viva Knievel! crashed and burned at the box office, marking a very unfitting end for the highly professional Gordon Douglas.
Gordon Douglas died of cancer at the age of 85 on September 29, 1993, in Los Angeles. Though described as a “journeyman” in most obituaries, that really under-sells the achievements of this hard-working director. Douglas had an affinity for gritty westerns and a flair for tough crime films, all directed with swift economy and a great understanding of pacing and clarity. Gordon Douglas also knew how to serve his often iconic stars, and how to get the best out of them on screen, both highly valuable commodities in Hollywood indeed.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Billy Fine, Craig R. Baxley, Harvey Bernhard, Bert I. Gordon, James Fargo, Jeremy Kagan, Robby Benson, Robert Hiltzik, John Carl Buechler, Rick Carter, Paul Dehn, Bob Kelljan, Kevin Connor, Ralph Nelson, William A. Graham, Judith Rascoe, Michael Pressman, Peter Carter, Leo V. Gordon, Dalene Young, Gary Nelson, Fred Walton, James Frawley, Pete Docter, Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
