By Erin Free
Though largely unheralded today, Robert Aldrich is one of the most individualistic, independent and bloody-minded filmmakers to work in the modern era. With his brusque manner, no-nonsense attitude and strength of commitment, Robert Aldrich only occasionally bowed to the powers that be, and even then it would be with a steely glint in his eye and a hearty sense of resistance.
Despite his blue-collar attitude to filmmaking, Aldrich was a child of privilege, born in 1917 to a Rhode Island banking family. He played football and studied economics at the University Of Virginia, but pulled away from his family’s influence, instead seeking a career in the movies. He chased it at exactly the right time: an old football injury had kept Aldrich out of the military, and at the time, there was a severe lack of man power due to WW2, meaning that Aldrich was quickly promoted out of his entry level job at RKO Studios, and bumped up to the position of assistant director and production manager, where he would spent the next decade working for esteemed directors like Lewis Milestone, Joseph Losey, Robert Rossen, Abraham Polonsky and Charlie Chaplin.
Aldrich moved into TV in the early ‘50s, before making his feature directorial debut in 1953 with the sports drama The Big Leaguer. The film failed to make any real impact, and Aldrich went back to TV, where he toiled diligently until top-shelf star Burt Lancaster recognised a kindred spirit. Lancaster tapped Aldrich to take the reins on the western Apache, which the actor had set up through his production company. A mix of spirited action, social comment and revisionist daring, the film would set the blueprint for Aldrich’s career, which would be built on a foundation of genre-based accessibility and probing intelligence.
Following Apache with the hit western Vera Cruz (with Lancaster and Gary Cooper) and the grimy film noir Kiss Me Deadly, Aldrich was in a strong enough position to set up his own production company, which he amusingly called Associates And Aldrich. His first project, The Big Knife – an adaptation of the Clifford Odets play about a struggling Hollywood actor – was loved in France, but failed to ignite at the box office, sending Aldrich back to studio filmmaking, where he plugged away with varied success. His best film during this period was Attack, still one of the strongest US anti-war films.
Aldrich found true voice again with 1962’s Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, a female-heavy horror-melodrama seemingly at odds with his more masculine brand of filmmaking. Aldrich returned to similar territory with Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, and proved again that he was a fine director of women with the controversial drama The Killing Of Sister George, an uncompromising depiction of a lesbian relationship. The audacity of that film was largely afforded by the work that preceded it: the anti-authoritarian war film The Dirty Dozen. The film was such a massive hit that it gave Aldrich the kind of carte blanche he so desperately coveted, allowing him to work outside the studio system for a number of years. He directed a series of harsh, uncompromising films (the anti-war drama Too Late The Hero, the aforementioned The Killing Of Sister George, the scathing anti-Hollywood rant The Legend Of Lylah Clare) that failed to connect with audiences, which sent Aldrich back to the major companies.
Despite being shackled, he continued to make strong films (Ulzana’s Raid, Emperor Of The North Pole, The Longest Yard, The Frisco Kid, Twilight’s Last Gleaming), though a number of setbacks would combine to ultimately break the director’s formidable spirit. He was deposed as president of the Directors’ Guild Of America after he had successfully lobbied for more creative rights during his 1975 to 1979 tenure, and retired from the business in 1981. He passed away two years later from kidney failure, leaving behind a strong body of work and a reputation as one of American cinema’s great iconoclasts.
ROBERT ALDRICH’S BEST
KISS ME DEADLY (1955)
Mickey Spillane’s famous private eye Mike Hammer gets a major shakeup in this sleazy potboiler that cagily mixes sex, violence, amorality and an unhealthy dose of Cold War paranoia.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962)
Bette Davis plays right to the back rows in this campy, deliriously over-the-top gothic melodrama as a former Hollywood child star who makes life hell for her wheelchair bound sister, played with surprising restraint by Joan Crawford.
THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967)
In this blueprint for the “guys on a mission” flick, Lee Marvin is at his brutish best as a military man who assembles a crack team of war criminals, thugs and deviants to incinerate a Nazi compound in WW2.
ULZANA’S RAID (1972)
Aldrich regular Burt Lancaster stars in this savage western about a cavalry troop’s pursuit of a vicious Apache leader who has been terrorising and torturing his way across the west.
THE LONGEST YARD (1974)
Burt Reynolds is at his macho best in this tough but hilariously funny brawler as a former football star who ends up in prison, where he organises a bruising game between the inmates and the guards.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs 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.
