By Erin Free
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: director Sam Wanamaker, who helmed The File Of The Golden Goose, The Executioner, Catlow, and Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger.
Like so many who have featured in the Unsung Auteurs column, the late Sam Wanamaker is under-celebrated as a filmmaker, but revered for many other things. Born in 1919 in Chicago, the son of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Wanamaker studied acting and worked successfully on Broadway before fleeing to the UK in the 1950s on fear of being persecuted and blacklisted for his communist views at the height of the McCarthy era. Wanamaker worked extensively as an actor and director in the British theatre, and, in a delicious piece of irony, was instrumental in restoring one of its most vital pieces of history…an American at the very heart of British theatre.
It became Wanamaker’s great passion to recreate Shakespeare’s famed Globe Theatre at its original location. He secured financial support from philanthropists and fellow lovers of Shakespeare, and today, on the south bank of The River Thames in London, near where the modern recreation of Shakespeare’s Globe stands, is a plaque that reads: “In Thanksgiving for Sam Wanamaker, Actor, Director, Producer, 1919–1993, whose vision rebuilt Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on Bankside in this parish.” It is indeed an extraordinary achievement, especially for an American, and Sam Wanamaker has received due praise, with books written about him and many duly singing his praises as a theatre pioneer.
But while he worked in the UK theatre for so much of his career, Sam Wanamaker also returned frequently to the US, where he toiled prodigiously as an actor on film and TV, appearing largely in character and supporting roles, delivering strong, eye-catching turns in everything from Holocaust and Private Benjamin to Billy Jack Goes To Washington and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace. Wanamaker was also a prolific director of episodic television and telemovies, which saw him enjoy something of a resurgence courtesy of Definitely-Not-Unsung-Auteur and film-buff-of-note Quentin Tarantino.
One of the shows that Sam Wanamaker directed was the largely forgotten, late-1960s-era western Lancer, which Tarantino crow-barred his fictional character Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) into in his glorious ode to cinema, 2019’s Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood. Sam Wanamaker is beautifully played in the film by US-born, part-time-Australian-based actor Nicholas Hammond. “He was a high energy man,” Hammond told FilmInk of Wanamaker. “The Lancer pilot in Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood is indeed one that he did direct, and he has a theatrical part – one that I portrayed.”
Like many, Nicholas Hammond wasn’t aware of the breadth of Sam Wanamaker’s filmmaking achievements. “I never met Sam Wanamaker,” Hammond replied when FilmInk asked if he’d ever crossed paths with the actor/director. “I was very well aware of who he was because of his creation of The Globe Theatre in London, but also because I had seen his work as an actor. I have seen him in a number of films and television series in America. I was certainly aware of who he was, but I hadn’t realised that he had been such a prominent director.”
Most of Wanamaker’s directorial work was done for television (his 1981 legal drama telemovie The Killing Of Randy Webster, starring Hal Holbrook and Sean Penn, is literally one of the best examples of the form you’ll find), but he does have a fistful of feature film credits on his resume. Despite his strong theatrical pedigree, Wanamaker’s films are tough and muscular in tone, briskly paced, and sit very much in genre territory; these are certainly not the literary titles he directed for the London stage.
Wanamaker debuted in 1969 with the UK-shot-and-set thriller The File Of The Golden Goose, which sees Yul Brynner’s American Secret Service agent dispatched to England to take down a major criminal ring trading in counterfeit cash. It’s a tricky, twisty thriller, and Wanamaker followed it up in 1970 with The Executioner, a film very much in the same vein, with George Peppard this time the American agent caught up with espionage and double crosses in England. Peppard makes for an engaging hero, and Wanamaker again directs with both flair and economy, while appearances from Joan Collins and Judy Geeson add to the enjoyment.
Wanamaker reunited with Yul Brynner for the 1971 western Catlow, on which he was brought in to replace director Peter Hunt. Sly and droll, the film features much humour (“This picture has a sense of humour, but that’s not the same as being a comedy western,” Wanamaker told The LA Times) in its tale of outlaws and a Confederate gold heist. The performances are good, and the film’s central performers – Brynner, Richard Crenna and Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy – have an enjoyable chemistry. Wanamaker’s skill with actors and knack for pacing is clearly evident here.
It was for these talents that Wanamaker was brought onto the 1977 fantasy adventure film Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger, a follow-up to the 1973 hit The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad, directed by Unsung Auteur Gordon Hessler and featuring groundbreaking stop-motion animation by that field’s unrivalled master, Ray Harryhausen. “I wanted an actor’s director for Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger, to see if we could get more dimension out of otherwise cardboard characters,” producer Charles H. Schneer told Starlog in 1990. “Sam didn’t have to handle any of the technical aspects of the picture. He merely had to pay attention to them. Within the parameters of the technical work, he directed the dramatic sections. The technical work was carried out by Ray and me.”
There’s certainly a pep and zip to the characters in Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger, and the film moves with exactly the kind of pace that Wanamaker had displayed with his previous westerns and spy thrillers. Regardless of how much of the picture is “his”, Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger is a rollicking adventure and was a sizeable hit at the box office too. Despite this, the film would stand as Wanamaker’s final feature, rounding out a small collection of snappy, well-performed, unpretentious flicks that never come close to outstaying their welcome.
Sam Wanamaker passed away from lung cancer in London on December 18, 1993, aged 74, where he was appropriately celebrated as a true visionary of the UK theatre. He also directed bundles of high-quality small screen work, and four feature films due far more credit than that which they currently receive…
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Paul Aaron, Savage Steve Holland, Rudy Wurlitzer, Keith Gordon, Alan Metter, Lynne Littman, Chuck Russell, John Derek, Don Chaffey, Harley Cokeliss, Jeannot Szwarc, Craig Gillespie, David Greene, Ernest Pintoff, Paul Williams, Jo Heims, Lee H. Katzin, Christoper Cain, Ken Wiederhorn, Barbara Loden, David Mackenzie, Alan Rudolph, James Lee Barrett, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, Joan Tewkesbury, Jamaa Fanaka, Jack Starrett, Joseph Sargent, Jeffrey Schwarz, George Sidney, Philip Dunne, Zak Hilditch, Luke Sparke, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Morgan Matthews, Tom Laughlin, Diane Keaton, Ed Hunt, Nancy Savoca, Robert Vincent O’Neil, Marvin J. Chomsky, Sam Firstenberg, Jack Sholder, Richard Gray, Giuseppe Andrews, Gus Trikonis, Greydon Clark, Frances Doel, Gordon Douglas, 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.
