1919
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William Wellman died of leukemia in 1975 at his Brentwood home in Los Angeles. [6] He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered at sea. His widow Dorothy, at age 95, died on September 16, 2009, in Brentwood, California.
- Overview
- Early life and work
- Films of the 1920s
- Films of the early to mid-1930s
William Wellman (born February 29, 1896, Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.—died December 9, 1975, Los Angeles, California) American film director whose more than 80 movies included Hollywood classics of documentary-like realism and who was ranked as an action director alongside Howard Hawks and John Ford.
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Wellman’s stockbroker father came from a family of means; his mother, an Irish immigrant, was a well-respected probation officer who testified before Congress about juvenile delinquency and whose charges included her son when Wellman was kicked out of high school in Newton, Massachusetts. After trying his hand at a number of jobs, Wellman became a ...
By 1923 Wellman was directing B-filmwesterns for the Fox Film Corporation (later Twentieth Century-Fox), and in 1926 he signed with Paramount. His third picture for that studio was Wings (1927), a World War I aviation drama written by former pilot John Monk Saunders and starring Clara Bow, Richard Arlen, and Charles (“Buddy”) Rogers (Gary Cooper also had a part). It shared with F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise what was in effect the first Academy Award for best picture. Wings reflected Wellman’s lifelong interest in aviation and his war experience while setting standards for documentary-like realism with its remarkable aerial camerawork and spectacular staging of airborne combat. Wellman and Saunders collaborated again on The Legion of the Condemned (1928), a tale about the Lafayette Escadrille that featured Cooper. For most of his career Wellman would work often and fast; as a result, many of his films were workmanlike and unremarkable, including his first partial sound film, Beggars of Life (1928), and the succession of underworld dramas and romances that followed during the late 1920s.
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In 1931 Wellman moved to Warner Brothers, where he directed 15 motion pictures over the next three years, including his next significant effort, The Public Enemy (1931), a genre-defining gangster saga that became one of the year’s biggest hits and launched James Cagney on the road to stardom. The Public Enemy had much to do with the establishment of the film Production Code in response to its realistic depiction of disreputable characters and callous violence, not least when Cagney’s cocky tough guy famously smashes a grapefruit into the face of a woman, played by Mae Clarke. Wellman’s next two films starred his favourite actress, Barbara Stanwyck, who played a fearless nurse who stands up to a gangster (Clark Gable) in Night Nurse (1931) and then played the lead in So Big (1932), a truncated version of Edna Ferber’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. For the remainder of the early 1930s, Wellman made a series of melodramas—with some aerial adventure mixed in—before turning to the pre-Code gem Wild Boys of the Road (1933), a message film in the best Warner Brothers tradition about three Great Depression-ravaged kids who take to the road in search of a better life.
Having made seven films for Warner Brothers in 1933, Wellman ended his association with the studio and began a very successful period as a freelancer. Among his films from the mid-1930s were The Call of the Wild (1935), a major box-office success that starred Gable as the Yukon-conquering hero of Jack London’s novel of the same name; The President Vanishes (1934), a cautionary political tale that is memorable chiefly for providing one of Rosalind Russell’s earliest screen appearances; and the love story Small Town Girl (1936), which teamed Robert Taylor and Janet Gaynor.
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- Michael Barson
William Wellman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter-director of the original A Star Is Born (1937), was called "Wild Bill" during his World War I service as an aviator, a nickname that persisted in Hollywood due to his larger-than-life personality and lifestyle.
- February 29, 1896
- December 9, 1975
Dec 11, 1975 · One day in 1931, shortly after the start of filming “Public Enemy,” still considered one of the most vivid gangster movies ever made, Mr. Wellman took the lead away from the originally ...
Dec 11, 1975 · William A. Wellman, director of 82 movies including such classics as “Wings,” Beau Geste,” “Public Enemy” and the original version of “A Star Is Born,” died. Page 48.
William Wellman, (born Feb. 29, 1896, Brookline, Mass, U.S.—died Dec. 9, 1975, Los Angeles, Calif.), U.S. film director. He was a flying ace in World War I and later a barnstorming stunt pilot.
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William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion.
