Robert Wise

Robert Wise was an American director, producer and editor. Born in Winchester, Indiana, he grew up in nearby Connersville where as a child he became an avid film fan with an ambition of writing for films. He enrolled at Franklin College at Franklin, Indiana. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1933 following David, his older brother, who had moved there 5 years earlier and was working in R.K.O.'s accounts department. Robert eventually joined them by working as an assistant in the editorial department and became a skilled editor. He worked with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. He then became director at R.K.O. and was then presided over by Val Lewton who gave Robert his first directing opportunities on what was expected to be a series of low budget horror films but emerged as striking psychological studies in terror such as The Curse of the Cat People, which was held in high critical esteem and which he credits Val as one of the major influences of his career. The horror cycle was followed by The Set-Up with Robert Ryan which won the Critics Prize at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival. At M.G.M. his direction of Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me resulted in Newman's emergence as a star. He became a freelance director on such films as Run Silent Run Deep and I Want to Live!, earning an Oscar nomination for himself and an Oscar for Susan Hayward. He had a dual role of producer and director on Odds Against Tomorrow followed by West Side Story and The Haunting. On an R.K.O. film set, he met actress Patricia Doyle whom he married in May 1942 and had a son Robert born March 14, 1943. They lived at Ocean Front, Santa Monica, California. Robert Wise died of heart failure on September, 14, 2005 in Los Angeles, just four days after his 91st birthday.