Happy Birthday, Robert Aldrich! Born today in 1918 as Robert Burgess Aldrich, this American screenwriter, producer and film director was an artistic maverick whose reputation in the United States did not match his prestige in Europe.
Born in Cranston, Rhode Island, Aldrich was the son of a family of wealth and social prominence - “The Aldriches of Rhode Island”.
Among his notable ancestors were the major general of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War Nathanael Greene and the American Puritan, theologian and author Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island Colony.
An aunt, American socialite and philanthropist Abigail Greene "Abby" Aldrich Rockefeller, married American financier and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of the Standard Oil fortune.
American businessman and politician Nelson Rockefeller, a four-term governor of New York State and U.S. Vice-President to American politician and later 38th U.S. President Gerald Ford, was the director's first cousin.
As the only male heir to the Lawson-Aldrich family line, Aldrich was under considerable pressure to compete successfully with his numerous cousins in a family of high achievers.
Following family tradition and expectations, Aldrich was educated at Moses Brown School in Providence from 1933 to 1937.
While there, he served as captain of the track and football teams and was elected president of his senior class.
Failing to matriculate to Yale due to mediocre grades, Aldrich attended the University of Virginia from 1937 to 1941, majoring in economics. He then continued to excel in sports and played a leading role in campus clubs and fraternities.
During the Great Depression, the adolescent Aldrich began to question the justice of his family's “politics and power” which clashed with his growing sympathies with left-wing social and political movements of the 1930s.
However, Aldrich's disaffection from the Aldrich-Rockefeller right-wing social and political orientation contributed to a growing tension between father and son.
Having satisfactorily demonstrated his aptitude for a career in finance, Aldrich defied his father by dropping out of college in his senior year without taking a degree.
Aldrich approached his uncle Winthrop W. Aldrich, who got his twenty-three-year-old nephew a job at RKO Studios as a production clerk at twenty-five dollars a week. For this act of defiance, he was promptly disinherited.
Aldrich would later reciprocate by expunging public records of his connection with the Aldrich-Rockefeller clan, while stoically accepting the breach. He rarely mentioned or invoked his family thereafter.
Indeed, it's been said that "No American film director was born as wealthy as Aldrich — and then so thoroughly cut off from family money."
While at RKO Pictures, Aldrich worked as a production clerk. He received this entry level position after he had declined an offer through his Rockefeller connections to enter the studio as an associate producer.
Aldrich later married his first wife, Harriet Foster, a childhood sweetheart. They had four children together, all of whom would later work in the film business.
Though the smallest of Hollywood's top studios, RKO could boast an impressive roster of directors: John Ford, Howard Hawks, George Cukor, as well as movie stars.
These included Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and the Marx Brothers.
Aldrich assumed his duties shortly after Orson Welles, at twenty-six, signed a six-year movie contract with RKO after the release of his widely acclaimed 1941 American black and white drama/mystery film 'Citizen Kane'.
When the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, Aldrich was inducted into the Air Force Motion Picture Unit, but quickly discharged when an old football injury disqualified him for military service.
Nonetheless, the film studio's manpower shortage allowed Aldrich to win assignments as third or second tier director's assistant to learn the basics of filmmaking.
In just two years, Aldrich participated on two dozen movies with well-known directors. Most notably, these included William A. Seiter, Edward Dmytryk and Robert Stevenson.
In 1944, Aldrich departed RKO to begin free-lancing on feature films at other major studios, including Columbia, United Artists and Paramount.
Among his credits of the 1950s, Aldrich is best known for co-writing, producing and directing the first film of which he is best known. This was the 1955 American black and white noir/mystery film 'Kiss Me Deadly'.
The screenplay was also co-written by and American novelist and screenwriter A. I. Bezzerides, based on American crime novelist Mikey Spillane's titular 1952 mystery crime fiction trash novel.
The film also withstood scrutiny from the Kefauver Commission, which called it a film "designed to ruin young viewers", leading director Aldrich to protest the Commission's conclusions.
Despite initial critical distaste, it is considered one of the most important and influential film noirs of all time, with praise directed at its bleak tone, deconstruction of pulp fiction archetypes, and twist ending.
The film has been noted as a stylistic precursor to the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave), and has been cited as a major influence on a number of filmmakers.
These included Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Quentin Tarantino, and English film director, screenwriter, actor, nonfiction author and broadcaster Alex Cox.
Among his credits of the 1960s, Aldrich is best known for producing and producing the second and last film of which he is best known. This was the 1962 American black and white psychological horror/thriller film 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'.
It had been based on American screenwriter and novelist Henry Farrell's titular 1960 Gothic psychological horror mystery, thriller, suspense fiction novel.
The intensely bitter Hollywood rivalry between the film's two stars, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, was heavily important to the film's initial success.
This in part led to the revitalization of the careers of the two stars. In the years after release, critics continued to acclaim the film for its psychologically driven black comedy, camp, and creation of the psycho-biddy subgenre.
Upon the film's release, it was met with widespread critical and box office acclaim.
The following year, it nominated for five Oscars, winning one for Best Costume, Black and White (Norma Koch). This occurred at the 35th Academy Awards in early April 1963.
The film's novel and controversial plot meant that it originally received an X rating in the United Kingdom.
Because of the appeal of the film's stars, American journalist and writer David L. Itzkoff (also a culture reporter for The New York Times) has identified it as being a "cult classic".
In 1965, Aldrich and Foster were divorced. Two years later, Aldrich married his second wife, American fashion model Sibylle Siegfried. They would both remain married until Aldrich's death.
Nicknamed Bob, or Le Gros Bob, Aldrich passed from kidney failure in a Los Angeles, California hospital on December 5, 1983. He was 65.
In 1999, 'Kiss Me Deadly' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2003 the character of Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis) ranked it at #44 on the American Film Institute's list of the 50 Best Villains of American Cinema.
In 2012, Los Angeles-based film critic James Patterson summarized Aldrich's career: "He was a punchy, caustic, macho and pessimistic director, who depicted corruption and evil unflinchingly, and pushed limits on violence throughout his career.
His aggressive and pugnacious film-making style, often crass and crude, but never less than utterly vital and alive, warrants — and will richly reward — your immediate attention."
Patterson also commented that Aldrich is "a wonderful director nearly 30 years dead now, whose body of work is in danger of slipping over the horizon."
In 2017, the American pay television channel FX American anthology miniseries Feud (March 5–April 23), Aldrich is portrayed by English actor and voice artist Alfred Molina.
The first season, titled Bette and Joan, centers on the backstage battle between Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange) during and after the production of 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'
Aldrich's other notable credits include 'Vera Cruz'(1954), ‘The Big Knife’ (1955), 'Autumn Leaves' (1956), 'Attack' (1956), ‘Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte’ (1964), 'The Flight of the Phoenix' (1965), ‘The Dirty Dozen’ (1967) and ‘The Longest Yard’ (1974).
Aldrich had directed some of Hollywood's more intense examinations of violence, morality, and survival during the 1950s and 1960s.
The trademarks in his films, containing a plethora of genres that he directed, almost always contained a subversive undertone along with extreme and often selfish leading characters.
Aldrich had a lot of success in his career, made a lot of features, did very well at the box office by and large, and left a legacy of films that will continually be rediscovered by new generations.
But despite all this, he has not become a ‘brand name’ among many cinephiles in the way that some of others of his generation have.
Aldrich had been active from 1945–1981.
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