Joseph H. Lewis (April 6, 1907 – August 30, 2000) was an American B-movie film director whose stylish flourishes came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement in 1966. In a 30-year directorial career, he helmed numerous low-budget westerns, action pictures and thrillers and is remembered for original mysteries My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) and So Dark the Night (1946) as well as his most-highly regarded feature, 1949's Gun Crazy, which spotlighted a desperate young couple (Peggy Cummins and John Dall) who embark on a deadly crime spree.
Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, BET Award for Best Male R&B/Pop Artist, Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, World Music Award for World’s Best Album, Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance, Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, Billboard M...
Movies
Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, My Name Is Julia Ross, Terror in a Texas Town, A Lawless Street, Invisible Ghost, So Dark the Night, The Undercover Man, A Lady Without Passport, Retreat, Hell!, 7th Cavalry, Cry of the Hunted, The Halliday Brand, Bombs Over Burma, Boys of the City, Minstrel Man, That Gang ...
[on the difference between working at a bottom-of-the-barrel studio like PRC and a top-of-the-line studio like MGM] If you asked [MGM] for a little clothes closet, they'd give you an eight-room house.
2
[about his arrival in Hollywood] I had grand illusions of being an actor. I sported a great big Adolphe Menjou mustache.
3
[explaining how he got the nickname "Wagon Wheel Joe"] I carried a box filled with different wagon wheels. Whenever I'd come to a scene which was just disgraceful in dialogue and all, I'd place a wagon wheel in one portion of the frame, and make an artistic shot out of it, so by the time the scene was over you only saw the artistic value and couldn't analyze what the scene was about.
4
[regarding the string of "B" westerns he shot at the beginning of his career] You didn't have actors; you had cowboys who owned a horse.
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Fact
1
He and his wife, Buena, had a daughter named Candy.
His nickname was "Wagon Wheel Joe," a name he received early in his career when he was shooting B Westerns for Universal. He had a penchant for framing shots through the spokes of the nearest wagon wheel, to break up the visual monotony of a scene. Several of the editors at Universal complained to the studio brass that they had a hard time cutting Lewis' films because "he keeps putting these damn wagon wheels in front of everything." Director Oliver Drake, a friend of Lewis' and also his boss on those Westerns, jokingly referred to him as "Wagon Wheel Joe," and the name stuck.
Director
Title
Year
Status
Character
The Big Valley
1965-1966
TV Series 3 episodes
A Man Called Shenandoah
1965-1966
TV Series 3 episodes
Gunsmoke
1965
TV Series 2 episodes
Branded
1965
TV Series 1 episode
Daniel Boone
1964
TV Series 1 episode
Bonanza
1963
TV Series 1 episode
The Rifleman
1958-1963
TV Series 51 episodes
The Dick Powell Theatre
1962
TV Series 1 episode
The Investigators
1961
TV Series 13 episodes
Zane Grey Theater
1961
TV Series 1 episode
The Detectives
1959
TV Series 2 episodes
Alcoa Theatre
1959
TV Series 1 episode
The Fat Man: The Thirty-Two Friends of Gina Lardelli