Robert Earl Wise (September 10, 1914 – September 14, 2005) was an American film director, producer and editor. He won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for both West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965). He was also nominated for Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane (1941) and directed and produced The Sand Pebbles (1966), which was nominated for Best Picture.Among his other films are The Body Snatcher (1945), Born to Kill (1947), The Set-Up (1949), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Destination Gobi (1953), This Could Be The Night (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), I Want to Live! (1958), The Haunting (1963), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Hindenburg (1975) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979).Wise was the president of the Directors Guild of America from 1971 to 1975 and the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1984 through 1987.Often contrasted with auteur directors such as Stanley Kubrick, who tended to bring a distinctive directorial "look" to a particular genre, Wise has been viewed as a craftsman, inclined to let the (sometimes studio-assigned) story concept set the style. Later cineastes, such as Martin Scorsese, insist that despite Wise's legendary workaday concentration on stylistic perfection within the confines of genre and budget, his choice of subject matter and approach still functioned to identify Wise as an artist and not merely an artisan. Wise achieved critical success as a director in a striking variety of film genres: horror, noir, western, war, science fiction, musical and drama, with many repeat successes within each genre. Wise's meticulous preparation may have been largely motivated by studio budget constraints, but advanced the moviemaking art. Robert Wise received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1998.
[on sequels generally especially A Game of Death (1945)] I don't like to do remakes. Usually, for one reason or another you have to see the original film, and it always rather bugs you when you find yourself doing a certain scene, and you keep being reminded of what it was like in the first film.
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[on Julie Andrews] How's she got to the top? It can not be all just talent. A lot of talented don't begin to make it the way she has made it. There is a genuineness about her; an unphoniness. She goes right through the camera, on to the film and out to the audience. Julie seems to have been born with the magic gene that comes through on the screen.
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Not true there was a cabal preventing Orson [Orson Welles] from making more films. He simply never fulfilled himself after that magnificent start; his own fault - lack of self-discipline.
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Fact
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On March 30th 1987 he accepted the best actor in a leading role Oscar on Behalf of Paul Newman who was not present at the ceremony though he didn't get to give the acceptance speech Paul had given him to give because Barbara Stanwyck who had presented the award wouldn't get off stage.
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Co-founded, with Mark Robson, Aspen Pictures, a film production company,.
When his first assignment under his 20th Century-Fox contract was shelved, his first film under his new deal was a loan-out to Warner Brothers for Three Secrets (1950).
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He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Blvd. on February 8, 1960.
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After collaborating closely and happily on the editing of Citizen Kane (1941) with Orson Welles, Wise was assigned to edit The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). When Welles left the country after finishing that film, RKO wanted Wise to edit it, making changes that Wise knew Welles wouldn't like. He initially refused because of his respect for Welles' vision of the film, but eventually relented and allowed RKO to put him in charge of a drastic editing of "Ambersons" that would result in a new ending and over 40 minutes of Welles' film being lost forever. A furious Welles held that against Wise for more than 40 years, until they reconciled publicly in 1984 by shaking hands on stage when the Directors Guild of America honored Welles with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 582-584. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.
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Has a son, Robert E. Wise, and a stepdaughter, Pamela Rosenberg. Has one granddaughter.
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In preparation for the scene in I Want to Live! (1958) in which Susan Hayward's character is executed, Wise attended a real execution.
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Retrospective at the 53rd San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain (2005).
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Interviewed in Tom Weaver's "It Came from Weaver Five" (McFarland & Co., 1996).
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Profiled in "Conversations with Directors: An Anthology of Interviews from Literature/Film Quarterly", E.M. Walker, D.T. Johnson, eds. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2008.
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He was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film culture.
Interviewed in "It Came from Horrorwood: Interviews with Moviemakers in the SF and Horror Tradition" by Tom Weaver (McFarland, 1996).
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When he and Jerome Robbins won the Best Director Oscar in 1962 for West Side Story (1961), it was the first time that a directing Oscar was shared among collaborators.
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From 1985-88 he was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
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He was awarded the American National Medal of the Arts by the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, D.C. (1992).
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Agreed to direct The Sound of Music (1965) after it had been abandoned by William Wyler on the condition that 20th Century -ox agree to finance The Sand Pebbles (1966). Wise, who also produced the musical, won his second Best Director Oscar and the Best Picture Oscar. The next year, "The Sand Pebbles" was nominated for Best Picture and Wise was awarded the Irving Thalberg Award, the highest honor for producers.
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Received the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award (1998).
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Celebrated his 91st birthday the weekend prior to his death (2005).
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He was the last surviving crew member of Citizen Kane (1941).
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Awarded honorary membership in the Society of Operating Cameramen (SOC) (1982).
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Accepted the Oscar for "Best Actor in a Leading Role" on behalf of Paul Newman, who was absent from the awards ceremony, for his performance in The Color of Money (1986) (1987).
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