The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller

In 2002, a ninth addition was made to the eight-part series, "The Men Who Made the Movies," which originally ran on PBS in 1973 and offered career surveys and interviews with eight notable veteran Hollywood directors, three of whom were still working at the time, Alfred Hitchcock, George Cukor and Vincente Minnelli. The others were King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman, Howard Hawks, and Frank Capra. The Time magazine critic and author of numerous film books, Richard Schickel, produced, directed and wrote the series. If I recall correctly, since I watched it all when it first ran, he also narrated it and conducted the interviews. When Turner Classic Movies licensed the series in 2001 and re-edited it with new, updated narration by Sydney Pollack, a decision was made to add a new episode devoted to longtime maverick director Sam Fuller, using an interview he gave late in life. (He died in 1997.) No credit is given to whoever conducted the interview. My immediate assumption is that it was Schickel, but I have no confirmation of that.

Fuller's great in the interview segments because he describes what he wanted to show on film, what kind of behavior he wanted to dramatize and what kinds of people these were. He tells us how he and the actors brought his ideas about human nature to life, with special attention to men's behavior and attitudes in the midst of combat, all backed up by plentiful film clips from the following films: I SHOT JESSE JAMES (1949), THE STEEL HELMET (1951), FIXED BAYONETS (1952), PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953), RUN OF THE ARROW (1957), FORTY GUNS (1957), SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963), THE NAKED KISS (1964) and THE BIG RED ONE (1980).

He doesn't tell a great many "Hollywood" stories, since he was so far out of the mainstream, even at his peak, but he does relate a meeting he had with Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover over the line spoken by Richard Widmark's lowlife pickpocket in PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953) as he's questioned by FBI agents, "Don't wave the flag at me."