Biography
One of Hollywood's top action directors of the late 1950s and 1960s, John Sturges, for a time, was a name associated almost exclusively with large-scale action-adventure films. A one-time assistant in RKO's blueprint department, Sturges spent most of his early career in the studio's art department and editing room (an especially productive department, where directors
Robert Wise and
Mark Robson also got their starts), before joining David O. Selznick as a production assistant and later as an editor. He became a director in the U.S. Army Air Force, making documentary and training films, including
Thunderbolt, in collaboration with veteran director
William Wyler. He returned to Hollywood as a director and, for a time, made successful if fairly undistinguished films (mostly action or suspense) until 1954, when he took on
Bad Day at Black Rock. Sturges, who had shown a knack for working with the increasingly difficult
Spencer Tracy (in
The People Against O'Hara), coaxed a great performance out of the legendary star (and some of the best work ever by
Lee Marvin,
Robert Ryan, and
Anne Francis, among others) and transformed the film from a routine suspense vehicle into a powerful thriller, dealing with the then increasingly topical subject of racism and violence. Sturges received his only Academy Award nomination for
Bad Day At Black Rock, and his career was made, as he became sought out by Hollywood's top producers. Gunfight At the O.K. Corral (1957), which he directed for producer Hal Wallis, was another hit. He was also responsible for
The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and The Last Train From Gun Hill (1959), starring
Spencer Tracy and
Kirk Douglas. Sturges then became his own producer, beginning with
The Magnificent Seven (1960), a large-scale Western action vehicle adapted from
Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954). It turned most of its featured players (including
Steve McQueen,
Charles Bronson, and
James Coburn) into stars and was popular enough to generate four sequels as well as a major hit musical theme by
Elmer Bernstein.
The Great Escape (1963), a fact-based all-star World War II thriller, was the high water mark of Sturges' career. It became an enormous theatrical hit and a subsequent favorite on home video and laserdisc (where there are two rival editions out -- one featuring Sturges's own recollections about the movie). His next movie,
The Satan Bug (1965), based on a popular best-seller, seemed to be a deliberate attempt to get away from big, all-star vehicles. It failed and quickly ended up on television, while
The Hallelujah Trail (1965) proved an awkward, unpopular Western satire despite its big-name cast. His subsequent movies, including
Ice Station Zebra (1968) and
Joe Kidd (1972), were popular but never on the scale of Sturges's early 1960s work. And his
Hour of the Gun (1967), a more personal, deeply psychological reinterpretation of events surrounding the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, was a failure at the box office.
Marooned (1969), which he inherited as a project from
Frank Capra, was initially a failure, until the story of an Apollo spacecraft trapped in orbit suddenly took on new relevancy in the wake of the Apollo 13 explosion; it became a hit soon after.
The Eagle Has Landed (1976), a return to
Great Escape-style action and scale dealing with an attempt by the Germans to kidnap Winston Churchill during World War II, was successful, but also marked his retirement. In 1991, Sturges came out of retirement to participate in the making of a special laserdisc edition of
The Great Escape for Voyager Company. Although not highly regarded as a stylist, Sturges had a way of working with actors and designing scenes that elicited strong emotional response from audiences -- especially men -- that made his pictures extremely compelling. He probably rated Academy Award consideration for
The Magnificent Seven and
The Great Escape. Curiously, he seemed to understand the special appeal that his films had for male audiences seeking escapist entertainment, and several of his films, including
The Great Escape and
Ice Station Zebra, don't feature a single female cast member. However, he never descended into cheap entertainment in catering to his audience. And one actress,
Anne Francis, did some of her best work in two of his movies,
Bad Day at Black Rock and
The Satan Bug. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide