Samuel Fuller

Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, actor, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget genre movies with controversial themes, often made outside the conventional studio system. Fuller wrote his first screenplay for Hats Off in 1936, and made his directorial debut with the Western I Shot Jesse James (1949). He would continue to direct several other Westerns and war thrillers throughout the 1950s. Fuller shifted from Westerns and war movies in the 1960s with his low-budget thriller Shock Corridor in 1963, followed by the neo-noir The Naked Kiss (1964). He was inactive in filmmaking for most of the 1970s, before writing and directing the semi-autobiographical war epic The Big Red One (1980), and the drama White Dog (1982), whose screenplay he co-wrote with Curtis Hanson. Several of his films would prove influential to French New Wave filmmakers, notably Jean-Luc Godard, who gave him a cameo appearance in Pierrot le Fou (1965). Early life Samuel Michael Fuller was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, of Jewish parents, Rebecca ( Baum) and Benjamin Fuller. His father died in 1923 when Samuel was 11. After immigrating to the United States, the family's surname was changed from Rabinovitch to Fuller, a name possibly inspired by Samuel Fuller, a doctor who arrived in America on the Mayflower. In his autobiography, A Third Face (2002), he says that he did not speak until he was five. His first word was "Hammer!" After his father's death, the family moved to New York City, where at the age of 12, he began working as a newspaper copyboy. He became a crime reporter in New York City at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the story of actress Jeanne Eagels' death. He wrote pulp novels, including The Dark Page (1944; reissued in 2007 with an introduction by Wim Wenders), which was later adapted into the 1952 movie Scandal Sheet.