Robert Wise, the highly honoured film editor-turned-director who won four Academy Awards for producing and directing West Side Story and The Sound of Music, died last Wednesday, four days after celebrating his 91st birthday. Wise, who edited Orson Welles's landmark Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, became ill at his home on Monday morning and died of heart failure.
In a directing career that began in 1944 when he took over the reins of the stylish horror classic The Curse of the Cat People in mid-production, Wise defied being pigeonholed.
Earning a reputation as a disciplined and impeccable craftsman, he worked in virtually every genre - from high drama and romantic comedy to film noir and the supernatural.
Wise had the distinction of having not only two films on the American Film Institute's (AFI) list of the 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time as a director (West Side Story at number 41 and The Sound of Music at 55), but as an editor he played a key role on the number one film, Citizen Kane, for which he received his first Oscar nomination.
In 1998, the modest and self-effacing filmmaker became the 26th recipient of the AFI's life achievement award, joining the ranks of fellow directors John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Welles in receiving what is widely considered the film industry's highest career honour.
"Some of the more esoteric critics claim that there's no Robert Wise style or stamp," Wise said at the time. "My answer to that is that I've tried to approach each genre in a cinematic style that I think is right for that genre. I wouldn't have approached The Sound of Music the way I approached I Want to Live! for anything, and that accounts for a mix of styles."
Director Martin Scorsese, who joined fellow director Oliver Stone in campaigning for Wise to receive the AFI honour, said at the time that he respected Wise for tackling so many types of films.
"I supported him because he represents the American tradition of excellence and honesty and integrity," Scorsese told the Chicago Tribune. "In a sense, he was the Steven Spielberg of his time." Wise's background as a film editor was invaluable training for his work as a director, Scorsese said.
The son of a meatpacker, Wise was born in Winchester, Indiana, on September 10th, 1914. Growing up in Connersville, another small Indiana town, he fell in love with the movies: he would see three or four matinees a week or, as he once recalled, "as often as I had change in my pocket".
Wise also developed an interest in writing - he was sports editor of his high school paper - and after graduating in 1931, he enrolled in nearby Franklin College with the intention of studying journalism.
But the Depression forced him to drop out of college and find work.
His older brother, David, was working in the accounting department at RKO Studios, and, in 1933, Wise headed to Hollywood. He landed a job in RKO's editing department as a $25-a-week "film porter", whose job consisted of transporting prints between the projection and cutting rooms.
He quickly moved into sound effects and after two years became an assistant to master film editor Billy Hamilton, who taught Wise that "pace is not necessarily just length, it's interest".
By 1939, Wise was sharing screen credit as an editor on The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. His first solo effort as an editor was the witty 1940 film My Favorite Wife, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.
Then came Welles's 1941 masterpiece, Citizen Kane, which Wise considered "a high point in a lucky life".
"I got a call from someone at the studio who asked if I would like to cut a movie with Welles, who was already well-known from the Mercury Theater and that radio play of The War of the Worlds," Wise recalled in a 2001 interview with the Detroit Free Press. "We met, and I recall being terribly impressed."
Citizen Kane was not particularly difficult to edit, Wise told the New York Times in a 1998 interview, primarily because of the work of cinematographer Gregg Toland.
"You would see those extraordinary dailies every day, the marvellous photography and angles and great scenes with actors that were new to the screen, and know it was quite special," he said. "And to think that Welles was 25, and it was his first film. Remarkable, really."
Wise's first assignment as a director came unexpectedly in 1944. He was editing The Curse of the Cat People when B-movie producer Val Lewton asked him to replace director Gunther von Fritsch, who had run over schedule with only half the script filmed.
Wise finished filming what became a B-movie cult horror classic in 10 days and was launched on a new career as a director.
After a series of B movies, he graduated to A pictures in 1948, with Blood on the Moon, an adult western starring Robert Mitchum.
Wise directed his final theatrical feature film - the urban musical Rooftops - in 1989. But in 2000, he returned to directing one last time: A Storm in Summer, a drama for Showtime about racial prejudice starring Peter Falk as an embittered Jewish deli owner.
Wise, who turned out B pictures at RKO in the 1940s in 18 days, had 21 days to shoot the cable movie. At 85, he brought it in on schedule.
In looking back over his career in his 1998 interview with the New York Times, Wise said one of his favourite films as a director was The Haunting. Another was I Want to Live!, for which Wise prepared by witnessing an execution at California's San Quentin prison.
Wise described the film's star, Susan Hayward, as "a very good actress and a very private person. Most actors schmooze with each other on the set, sit around canvas chairs. Not Susan. She spent all the time in her dressing room." Wise's biggest disappointment was Star!, his flop 1968 musical starring Julie Andrews as stage star Gertrude Lawrence.
Wise's first wife, Patricia, whom he married in 1942, died in 1975. He married his second wife, Millicent, in 1977. She survives him. He is also survived by a son, a daughter and a granddaughter.
Robert Wise: born September 10th, 1914; died September 14th, 2005