Robert Aldrich Filmography

The Frisco Kid

Crew: Director

Actors: Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford, Ramon Bieri, Val Bisoglio, William Smith, George DiCenzo

Synopsis: Robert Aldrich returns to the western-spoof genre he'd previously explored in Four for Texas with The Frisco Kid. Gene Wilder plays Polish rabbi Avram Belinsky, who intends to set up a congregation in San Francisco. Eminently unsuited for life in the Old West, poor Avram is victimized by everyone Read More

Twilight's Last Gleaming

Crew: Director

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Charles Durning, Melvyn Douglas, Paul Winfield

Synopsis: Soured on America by his experiences as a POW in Vietnam, General Lawrence Dell (Burt Lancaster) hopes that his government will someday tell the truth about the Southeast Asian debacle, thereby allowing his country to embark upon a healing process. Regarded as a dangerous embarrassment by the Read More

The Choirboys

Crew: Director

Actors: Charles Durning, Louis Gossett, Jr., Perry King, Clyde Kusatsu, Stephen Macht

Synopsis: Loosely based on former policeman Joseph Wambaugh's humorous novel, The Choirboys determinedly explores the stunted interior lives of a large crew of callous, bigoted L.A. policemen. These men get together to lend one another emotional support. However, the means they choose for this do not Read More

Hustle

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Catherine Deneuve, Ben Johnson, Paul Winfield, Eileen Brennan

Synopsis: Director Robert Aldrich (The Longest Yard) re-unites with Burt Reynolds for this hard-edged neo-noir. Lieutenant Phil Gaines (Reynolds) is a cynical Los Angeles police detective amorously involved with an icewater-veined Parisian call girl, Nicole Britton (Catherine Deneuve). On the job, he begins Read More

The Longest Yard

Crew: Director

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Eddie Albert

Synopsis: Ex-football star Paul Crewe (Burt Reynolds) ends up in a prison run by sadistic sports-nut Warden Hazen (Eddie Albert). Strong-armed into forming an inmate football team, Crewe manages to instill an esprit de corps previously lacking in the prisoners' lives. Besides, they now have the Read More

Emperor of the North

Crew: Director

Actors: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine, Charles Tyner, Malcolm Atterbury

Synopsis: In this gritty and violent period drama set in the depths of the Great Depression, Lee Marvin stars as "A No. 1", the acknowledged King of the Hoboes. A No. 1 is famous among his fellow tramps for his ability to catch a ride on any train, no matter how risky the hop or dangerous the guards. He Read More

Ulzana's Raid

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Bruce Davison, Jorge Luke, Richard Jaeckel, Joaquin Martinez

Synopsis: One of the best films by often-underrated director Robert Aldrich, this stark, brutal Western is also an effective allegory of America's involvement in the Vietnam War. Set in Arizona during the late 1880s, the film begins with experienced scout McIntosh (Burt Lancaster) and idealistic U.S. Read More

The Grissom Gang

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Kim Darby, Scott Wilson, Tony Musante, Irene Dailey, Robert Lansing

Synopsis: The Grissom Gang is a remake of the notorious 1949 British melodrama No Orchids for Miss Blandish. Kim Darby plays a 1920s-era debutante who is kidnapped and held for ransom. Her captors are the Grissoms, a family comprised of sadists and morons, and headed by Ma Barker clone Irene Dailey. One of Read More

Too Late the Hero

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Michael Caine, Cliff Robertson, Henry Fonda, Ian Bannen, Harry Andrews

Synopsis: Filmed on location in the Philippines, Suicide Run is the alternate title of the British war thriller Too Late the Hero. Cliff Robertson stars as an opportunistic, mildly cowardly US navy lieutenant who is reluctantly recruited for a suicide mission. When his CO is killed, Robertson is forced into Read More

Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice?

Crew: Producer

Actors: Geraldine Page, Ruth Gordon, Rosemary Forsyth, Robert Fuller, Mildred Dunnock

Synopsis: Mrs. Marrable (Geraldine Page) is a bereaved widow who takes to hiring housekeepers then kills them for their money in this shadowy macabre drama. When Miss Tinsley (Mildred Dunnick) disappears, her former employer Alice (Ruth Gordon) investigates. Posing as a maid, she gains employment with the Read More

The Killing of Sister George

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Beryl Reid, Susannah York, Coral Browne, Ronald Fraser, Patricia Medina

Synopsis: A year after helming The Dirty Dozen, director Robert Aldrich took on this controversial drama based on the play of the same name by Frank Marcus. Beryl Reid stars as soap opera star June, an alcoholic lesbian who spends most of her time with her younger lover, Alice (Susannah York). When Read More

The Legend of Lylah Clare

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Kim Novak, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine, Milton Selzer, Rossella Falk

Synopsis: Film star Lylah Clare is dead, but her legend lives on. Movie-producer Barney Sheean (Ernest Borgnine) hires Elsa Brinkmann (Kim Novak), the living image of the late Lylah, to star in a film based on Ms. Clare's life. Barney hires director Lewis Zarkan (Peter Finch), Lylah's former husband, to Read More

The Dirty Dozen

Crew: Director

Actors: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, John Cassavetes, George Kennedy, Richard Jaeckel

Synopsis: Director Robert Aldrich took what he considered a hopelessly old-fashioned script by Lukas Heller and Nunnally Johnson and fashioned The Dirty Dozen into one of MGM's biggest moneymakers of the 1960s--and the sixth highest-grossing film in the studio's history. Lee Marvin plays Major Reisman Read More

The Flight of the Phoenix

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Hardy Kruger, Ernest Borgnine

Synopsis: Based on Elleston Trevor's novel, The Flight of the Phoenix opens with a well-staged plane crash in the middle of the Sahara desert. The pilot (James Stewart) and the navigator (Richard Attenborough) do their best to maintain order among the survivors, a group of oil men not well-suited for Read More

Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead, Cecil Kellaway

Synopsis: An unusually long pre-credits sequence establishes the roots of faded Southern belle Charlotte's (Bette Davis) insanity; she'd been witness to the dismemberment murder of her fiance (Bruce Dern) and the suicide of the murderer, her own father (Victor Buono). Years later, Charlotte remains a Read More

4 for Texas

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Anita Ekberg, Ursula Andress, Charles Bronson, Victor Buono

Synopsis: In 4 for Texas, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin star as Zack Thomas and Joe Jarrett, a pair of rival mountebanks who spend most of the film battling over who will control the gambling and wenching in 1870 Galveston. Though they'd as soon cut each other's throats than cooperate, Zack and Joe are Read More

Sodom and Gomorrah

Crew: Director

Actors: Stewart Granger, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Stanley Baker, Anouk Aimée, Rossana Podestà

Synopsis: This 153-minute Biblical epic about salt and sin is directed by Robert Aldrich and has enough dynamic interactions between its chief protagonists to sustain interest in-between climactic scenes. Stewart Granger is Lot, the Hebrew leader who takes his people to camp in the Valley of Jordan only to Read More

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Marjorie Bennett, Anna Lee, Maide Norman

Synopsis: As a child, "Baby Jane" Hudson was the toast of vaudeville. As an adult, however, Baby Jane was overshadowed by her more talented sister, Blanche, who became a top movie star. Then, one night in the early '30s, came the accident, which crippled Blanche for life and which was blamed on a drunken Read More

The Last Sunset

Crew: Director

Actors: Rock Hudson, Kirk Douglas, Dorothy Malone, Joseph Cotten, Carol Lynley

Synopsis: Scripted by Dalton Trumbo and directed by Robert Aldrich, this off-beat, almost eclectic film could be hailed as a thinking person's western. It is the dark cat-and-mouse tale of a sherrif's hunt for a philosophy-spouting criminal in the midst of a great cattle drive. The outlaw killed the Read More

Ten Seconds to Hell

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jeff Chandler, Jack Palance, Martine Carol, Wesley Addy, Robert Cornthwaite, Dave Willock, Virginia Baker

Synopsis: This film is a 1959 WWII drama that focuses on members of a German bomb squad. The fatalistic soldiers pool part of their paychecks into a fund that the last surviving member of the squad will get to keep. One by one, the men meet their deaths until only two remain: Karl Wirtz (Jeff Chandler) and Read More

The Angry Hills

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Elisabeth Müller, Stanley Baker, Gia Scala, Theodore Bikel, Donald Wolfit

Synopsis: Robert Aldrich (Kiss Me Deadly) directed this cloak-and-dagger yarn (based on a bestseller by Leon Uris), filmed on sumptuous locations in Greece. Set in Athens in 1941, before the Nazis overran the country, Robert Mitchum plays American war correspondent Mike Morrison, who has come into the Read More

Autumn Leaves

Crew: Director

Actors: Joan Crawford, Cliff Robertson, Vera Miles, Lorne Greene, Ruth Donnelly

Synopsis: Few actresses other than Joan Crawford could have successfully pulled off the melodramatic excesses of Autumn Leaves. Though a very attractive fortysomething, Crawford remains aloof from romance until she meets Cliff Robertson, a young man half her age. An ardent and persistent suitor, Robertson Read More

Attack

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jack Palance, Eddie Albert, Lee Marvin, Robert Strauss, Richard Jaeckel

Synopsis: It is easy to see why the US Army refused to cooperate in the production of Attack. Based on the Norman Brooks play The Fragile Fox, this searing war film is a powerful indictment against a military system which protects even its most incompetent of officers. Eddie Albert plays a posturing but Read More

The Big Knife

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Rod Steiger, Shelley Winters

Synopsis: Robert Aldrich's screen adaptation of Clifford Odets' stage play reflects the quandary of the writer's later career; the golden boy of the Group Theater in the '30s, when his plays were the toast of Broadway, his talent seemed to wither after a number of years in the screenwriting trenches, and a Read More

Kiss Me Deadly

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Wesley Addy, Maxine Cooper, Cloris Leachman

Synopsis: Regarded by many critics as the ultimate film noir, and by many more as the finest movie adaptation of a book by Mickey Spillane, Kiss Me Deadly stars Ralph Meeker as Spillane's anti-social private eye Mike Hammer. While driving down a lonely road late one evening, Hammer picks up a Read More

World for Ransom

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Dan Duryea, Gene Lockhart, Patric Knowles, Reginald Denny, Nigel Bruce

Synopsis: World for Ransom is an unofficial extension of the popular 1950s TV series China Smith. Most of the Smith personnel, including star Dan Duryea, director Robert Aldrich and cinematographer Joseph Biroc, are on hand for this inexpensive but well-mounted melodrama. Duryea plays a mercenary adventurer Read More

Apache

Crew: Director

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Jean Peters, John McIntire, Charles Buchinsky, John Dehner

Synopsis: Apache was based on Paul I. Wellman's novel Broncho Apache, which in turn was inspired by a true story. Burt Lancaster plays Massai, a lieutenant of the great Apache warrior Geronimo (here depicted as an old man, played by Monte Blue). Though his tribe has signed surrender terms with the Read More

Vera Cruz

Crew: Director

Actors: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Cesar Romero, Sarita Montiel

Synopsis: Produced by Burt Lancaster's own company, Vera Cruz teams Lancaster with the venerable Gary Cooper. The story, set during the Mexican revolution of 1866, casts Coop and Lancaster as Ben Trane and Joe Erin, two rival soldiers of fortune who team to fight for the highest bidder. The two men come to Read More

Limelight

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Charles Chaplin, Claire Bloom, Nigel Bruce, Sydney Chaplin, Andre Eglevsky, Melissa Hayden, Buster Keaton

Synopsis: London, 1914. Calvero (Charles Chaplin), a once-great music hall comedian, weaves drunkenly home to his shabby flat. As he arrives home, he is suddenly sobered by a bad smell. It isn't his shoes, as he originally assumes, but the smell of gas, emanating from behind a locked door. Calvero smashes Read More

The Witness

Crew: Director

Synopsis: A video of two television dramas: "One Way Out" and "Witness." ~ All Movie Guide Read More

The Big Leaguer

Crew: Director

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Vera-Ellen, Jeff Richards, Richard Jaeckel, William Campbell

Synopsis: Big Leaguer was the inauspicious feature-film debut for director Robert Aldrich. Edward G. Robinson stars as the real-life Hans Lobert, the baseball scout in charge of the New York Giants' Florida training camp. Each year, a new crop of would-be ballplayers are given a two-week tryout under Read More

Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Charles Laughton, Hillary Brooke, Bill Shirley

Synopsis: Though out of favor with many Abbott and Costello buffs, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd is actually a lot of fun, so long as the viewer parks logic and dignity at the door. Captain Kidd is played by no less than Charles Laughton, who reportedly agreed to sign up for this film because he Read More

The Prowler

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Van Heflin, Evelyn Keyes, John Maxwell, Katherine Warren, Emerson Treacy

Synopsis: Webb Garwood (Van Heflin) is a cynical policeman who believes that success comes from lucky breaks. Responding to a prowler complaint at the home of Susan Gilvray (Evelyn Keyes), he is immediately attracted to her and her wealth. He returns to "check up" on Susan, and they begin an affair Read More

The Big Night

Actors: John Drew Barrymore, Preston S. Foster, Joan Lorring, Howard St. John, Dorothy Comingore

Synopsis: Awkward teenager George LeMain (John Drew Barrymore, credited as John Barrymore Jr.) is given a small birthday party by his widowed father Andy (Preston Foster) at his bar. He is puzzled that his father's longtime girlfriend, Frances, is not there, but neither Andy nor Flanagan (Howland Chamberlain Read More

Force of Evil

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor, Roy Roberts, Beatrice Pearson

Synopsis: John Garfield, in the best performance of his career, portrays Joe Morse, an ambitious attorney who has long since abandoned his scruples in favor of monetary reward. Morse now represents the interests of crime boss Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts), who plans to take over the numbers racket in New York. Read More

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: George Sanders, David Bond, Angela Lansbury, Ann Dvorak, Frances Dee, John Carradine

Synopsis: Writer/director Albert Lewin, ever on the lookout for esoteric story material that would accommodate his fascination with Egyptian sculpture and feline symbolism, managed to inject both into The Private Affairs of Bel Ami. Though based on a Guy de Maupassant story, Bel Ami seems to have been Read More

Body and Soul

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, James Burke, Anne Revere, Canada Lee, Mary Currier, Joe Devlin, Hazel Brooks, William Conrad

Synopsis: This riveting 1947 drama, regarded by many as the greatest boxing movie of all time, centers on a former pugilist who looks back on his life in and out of the ring and realizes that self-respect is a more important prize than winning. John Garfield is Charlie Davis, a former boxing champion who Read More

Pardon My Past

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Fred MacMurray, Marguerite Chapman, Akim Tamiroff, William Demarest, Rita Johnson

Synopsis: A case of mistaken identity leads to hilarity in this comedy. Eddie (Fred MacMurray) and Chuck (William Demarest) are a pair of GIs who've just been sprung from the service and plan to open a mink ranch in Wisconsin. No sooner do they arrive in the Cheese State than one Jim Arnold (Akim Tamiroff) Read More