Robert Wise Filmography

Born:: September 10, 1914 in Winchester, IN
Occupation:: Director, Editor, Producer
Biography:: One of the most successful directors of the 1960s, when he became an efficient maker of epic-length pictures, Robert Wise is one of Hollywood's few popularly recognized filmmakers. He joined RKO in the 1930s as a cutter and eventually became one of the studio's top editors, working in this...Read More

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Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows

Actors: Roger Corman, Glenn Gabbard, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Val Lewton, Alexander Nemerov

Synopsis: While his name was known to only the most obsessive film fans during the course of his career, Val Lewton produced a handful of low-budget horror movies in the 1940's that had a revolutionary impact on the genre. Working within a special production unit at RKO Pictures, Lewton's films were mood Read More

2007
In the Mind of Daredevils

Crew: Series Producer

Synopsis: The Learning Channel invites viewers Into the Mind of Daredevils. Meet a group of thrill-seekers who risk their lives all in the name of fun. These daredevils are shown jumping off cliffs, plunging down waterfalls in barrels, surfing dangerous 60-foot waves, walking on the wings of airplanes, and Read More

2001
A Storm in Summer

Crew: Director

Actors: Peter Falk, Aaron Meeks, Nastassja Kinski, Andrew McCarthy, Ruby Dee

Synopsis: Robert Wise brings his distinguished name and considerable directorial skill to this remake of a 1970 Rod Serling TV drama. Set in 1969, Abel Shaddick (Peter Falk), a crotchety deli owner, has a grudge against virtually everyone in his upstate New York town of Fairview, particularly against his Read More

2000
Tudo E Brasil

Actors: Richard Wilson, Robert Wise, Bill Krohn, Edmar Morel, Paula Lima

Synopsis: Continuing his four-year research into Orson Welles' 1942 trip to Rio, Rogerio Sganzeria rounds out his trilogy with this Brazilian documentary, an assemblage of interviews, radio programs, film clips, photos, graphic designs, and samba music, combining to explain how Welles lost control of The Magnificent Ambersons Read More

1998
The Battle Over Citizen Kane

Synopsis: Arguably the greatest film ever made, Citizen Kane almost never saw the light of day. In this documentary from directors Michael Epstein and Thomas Lennon, the story behind the legendary film is told, highlighting the attempts by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to kill the thinly-veiled Read More

1996
Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick

Actors: Alec Baldwin

Synopsis: Directed by the acclaimed Walter Hill and narrated by actor Alec Baldwin, this documentary profiles the adventurous, contentious, and very talented director William Wellman (1896-1975). Ambulance driver for the French Foreign Legion and decorated American pilot in World War I, Wellman later became Read More

1995
Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography

Actors: Néstor Almendros, John A. Alonzo, Michael Ballhaus, Stephen H. Burum, Sven Nykvist, Vittorio Storaro, Haskell Wexler, Gordon Willis

Synopsis: The film equivalent of a stroll through the Louvre, the documentary Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography collects interviews with many of modern-day Hollywood's finest directors of photography and is illustrated by examples of their best work as well as scenes from the pictures which most Read More

1993
Rooftops

Crew: Director

Actors: Jason Gedrick, Troy Beyer, Eddie Velez, Alexis Cruz, Tisha Campbell

Synopsis: Set in the Manhattan street milieu that served him well in West Side Story, Robert Wise’s Rooftops tells the story of T, a quiet, soft-spoken teen-ager who has left his broken home and is living in a makeshift shelter in an old water tower on top of an abandoned tenement building. There are other Read More

3/17/89
Wisdom

Crew: Executive Producer

Actors: Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, William Allen Young

Synopsis: In this film, an old felony conviction comes back to haunt the young, ambitious John Wisdom (Emilio Estevez) as he applies and is turned down for a number of jobs. Frustrated by his attempts to make a legitimate living, John and his girlfriend, Karen (Demi Moore), set out to commit a series of Read More

12/31/86
50 Years of Action!

Actors: Stanley Ackerman, Woody Allen, John A. Alonzo, Warren Beatty

Synopsis: One of the few documentaries to shine a spotlight on directors in Hollywood, this informative film sketches out the 50-year history of the Directors Guild of America. Formed at a time when people were still fighting for unions in the United States, the guild also had its problems when the studios Read More

1986
The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal

Synopsis: The works of "Puppetoon" creator and special effects wizard George Pal are perhaps best seen separately and in toto rather than lumped together in fragmentary form. The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal contains an abundance of enjoyable film clips, but most are far too short for the Read More

1985
Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Crew: Director

Actors: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Stephen Collins, James Doohan, George Takei, Walter Koenig

Synopsis: When plans to launch a second Star Trek television series in the late 1970s were scrapped by Paramount Pictures, the show's creator, Gene Roddenberry, instead transformed the aborted program's 2-hour pilot into this big budget theatrical feature. Five years after the legendary voyages of the Read More

1979
Audrey Rose

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Marsha Mason, Anthony Hopkins, John Beck, Susan Swift, Norman Lloyd

Synopsis: Audrey Rose is a "thinking man's" horror film, which in a way is unfortunate, since it tended to be ignored amidst the many spell-it-all-out scarefests of the late '70s. Marsha Mason and John Beck play Janice and Bill Templeton, a happily married couple, the parents of well-adjusted preteen Ivy (Susan Swift Read More

1977
The Hindenburg

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft, William Atherton, Roy Thinnes, Gig Young

Synopsis: "The German Air Force is not at all what it used to be," says Anne Bancroft's Countess, about 16 minutes into The Hindenburg, pausing and then adding, "But then, nothing is these days." That seems to sum up the ponderous, irony-laden script and plot of Robert Wise's movie, which is posited -- in Read More

1975
Two People

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Peter Fonda, Lindsay Wagner, Estelle Parsons, Alan Fudge, Philippe March

Synopsis: Evan Bonner (Peter Fonda) is a former solider who deserted the Army due to his growing opposition to the U.S. role in Vietnam. Having spent the intervening years drifting aimlessly, he has ended up in Marrakesh – where he has made the decision to return to the U.S. and turn himself in. Also in Read More

1973
The Andromeda Strain

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, Kate Reid, Paula Kelly

Synopsis: The "Andromeda Strain" is a deadly extraterrestrial virus. It is brought to Earth when a research satellite crashes near a tiny Arizona town. Everyone in the community dies within days, except for a baby and an "insulated" drunkard. Recruited from labs all over North America, doctors Charles Read More

1971
The Baby Maker

Crew: Producer

Actors: Barbara Hershey, Collin Wilcox-Horne, Sam Groom, Scott Glenn, Jeannie Berlin

Synopsis: Barbara Hershey stars as the "baby maker" of the title. Tish Gray (Hershey) hires herself out to married couple Jay and Suzanne Wilcox (Sam Groom and Collin Wilcox-Horne), who've been unable to conceive a child of their own. Tish agrees to bear the child for them, assuming that her hippie Read More

1970
Star!

Crew: Director

Actors: Julie Andrews, Richard Crenna, Michael Craig, Daniel Massey, Robert Reed

Synopsis: Touted by 20th Century-Fox as a follow-up to their enormously successful The Sound of Music, Star! reteams that earlier film's leading lady Julie Andrews and director Robert Wise. Andrews plays legendary musical comedy star Gertrude Lawrence, while Daniel Massey appears as Lawrence's friend Read More

1968
The Sand Pebbles

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, Marayat Andriane

Synopsis: Steve McQueen received his only Academy Award nomination for his performance in this epic-scale war drama, based on the novel by Richard McKenna. In 1926, as China teeters on the edge of political revolution in the midst of a civil war, the USS San Pablo, is ordered to patrol the Yangtze Read More

1966
The Sound of Music

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker, Richard Haydn, Peggy Wood

Synopsis: One of the most popular movie musicals of all time, The Sound of Music is based on the true story of the Trapp Family Singers. Julie Andrews stars as Maria, a young nun in an Austrian convent who regularly misses her morning prayers because she enjoys going to the hills to sing the title song. Read More

1965
The Haunting

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Lois Maxwell

Synopsis: One of the most highly regarded haunted house films ever produced, Robert Wise's The Haunting (based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House) weaves the dark tale of a questionably sane young woman and a sinister house which holds a terrifying past. Invited to join anthropologist Dr. Read More

1963
Two for the Seesaw

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Shirley MacLaine, Edmon Ryan, Elisabeth Fraser, Eddie Firestone

Synopsis: Based on the two-character play by William Gibson, Two for the Seesaw was unnecessarily expanded for the film version. Robert Mitchum plays an Omaha businessman, newly arrived in New York. Though unhappily married, Mitchum is averse to asking for a divorce. This state of affairs gets dicey when Read More

1962
West Side Story

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris

Synopsis: Romeo and Juliet is updated to the tenements of New York City in this Oscar-winning musical landmark. Adapted by Ernest Lehman from the Broadway production, the movie opens with an overhead shot of Manhattan, an effect that director Robert Wise would repeat over the Alps in The Sound of Music four Read More

1961
Odds Against Tomorrow

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Sr., Gloria Grahame

Synopsis: Harry Belafonte was both producer and star of this hard-edged film noir crime drama. Dave Burke (Ed Begley, Sr.) is an ex-cop who has been kicked off the force for refusing to inform on his colleagues to the State Crime Committee. Short on money, the former policeman jumps to the other side Read More

1959
I Want to Live!

Crew: Director

Actors: Susan Hayward, Simon Oakland, Virginia Vincent, Theodore Bikel, Wesley Lau

Synopsis: Grim, almost unbearably intense, I Want To Live is the story of the life and execution of Barbara Graham (Susan Hayward) a perjurer, prostitute, liar and drug addict. The product of a broken home, Graham works as a shill, luring gullible men into crooked card games. She attempts to go straight Read More

1958
Run Silent, Run Deep

Crew: Director

Actors: Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, Jack Warden, Brad Dexter, Don Rickles

Synopsis: The contrasting acting styles of Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster serve to increase the already high tension level of the WW2 drama Run Silent, Run Deep. Gable plays submarine commander "Rich" Richardson, who assumes command of the USS Nerka. Because his previous sub was sunk by the Japanese under Read More

1958
This Could Be the Night

Crew: Director

Actors: Jean Simmons, Paul Douglas, Anthony Franciosa, Julie Wilson, Neile Adams, Joan Blondell

Synopsis: A rare comedy effort by director Robert Wise, This Could Be the Night is based on a series of short stories Cordelia Baird Gross. Jean Simmons stars as Anne Leeds, a prim, proper and very level-headed grade-school teacher who takes a night job as secretary to rough-and-tumble nightclub owner Rocco Read More

1957
Until They Sail

Crew: Director

Actors: Jean Simmons, Joan Fontaine, Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, Charles Drake

Synopsis: Adapted by Robert Anderson from a story by James A. Michener, the Robert Wise-directed soaper Until They Sail is set in World-War-II New Zealand. Paul Newman plays been-there-done-that U.S. marine captain Jack Harding, assigned to investigate servicemen's requests to marry local girls. An Read More

1957
Tribute to a Badman

Crew: Director

Actors: James Cagney, Don Dubbins, Stephen McNally, Irene Papas, Vic Morrow

Synopsis: The catch-all title Tribute to a Bad Man had been floating around MGM for years (at one point, it was the working title for The Bad and the Beautiful) before it was finally affixed to this big-budget western. Originally intended as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy, the film was recast with James Cagney Read More

1956
Somebody Up There Likes Me

Crew: Director

Actors: Paul Newman, Anna Maria Pier Angeli, Everett Sloane, Eileen Heckart, Sal Mineo

Synopsis: Once you get past the fact that handsome Paul Newman could never pass for plug-ugly boxer Rocky Graziano in real life, you will be able to accept Somebody Up Their Likes Me as one of the more accomplished movie biopics of the 1950s. Based on Graziano's autobiography (co-written with Rowland Read More

1956
Helen of Troy

Crew: Director

Actors: Rossana Podestà, Jacques Sernas, Cedric Hardwicke, Stanley Baker, Niall MacGinnis

Synopsis: Rossana Podesta may not quite possess the face that would launch a thousand ships, but she is otherwise convincing in the title role of Helen of Troy. Filmed in Italy, this super-epic costars Jacques Sernas as Paris of Troy, who sails to Sparta to secure a peace treaty between the two powerful Read More

1955
Executive Suite

Crew: Director

Actors: William Holden, June Allyson, Barbara Stanwyck, Fredric March, Walter Pidgeon

Synopsis: Cameron Hawley's novel Executive Suite appeared around the same time as two other tales of big-business intrigue, the 1954 film A Woman's World and the 1955 Rod Serling teleplay Patterns. Elements of all three properties inevitably overlap. In Executive Suite, a furniture-store executive dies Read More

1954
Destination Gobi

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Widmark, Don Taylor, Casey Adams, Murvyn Vye, Darryl Hickman

Synopsis: An offbeat blend of World War II drama and "Arabian Nights" escapism, Destination Gobi is all the more odd in that it is allegedly based on fact. Richard Widmark heads a group of US Navy men, sent to Mongolia for weather observation. Widmark must lead his men across the treacherous Gobi desert to Read More

1953
So Big

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Wyman, Sterling Hayden, Nancy Olson, Steve Forrest, Elisabeth Fraser

Synopsis: This 1953 tear-jerker is the third film version of the Edna Ferber novel So Big. Stepping into the role previously essayed by Colleen Moore and Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman plays Selina, a girl of wealth who comes to a Dutch community outside Chicago as a schoolteacher. Here Selina falls in love Read More

1953
Return to Paradise

Crew: Producer

Actors: Gary Cooper, Roberta Haynes, Barry Jones, Moira MacDonald, John Hudson

Synopsis: Gary Cooper stars as an island drifter who falls in love with a lovely Polynesian girl (Roberta Haynes) and defies a dominating bible-toting preacher who's out to dominate all island life. With Cooper as an example, the natives gain courage and are able to overcome the rule of the despot orator. Read More

1953
The Desert Rats

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Burton, Robert Newton, Robert Douglas, James Mason, Torin Thatcher, Chips Rafferty

Synopsis: The Desert Rats was a quickly assembled follow-up to 20th Century-Fox's successful war film The Desert Fox. Richard Burton plays an officer in the British Eighth Army, battling Rommel's forces in defense of Tobruk. Put in charge of an Australian unit, Burton rides his men ruthlessly, with Read More

1953
Something for the Birds

Crew: Director

Actors: Victor Mature, Patricia Neal, Edmund Gwenn, Larry Keating, Gladys Hurlbut

Synopsis: Something for the Birds is a toothless satire of Washington, filmed during the McCarthy era. For lack of a political target that wouldn't get them labeled as Communists, the producers decided to go after lobbyists. Patricia Neal comes to Washington on behalf of the preservation of the California Read More

1952
The Captive City

Crew: Director

Actors: John Forsythe, Joan Camden, Harold J. Kennedy, Marjorie Crossland, Victor Sutherland

Synopsis: One of several early-1950s films to capitalize on the Kefauver Committee's investigation of organized crime, The Captive City stars John Forsythe as crusading editor Jim Austin. While Austin prepares his testimony before the Committee, the film flashes back to the events which led to this Read More

1952
The Day the Earth Stood Still

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe, Billy Gray

Synopsis: All of Washington, D.C., is thrown into a panic when an extraterrestrial spacecraft lands near the White House. Out steps Klaatu (Michael Rennie, in a role intended for Claude Rains), a handsome and soft-spoken interplanetary traveler, whose "bodyguard" is Gort (Lock Martin), a huge robot who Read More

1951
The House on Telegraph Hill

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Basehart, Valentina Cortese, William Lundigan, Fay Baker, Gordon Geberl, Steven Geray

Synopsis: After surviving the hell of a Nazi death camp, a refugee faces even greater dangers in America in this tale of murder, deceit, and assumed identities. Victoria Kopwelska (Valentina Cortese) is a Polish woman imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp near the end of World War II. Desperate to Read More

1951
Two Flags West

Crew: Director

Actors: Joseph Cotten, Linda Darnell, Jeff Chandler, Cornel Wilde, Dale Robertson

Synopsis: Two Flags West is set in the waning days of the Civil War. Colonel Clay Tucker (Joseph Cotten) is one of several Confederate prisoners who agree to fight alongside Union soldiers against the Indians in New Mexico. Tucker's Union commander Kenniston (Jeff Chandler) despises all "Johnny Rebs," Read More

1950
Three Secrets

Crew: Director

Actors: Eleanor Parker, Patricia Neal, Ruth Roman, Frank Lovejoy, Leif Erickson

Synopsis: Three Secrets is a darker variation on a theme first explored in A Letter to Three Wives (1949). There's only one survivor when a private plane crashes in the mountains of California. That survivor is a five-year-old boy, who hovers between life and death. As efforts continue to save the boy Read More

1950
The Set-Up

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter, Wallace Ford

Synopsis: As shown by the clock face that opens and closes the film, The Set-Up takes place within a compact 72 minutes, with the action played out in "real time." Robert Ryan plays Bill "Stoker" Thompson, a washed-up boxer who refuses to give up his career despite the pleas of his wife Julie (Audrey Read More

1949
Johnny Belinda

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford, Agnes Moorehead, Stephen McNally, Jan Sterling

Synopsis: After years of dumb-blonde and best-friend roles, Jane Wyman proved her skills as a dramatic actress -- and won an Academy Award in the bargain -- in Johnny Belinda. Adapted from a stage play by Elmer Harris, the story takes place in Nova Scotia, where deaf-mute Belinda (Wyman) leads a lonely Read More

1948
Blood on the Moon

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Mitchum, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Preston, Walter Brennan, Phyllis Thaxter

Synopsis: One of the best "psychological" westerns of the 1940s, RKO Radio's Blood on the Moon stars Robert Mitchum as itinerant cowboy Jim Garry. Riding into a Texas Indian reservation, Garry finds himself embroiled in a deadly feud between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. He befriends both Amy Lufton (Barbara Bel Geddes Read More

1948
Mystery in Mexico

Crew: Director

Actors: William Lundigan, Jacqueline White, Ricardo Cortez, Tony Barrett, Jacqueline Dalya

Synopsis: Much of Mystery in Mexico was filmed on location through the facilities of RKO Radio's Churubusco Studios. William Lundigan plays Steve an insurance investigator sent to Mexico City to ascertain the whereabouts of a missing colleague. Also concerned for the missing man's welfare is his sister Read More

1948
Born to Kill

Crew: Director

Actors: Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long

Synopsis: Somehow the titles of the films of hardcase actor Lawrence Tierney seemed to be extensions of the man's personality, as witness such films as The Devil Thumbs a Ride and Born to Kill. In the latter picture, Tierney starts the ball rolling by committing a double murder in a jealous pique. Claire Trevor Read More

1947
Criminal Court

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Conway, Martha O'Driscoll, June Clayworth, Robert Armstrong, Addison Richards

Synopsis: Elevating Criminal Court above the B-picture norm is the inventive direction by Robert Wise and the better-than-usual performances by all concerned. In a break from his heroic "Falcon" role, Tom Conway stars as Steve Barnes, a criminal attorney known for his unorthodox courtroom tactics. After Read More

1946
The Body Snatcher

Crew: Director

Actors: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith Atwater, Russell Wade, Donna Lee, Rita Corday

Synopsis: Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were given top billing in the Val Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher, but the film's protagonist is played by Henry Daniell. A brilliant 18th century London surgeon, Daniell can only make his humanitarian medical advances by experimenting on cadavers, which is strictly Read More

1945
A Game of Death

Crew: Director

Actors: John Loder, Audrey Long, Edgar Barrier, Russell Wade, Jason Robards, Sr., Russell Hicks

Synopsis: RKO Radio's A Game of Death was the first official remake of Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, given a contemporary WW2 twist. Novelist Rainsford (John Loder) and brother-and-sister shipwreck victims Ellen (Audrey Long) and Robert (Russell Wade) are among the innocents stranded on remote Read More

1945
Mademoiselle Fifi

Crew: Director

Actors: Simone Simon, John Emery, Kurt Kreuger, Alan Napier, Helen Freeman

Synopsis: One of the few failures for RKO Radio's resident "prestige programmer" producer Val Lewton, Mademoiselle Fifi is based on two Guy De Maupassant tales, with emphasis on Boule de Suif. The story takes place during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, though it is clearly an allegorical representation of Read More

1944
The Curse of the Cat People

Crew: Director

Actors: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Ann Carter, Eve March, Elizabeth Russell

Synopsis: Officially a sequel to Val Lewton's psychological-horror classic Cat People (1942), Curse of the Cat People is in fact an engrossing and oftimes charming fantasy, told from a child's point of view. Six-year-old Ann Carter plays Amy Reed, the lonely daughter of eternally preoccupied Oliver Reed (Kent Smith Read More

1944
The Iron Major

Crew: Editor

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Ruth Warrick, Robert Ryan

Synopsis: The Iron Major is the saga of WW1 hero-cum-football coach Frank Cavanaugh, played with his usual no-nonsense professionalism by Pat O'Brien. Leaving home and hearth behind to serve his country in the Great War, Cavanaugh goes on to lead the Dartmouth, Boston College and Fordham football teams to Read More

1943
The Fallen Sparrow

Crew: Editor

Actors: John Garfield, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak, Patricia Morison, Martha O'Driscoll

Synopsis: John Garfield was borrowed from Warner Bros. by RKO Radio for the tense espionage melodrama The Fallen Sparrow. Garfield is cast as Kit, an idealistic Spanish Civil War veteran who survives two torturous years in a fascist prison. Upon returning to New York, Kit is pounced upon by Nazi agents, who Read More

1943
Bombardier

Crew: Editor

Actors: Pat O'Brien, Randolph Scott, Anne Shirley, Eddie Albert, Walter Reed

Synopsis: A major moneymaker for RKO Radio, Bombardier stars Pat O'Brien and Randolph Scott as trainers at a school for bomber pilots. O'Brien and Scott argue over teaching methods, while their students vie for the affections of