John Eliot Sturges (; January 3, 1910 – August 18, 1992) was an American film director. His films include Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), and Ice Station Zebra (1968). In 2013 and 2018, respectively, The Magnificent Seven and Bad Day at Black Rock were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Career
Sturges started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932. During World War II, Sturges directed documentaries and training films as a captain in the United States Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit. Sturges's mainstream directorial career began with The Man Who Dared (1946), the first of many B movies. In the suspense film Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), he made imaginative use of the widescreen CinemaScope format by placing Spencer Tracy alone against a vast desert panorama, receiving a Best Director Oscar nomination for the film. Over the course of his career, Sturges developed a reputation for elevated character-based drama within the confines of genre filmmaking. He was awarded the Golden Boot Award in 1992 for his lifetime contribution to Westerns.
He once met Akira Kurosawa, who told him that he loved The Magnificent Seven (which was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai). Sturges considered this the proudest moment of his professional career. The Magnificent Seven was an inductee in the 2013 National Film Registry list. Sturges commented that its popularity is due in part as a springboard for several young actors, transporting the locale from Japan to Mexico, putting a twist into the career of Yul Brynner, and having part of its score used as the Marlboro cigarette commercial theme. He died in 1992.
Awards
- Nominee Best Director — Academy Awards (Bad Day at Black Rock)
- Nominee Palme d'Or — Cannes Film Festival (Bad Day at Black Rock)
- Nominee Best Director — Directors Guild of America (Bad Day at Black Rock)
- Nominee Best Director — Directors Guild of America (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (film))
- Winner Best Foreign Language Film — Blue Ribbon Awards (Japan) (The Old Man and the Sea)
- Nominee Best Picture — Hugo Awards (Marooned) (also, screenwriter Mayo Simon, author Martin Caidin)
- Nominee Grand Prix — Moscow International Film Festival (The Great Escape)
- Winner "Golden Eddie" Filmmaker of the Year — American Cinema Editors (1970)
- Winner Golden Boot Award (1992)
Filmography
References
Further reading
- Lovell, Glenn (2008), Escape Artist. The Life and Films of John Sturges, University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 978-0-299-22830-9
- Gesprengte Ketten: The Great Escape, Behind the Scenes, Photographs of cameraman Walter Riml, Editor Helma Türk and Christian Riml, House Publishing 2013, English/German (Online)
External links
- John Sturges at IMDb
