Joseph H. Lewis

Joseph H. Lewis (born April 6, 1907, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died August 30, 2000, Santa Monica, California) was an American film and television director who developed a cult following for his B-westerns and film noirs, which were especially known for their visual style.

Lewis broke into the film industry as a camera assistant and later worked as a film editor. He was a second-unit director on a number of low-budget productions before codirecting (with Crane Wilbur) his first feature, Navy Spy, in 1937. A plethora of genre entries followed, including such westerns as Courage of the West (1937), his first solo directing credit; Two-Fisted Rangers (1939); and The Man from Tumbleweeds (1940).

In 1940 Lewis directed the East Side Kids entries Boys of the City and Pride of the Bowery, and the following year he made Invisible Ghost, a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. Lewis’s 1942 credits included such B-movies as Secrets of a Co-Ed and The Mad Doctor of Market Street, with Lionel Atwill as a murderous hypnotist. In 1945, however, he worked on The Falcon in San Francisco, a solid entry in the Falcon detective series that netted him a contract with Columbia Pictures. There, for the first time, he was given properties—if not budgets—that supported better filmmaking.

Lewis’s first assignment at Columbia was My Name Is Julia Ross (1945), a gripping film noir in which a young woman (played by Nina Foch) is hired to be the secretary of a wealthy matriarch (Dame May Whitty) but is then drugged, imprisoned in a mansion, and told that she is the wife of her employer’s son (George Macready). The atmospheric thriller was also noted for the stylistic flourishes that would become Lewis’s hallmark. Another praised noir was So Dark the Night (1946), which focused on an ill-fated romance in the French countryside. Less successful was The Return of October (1948), a mild comedy with Glenn Ford and Terry Moore. However, The Undercover Man (1949) was a solid docudrama inspired by federal agents’ pursuit of Al Capone for tax evasion.

In 1950 Lewis went to United Artists to make Gun Crazy (also known as Deadly Is the Female), a tale of sexual obsession and the thrill of violence. The classic B-film, which was considered ahead of its time, was based on the exploits of Bonnie and Clyde and featured a script cowritten by Dalton Trumbo (under the name Millard Kaufman); it starred John Dall and Peggy Cummins. The reputation Lewis now enjoys is largely based on a latter-day appreciation of this poetic rendering of American bloodlust.

Lewis’s next film, A Lady Without Passport (1950), was only serviceable, despite the presence of Hedy Lamarr as a shady woman trying to get out of Havana. Retreat, Hell! (1952) was his only foray into war pictures, a downbeat but effective account of U.S. Marines during the Korean War. At MGM he made the unremarkable Desperate Search (1952), in which Howard Keel played a father trying to find his children in the Canadian wilderness, and Cry of the Hunted (1953), a formulaic chase picture set in the Louisiana bayous. Far better was The Big Combo (1955), starring Cornel Wilde as a police detective who is obsessed with the girlfriend (Jean Wallace) of a mobster (Richard Conte). With its frank sexuality and brutality, the film garnered much controversy when released. However, it is considered one of the last great noir dramas.

Lewis’s final four films were westerns. Randolph Scott starred in A Lawless Street (1955) and 7th Cavalry (1956), the latter centring on a Little Bighorn survivor who must prove he is not a deserter. The Halliday Brand (1957) had Joseph Cotten as the son of a despotic rancher. The most original of the group was the cult classic Terror in a Texas Town (1958). Sterling Hayden played a whaler looking to avenge his father’s death; the final showdown has him armed with a harpoon. Late in his career, Lewis earned the nickname “Wagon Wheel Joe” for a visual trick he often used, filming through the spokes of a wagon wheel in order to liven up otherwise generic scenes.

Lewis subsequently moved into television. After beginning with such detective programs as The Investigators, he shifted to westerns, helming episodes of The Rifleman, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and The Big Valley, among others. He retired from directing in 1966.