Samuel Fuller Biography and List of Works

American screenwriter, producer and director, a controversial figure in American cinema, who also wrote most of the screenplays of his film. Fuller has been called the Joe McCarthy of Hollywood film making, who seemingly opposed everything that he saw threatening the traditional American way of life. In Europe Fuller was a highly acclaimed auteur by leftist filmmakers. Fuller's right-wing noir movie PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953) was ambiguous in its ideology and the thriller WHITE DOG (1982), dealing with the subject of racism, was unjustly prevented a proper release. In the story an actress unknowingly acquires a dog that has been trained to attack blacks only. Then the dog is given to a black animal trainer but ironically now it starts to hate whites.

Jim Jarmusch: What is God to you?
Samuel Fuller: Nature.
(from Tigrero, dir. by Mika Kaurismäki, 1994)

Fuller was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. He became at the age of 12 a copyboy on the New York Journal and at 17 a crime reporter for the San Diego Sun. During the Depression years he wandered about the country on freight trains and began writing short stories. His first pulp novel, BURN BABY BURN, was published in 1935 and was followed by several others. In 1936 Fuller started his career in film business, collaborating on the script of James Cruze's Gangs of New York (1938).

In World War II Fuller fought in North Africa and Europe. He was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and a Purple Heart. His was experiences Fuller collected in the masterpiece, THE BIG RED ONE, filmed in 1978 but released in 1980. It was hailed by many critics as one of the great American war dramas ever filmed. Fuller started the film from World War I with a surrealistic images. Lee Marvin plays a tough sergeant, who is a father figure to his baby-faced recruits, among them Robert Carradine as a cigar-chomping writer who is based on Fuller. 'Surviving is the only glory in war', Carradine states at the end. The script was also adapted into a novel.

Fuller made his directorial debut with I SHOT JESSE JAMES (1949), in which Bob Ford, 'the dirty little coward who shot Mr Howard', kills Jesse James to get the pardon that will allow him to marry his childhood sweetheart. PARK ROW (1953) reflected Fuller's own journalistic background - he was once supposed to be the youngest crime reporter in New York. HOUSE OF BAMBOO (1955) was filmed on location is Japan. Robert Stack was a military policeman who moves into an undercover action against Tokyo gangsters. Robert Ryan played a mad ex-GI running his syndicate as a paramilitary organization. Tigrero! Was Fuller's great film project in the mid-1950s, which was never realized. John Wayne, Tyrone Power, and Ava Gardner were interested in the story, which was set in the Amazon jungle. Darryl Zanuck sent Fuller to Mato Grosso to develop ideas for the film. In the story a woman helps her husband to escape from prison. They hire a jaguar hunter to help them to cross Mato Grosso. Fuller shot on location much background material, and part of it was used in SHOCK CORRIDOR (1963). Later this period in Fuller's life gave inspiration to Mika Kaurismäki's film Tigrero - a film that was never made (1994).

TIGRERO

(quietly)
Don't blame him too much. Men do crazy things under the spell of fear and panic. The jungle brings out the best and the worst in people. It was self-preservation. His mind snapped.
(pauses)
He loved you, all right --- It's just that he loved himself a little more.
(from Fuller's screenplay)

FORTY GUNS (1957) was condemned in America because of its brutal handling of the narrative structure but in Europe in was praised for its stylistic vigour. The famous French film director imitated in his film A Bout de Souffle (1960) the shots, in which Eve Brent is seen through a gun barrel that tracks into a close-up of her and then cuts to her kissing Barry Sullivan, the marshal. Barbara Stanwyck is Jessica Drummond, a ruthless, whip-wielding woman. Jessica controls Cochise County with the aid of forty armed gunmen. She has a weak spot in her trigger-happy brother (John Ericson), who murders the marshal's brother and Jessica loses everything. Ericson uses her as a shield against the law in the film's climax, she is only wounded, but he dies crying 'I'm killed Mr. Bonnel, I'm killed', and Sullivan says coldly 'Get a doctor, she'll live.'

RUN OF THE ARROW (1957) treated the Indians sympathetically. In the story Rod Steiger is a Southerner who attempts to become a Sioux but finally accepts the defeat of the South by the North and becomes an American. Jay C. Flippen explains in the film that he doesn't want to become the chief of his tribe because he 'couldn't stand the politics'.

"This is the last stop... The frontier is finished. There'll be no more towns to break - no more men to break."

In Shock Corridor a dishonest reporter, Peter Breck, plans to solve a murder that occurred in an insane asylum. He fakes mental illness and is committed to the asylum. However, Breck's sanity is seriously threatened in the world where a black man insists that he is a member of KKK and shock therapy is part of the day's program. Breck loses his voice but wins his Pulitzer Prize. Distorted colour stock footage used in the intervals was shot by Fuller in Japan and Africa. NAKED KISS (1964) was one of Fuller's most shocking films. In the story a prostitute becomes a nurse in a children's hospital and falls in love with a man who turns out to be a child molester.

"I write original stories."
(Fuller in Tigrero)

In the 1960s Fuller directed several episodes for various US TV series. The beginning of the 1980s Fuller left United States for France, where he was especially admired. He appeared in several American or European films as an actor or himself, as in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965), Wim Wender's American Friend (1977) and Hammett (1982), and Mika Kaurismäki´s Helsinki Napoli - all night long (1987). He was also seen in the US films The Last Picture Show (1971), directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 1941 (1979), directed by Steven Spielberg, and Return to Salem's Lot (1987). In Europe Fuller's films were shown in several retrospectives and in 1986 Fuller was the first guest of honour at Sodankylä film festival in Finland - the legendary visit is still remembered in Lapland.

In 1967 Fuller married the actress Christa Lang; it was his second marriage. Fuller died in 1977. Among the director's unfinished projects was a film about Abraham Lincoln, in which Lincoln is seen in a critical light. Fuller was an accomplished photographer and his still images of Manhattan, the East River docks, immigrants, Lucky Luciano, Ella Fitzgerald and others were collected in NEW YORK IN THE 1930s (1997).

For further reading: Samuel Fuller by Phil Hardy (1971); Samuel Fuller by Nicholas Garnham (1971); Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, ed. by Jim Hillier (1985); Fuller, Samuel by Olivier Amiel (1985); Il était une fois -- Samuel Fuller: histoires d'Amérique racontées à Jean Narboni et Noël Simsolo, préface Martin Scorcese (1986); Sam Fuller. Film is a Battleground by Lee Server (1994); The Film Encyclopaedia by Ephrain Katz (1994); Rikoksen hehku by Peter von Bagh (1997) - NOTE: Fuller's birth year in some sources 1912.

Selected films as screenwriter and director:

Selected bibliography:

HATS OFF, (1936)
I SHOT JESSE JAMES, (1949)
Test Tube Baby, (1936)
Make up and Kiss, (1938)
Dark Page, (1944)
Crown of India, (1966)
144 Piccadilly, (1971)
The Big Red One, (1980)
New York in the, (1930)