Don Siegel

Born in Chicago on October 26, 1912, Donald Siegel was the son of a dedicated mandolin player. Because of his father’s work, the family spends time in New York, New Jersey and even in Great Britain. Young Don majored in the study of the New Testament at Cambridge. Later, he began his studies in Fine Arts in Paris, and although he immediately gave up, at least he took advantage of the stay to learn French.

Back in the United States, he settled in Los Angeles, where his uncle, editor Jack Saper, got him a job at Warners. At first they assigned him to the company’s archive, where he spent a long time, until, determined to follow in the footsteps of his relative, he manages to be assigned a position as assistant editor. Don Siegel is involved in editing such films as Casablanca and North Atlantic Action , among others. Since he had been forced to shoot some additional shots for the films he was editing, he was able to convince Jack Warner to let him become a second unit director (on films like Sgt. York and The Politician ).), and also to be authorized to direct a short, Star in the Night , which won an Oscar in 1946.

In recognition of the feat of winning the statuette, Warner put him in charge of his first feature film, The Verdict , a low-budget thriller about a Scotland Yard agent who investigates a crime. Although it barely had an impact, it has good performances by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre . After the interesting romantic drama Dark Souls , with Ronald Reagan and Viveca Lindfords, Siegel decides to become independent from Warner, where he had already been for many years, and directs the interesting thriller The Great Robbery (with Robert Mitchum ) for RKO and for Universal Duel at Silver Creek (with Audie Murphy), his first western.

All these B-series titles have little impact, so Siegel has to make do with shrinking budgets. He even spends several periods inactive, or is forced to take charge of television episodes. In 1956, the filmmaker managed to attract attention with The Invasion of the Body Snatchers , shot in 23 days, with unknown actors, and a paltry budget of less than $400,000. Parable of the Cold War, and a faithful portrayal of the fear of the Soviet invasion, Siegel hardly needs special effects to tell what happens to the inhabitants of a small town, replaced by replicas of aliens. Over time, the work would acquire the category of classic science fiction, and would be the subject of remakes.

After fulfilling with enormous professionalism the strange assignment of filming Aventura para dos in Spain , co-directed by Luis Marquina , at the service of the great star Carmen Sevilla , Don Siegel manages to get something out of Elvis Presley himself , who plays Elvis Presley , in the cinema . a half-breed in the western Firestar , where the king of rock just sings one song, and which is above average for his usual mediocre movies.

Shortly thereafter, Don Siegel is reunited with Ronald Reagan , in his last screen appearance before turning to politics, in Code of Underworld , where the actor shares the screen with Lee Marvin , Angie Dickinson , and John Cassavettes. Adaptation of the story by Ernest Hemingway that had already given rise to the magnificent Outlaws , by Robert Siodmack, in Underworld CodeSiegel recovers the atmosphere of the film noir classics, at a time when the genre seemed relegated to oblivion. Originally conceived for television, NBC refused to broadcast it due to its crude violence, so it ended up being released in cinemas. It was a well-deserved success that opened Siegel’s doors to A-series productions forever. The filmmaker was never going to have budget problems again, but he began to miss the creative independence of his early days. “Once I told Jean-Luc Godard that he had something that I wanted, freedom. And he told me that I had something that he wanted, money,” Siegel said.

In 1953 Don Siegel divorced actress Viveca Lindfors , with whom he had a son. The director was later paired with Doe Avedon , the model (and later actress) whose life inspired the film An Angel Face , which starred Audrey Hepburn . Avedon had separated from her discoverer, the photographer who gave rise to the character of Fred Astaire on the screen . Although together they adopted four children, they later separated, and Siegel ended his days with Carol Rydall, assistant to Clint Eastwood , a star who would be of enormous importance in the filmmaker’s career.

When Don Siegel met Clint Eastwood

In 1968, Clint Eastwood had become popular with the dollar trilogy, shot by Sergio Leone , and had launched his own production company, Malpaso, inaugurated with They Made Two Errors . At that time, the company was preparing The Human Jungle with Universal. As was going to be usual in all the tapes in which Malpaso was going to be involved, Eastwood had the last word to choose the director. The actor has joked on many occasions about his first meeting with Siegel. “I recommended Don Taylor as a filmmaker , and the production company got Don wrong,” Eastwood explained with a laugh. What really happened was that he opted for Mark Rydell at first., who could not take over the project due to scheduling problems, so he suggested Siegel.

During the first meetings to prepare the film, the democrat Siegel did not stop having friction with the republican Eastwood. But the actor had a hunch that the director was going to do a good job, since he had verified the efficiency with which he shot low-budget productions. He decided to invite her for a weekend to fraternize. It turned out that they hit it off, they spent their time talking about all sorts of topics except the movie they were going to shoot, and from that moment they would maintain a great friendship that would last for many years, during which conversations about politics were put on hold forever.

Both Siegel and Eastwood were clear that although they liked the idea of ​​the film – a small-town cop has to go to New York to pick up a criminal – the script didn’t quite work. They decided to oversee a revision themselves that they commissioned to librettist Dean Riesner .

Siegel conceived the film as a modern western, achieved a dynamic pace and although The Human Jungle was strikingly violent and bawdy for the time, it also introduced effective shots of humor.

Together they would shoot four more films. They repeated almost immediately in Two Mules and a Woman , more comedy than western, where Eastwood forms an unforgettable pairing with the great Shirley MacLaine , who replaced Elizabeth Taylor , originally planned. With a great sense of self-parody, the actor plays a laconic mercenary who saves a presumed nun, played by MacLaine, from criminals during the war between the troops of Juárez and the supporters of Maximilian of Austria, in Mexico.

During filming, Eastwood was reading the book “The Beguiled” by Thomas Cullinan, which enthralled him to the point that he showed it to Don Siegel , who saw possibilities for a film. Thus was born Eastwood’s riskiest project with Siegel, The Seducer , apparently a western, although it ends up being closer to horror movies. Set in the Civil War, Eastwood gambled on playing the most amoral and unpleasant character of his career, a wounded Union soldier rescued by a girl who takes him to her school for southern girls.

Getting the project off the ground wasn’t easy for Siegel, as producer Jennigs Lang wanted to make changes to make it more like Eastwood’s previous heroic films. Even he came to doubt the advisability of radically changing his register for his career, but Siegel convinced him that it would be very useful for his evolution as an actor to undertake a more complex character than he had previously embodied in the screen. Certainly, Eastwood managed to outdo himself, and just at this time he began to take an interest in filmmaking, to the point that he took advantage of filming to take his first steps as a director with The Beguiled: The Storyteller , a short documentary about the figure from Siegel.

Despite its rave reviews, The Seducer slammed at the box office, largely because Universal released it as your typical Clint Eastwood action western , disappointing audiences, who were left with a very different story. But Don Siegel always said that it was his favorite movie of all his filmography. In addition, it has masterful sequences, like the one in which Eastwood tells the local women – all in love with him – his ‘heroics’ in the war, while small flashbacks reveal that he is completely lying.

After filming, Siegel lent an important hand to his buddy Eastwood in his first fiction feature film as a director, Chill in the Night , with many points in common with The Seducer , as Eastwood plays a radio host (curiously from his town in residence, Carmel, of which he would become mayor), harassed by a terrifying woman. Siegel himself appeared onscreen in a small cameo as a waiter.

Warners were so interested in having Eastwood star in Dirty Harry , an adaptation of the novel “Dead Right” by Harry Julian and Rita M. Fink (partially inspired by the crimes of the Zodiac Killer, also covered in the film Zodiac ), that his executives didn’t mind waiting for the actor to wrap up Goosebumps in the Night . After the lead role – unorthodox cop Harry Callahan – was turned down by the likes of Frank Sinatra , John Wayne and Paul Newman , Warners swallowed all of Eastwood’s demands that the script be rewritten to suit him and that the director be Don Siegel. Some very young John Milius and Terrence Malick , future filmmakers, participated in the final script (although they are not accredited).

The film, where Eastwood’s character does not hesitate to use all the methods at his disposal to capture Scorpio, a ruthless murderer, swept the box office. It is explained because it came to the screens at the right time, when crime rates reached very high levels, and the population was very concerned about criminals who managed to get out by taking advantage of legal loopholes. Although Dirty Harry was labeled a fascist by the most ‘progressive’ critics, it should be noted that Callahan is a complex character, who despite his methods seeks to enforce the law.

It would take 8 years for the paths of Siegel and Eastwood to cross again professionally, for the last time, in Escape from Alcatraz . It adapted the book by J. Campbell Bruce, which documents the journey of three men who managed to escape from the most impregnable prison in the United States (at least in theory, since their bodies were never found). The film is one of the great titles of the prison subgenre, as Siegel manages to tell in great detail, but without boring or confusing the viewer, a complex plan to get out of the place. Inspired by Jacques Becker ‘s The Escape , the film is shot –to increase its realism– in the real prison of Alcatraz.

Two very interesting twilight westerns stand out in Don Siegel ‘s filmography . Lawless City was veteran Richard Widmark ‘s last job as a sheriff who, after decades of maintaining order in a Texas town, discovers that the local bosses want to replace him with someone more manageable. Despite the quality of the film, disagreements arose between Siegel and Universal, so the filmmaker and co-director Robert Totten co -signed with the resorted pseudonym provided for these cases: Alan Smithee. The other film, even better, is The Last Gunslinger , which marked the cinematographic farewell of the great among the greats of the genre, John Wayne .. He played a legendary cancer-stricken gunslinger who returns to his hometown to spend his last days in peace, though three outlaws aren’t willing to leave him alone. The film also featured the legendary John Carradine , Lauren Bacall and even James Stewart , in a small job as the doctor who diagnosed the protagonist with a terrible disease.

For his part, Don Siegel would still be active for a few more years. In Telephone , Charles Bronson played a Soviet agent sent to the United States to neutralize a renegade spy. In the irregular Bold Strike , David Niven plays a retiring Scotland Yard inspector in search of a sophisticated jewel thief ( Burt Reynolds ). Siegel retired from the cinema co-directing with his friend Sam Peckinpah the unworthy Blackjack (1982), a thriller about card players, with few moments of height. The director died in Nipomo (California), at the age of 78, a victim of cancer, on April 20, 1991.Clint Eastwood would dedicate his round Without Forgiveness to his great teachers Sergio (Leone) and Don (Siegel).