Celebrity Biographies
Joseph Sargent
Joseph Sargent was responsible for titles beloved by moviegoers such as “Pelham, 1, 2, 3” and “MacArthur, the Rogue General.” The director died on December 22, 2014, at his home in Malibu, due to complications after suffering a heart attack. He was 89 years old, but he had only been retired for 5 years.
Born on July 22, 1925, in Jersey City, Giiuseppe Danielle Sorgente was the son of Italian emigrants Maria and Domenico. At first he wanted to succeed as an actor, and for example he briefly appeared as one of the soldiers in From Here to Eternity , where he was uncredited.
As success eluded him, he reinvented himself as a director, and spent 15 years directing episodes of series such as Lassie, Star Trek and The Invaders . He debuted on the big screen with Un espia de más , which came to be an extended episode of the television production El agente de CIPOL .
In the 70s he alternated the small screen with films like the fast-paced thriller Pelham 1, 2, 3 , where armed men hijacked a subway car ( Tony Scott directed a remake in 2009), Mac Arthur, the rebel general , biopic of the supreme commander of the allied troops during World War II, with exceptional work by Gregory Peck , or The Traffickers , an action film with Burt Reynolds . He subsequently specialized in numerous TV Movies, until 2007.
For the past decade he has served as Instructor in Residence for AFI’s Director’s Education Program and Professor of Conducting for Pepperdine University in Malibu, the place where Sargent resided with his wife, Carolyn, for forty years.