Don Siegel Biography
Born: October 26, 1912
Died: April 29, 1991
Coming out of a musical family and trained as a stage actor, Don Siegel became one of the most respected directors of action films in Hollywood. He began his career as a film librarian and advanced through the editing department at Warner Bros., where he frequently directed transition and linking footage in the early '40s, making two Oscar-winning short films during this same period.
Siegel became a feature director in 1946 with an offbeat mystery called The_Verdict, starring Sydney_Greenstreet and Peter_Lorre. His second film, the much-underrated Night_Unto_Night, proved so difficult a subject -- as a psychological drama about a dying man (Ronald_Reagan) and a suicidal woman (Viveca_Lindfors, who was then Siegel's wife) -- that its release was delayed for more than two years. During the early '50s, Siegel made his reputation as an efficient, reliable, often inspired maker of action and crime films, most notably Riot in Cell Block H and Private_Hell_36 (both 1954). His ability to transform difficult or lackluster script material into original, memorable, often startling motion pictures was established with 1955's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, one of the most unsettling, popular, and profitable science fiction films of the decade.
Siegel thrived for the next 15 years in relative obscurity (although he made one of Elvis_Presley's finest films, Flaming_Star) until the late '60s, when he began his association with Clint_Eastwood. His Eastwood vehicles included Two Mules for Sister Sara, The_Beguiled (both 1970), and the phenomenally popular and controversial police thriller Dirty_Harry (1971). The actor and future director was just rising to fame after his success in Sergio_Leone's spaghetti Westerns, and Siegel's recognition rose commensurately with Eastwood's popularity. He became something of a mentor to Eastwood and made a cameo in the actor's directorial debut, Play Misty for Me (1971). Siegel's other '70s films included John_Wayne's final movie, The_Shootist (1976), and the Cold War thriller Telefon (1977). He made another cameo appearance as a taxi driver in Philip_Kaufman's Body_Snatchers remake in 1978 and directed Eastwood one last time in 1979's Escape_From_Alcatraz. Retired from films since the early '80s, Siegel died of cancer in 1991. Eastwood wrote a forward for his autobiography, -A Siegel Film, which was published posthumously in 1993. Bruce Eder, Rovi
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