Celebrating directors who died before their final films were released: William Friedkin, Orson Welles, John Huston …
Cinema took a big hit in August when William Friedkin died at the age of 87. He was one of the most popular and influential “New Hollywood” directors who came to fame in the 1970s. And what fame-winning the Oscar for the landmark crime 1971 crime drama “The French Connection” and then earning another Oscar nomination for best director for the ultimate horror flick, 1973’s “The Exorcist.” There were numerous other films including the underrated 1977 “Sorcerer” and the 1985 crime flick “Live and Die in L.A.”
And his final film, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” opened to strong reviews at the Venice Film Festival. Herman Wouk’s courtroom drama, which initially premiered on Broadway in 1953, is a fitting swan song for Friedkin. The film is currently streaming on Paramount + and Showtime. Rolling Stone noted: “There are no car chases, no head-spinning demon children…There aren’t even cellphones. Just performers digging into well-worn material about speaking truth to power…And it’s …electric.”
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Over the decades, many well-known directors have died before their final films were released. Among the first was William Desmond Taylor who helmed 59 films between 1914-1922 and acted in 27 movies between 1913-15. He was discovered murdered in his bungalow in Los Angeles on Feb 1, 1922, at the age of 49. His death by gunshot was one of Hollywood’s major scandals of the era. Taylor’s two final films were released after his death: “The Green Temptation,” starring Betty Compson opened on April 2 that year followed four months after his death by “The Top of the World” starring May McAvoy.
F.W. Murnau was more than a director, he was a true artist. One of the premiere filmmakers of German Expressionism style of filmmaker, he came to Hollywood in the late 1920s where he made the romantic 1927 drama “Sunrise, the Story of Two Humans” which the New York Times described as a “film masterpiece.” The film won Oscars for Charles Rosher and Karl Struss’ cinematography, best actress for Janet Gaynor and the first and only award for best unique and artistic picture. A week before his 1931 film “Tabu: A Story of the South Seas” was set to premiere he died in a car crash at the age of 42.
Polish-born Richard Boleslawski began directing movies in Hollywood in the late ‘20s, helming such films as 1934’s “Operator 13,” with Marion Davies as a Union spy who disguises herself as a black maid (yes you read that right); 1935’s “Les Miserables,” which was nominated for best picture, and 1936’s screwball comedy “Theodora Goes Wild,” for which Irene Dunne received an Oscar nomination for best actress. He was directing the 1937 caper comedy “The Last of Mrs. Cheyney” with Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery and William Powell when he suddenly died at 47 of cardiac arrest in Jan. 1937. George Fitzmaurice took over the reins. And when he got sick, Dorothy Arzner finished the film which opened a month after his death. Both Fitzmaurice and Arzner took no credit for their work
And neither did Otto Preminger for 1948’s Betty Grable Technicolor musical “That Lady in Ermine.” Ernst Lubitsch was the initial director on the film, but eight days into production in November 1947 he died of a heart attack at the age of 55. Preminger took over the production but insisted that Lubitsch get sole credit “as a mark of respect and admiration for the departed master.” The film opened in August 1948; the box office wasn’t up to such Grable hits as 1947’s “Mother Wore Tights.”
French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse won the Oscar for best original screenplay for his enchanting 1956 short “The Red Balloon” starring his son Pascal. Several of his films were honored at Cannes. While making “The Lover’s Wind,” a documentary tour of Iran in 1970, he died in a helicopter crash at the age of 48. His wife and son used his notes to finish the film and it was nominated for best feature documentary.
Orson Welles died in 1985; thirty-three years later “The Other Side of the Wind,” which he made over a six-year period in the 1970s, was finally completed and released in theaters and on Netflix. John Huston starred in the film. Huston’s daughter Anjelica told me in a 2019 L.A Times interviews that her father told her that “he didn’t think a movie had ever been done before on a certain level. I think it was absolutely true. Orson was cobbing this thing together.”
Anjelica Huston also starred in her father’s last film, the melancholy 1987 adaptation of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” Her father, who was the 80, had suffered from emphysema for a decade and directed the film from his wheelchair. “There was no one more capable of making a movie than my dad, as I witnessed on ‘The Dead.’ He was so sick, but he could literally do it with his eyes closed. He knew when we were going to get a take way long before the cameras rolled. I mean the timing was so precise that he could tell everything, exactly how it was going to go. “
Huston was 81 when he died on Aug. 28, 1987; “The Dead” premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 3. The film went on to earn two Oscar nominations for his son Tony Huston’s screenplay adaptation and Dorothy Jeakins’ costumes. And nearly six months after his death Huston posthumously won the Spirit Award for best director while his daughter received the honor for best supporting female.
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