Samuel Fuller

Samuel Fuller was an American film director and screenwriter who worked first as a reporter and pulp novelist. His first screenplay was Hats Off in 1936, and his first film as director was the Western I Shot Jesse James (1949). He became known for low-budget genre pictures with controversial themes, made outside the studio system. War and Western subjects dominated his 1950s output, and The Steel Helmet, his third feature, drew on his wartime service. Pickup on South Street, a film noir with Richard Widmark, became one of his best known movies, and he shifted to the low-budget thriller Shock Corridor (1963) and the neo-noir The Naked Kiss (1964). After years away from directing, he returned with The Big Red One (1980) and White Dog (1982), which he co-wrote with Curtis Hanson, then worked mainly in Europe and moved to France. His films influenced the French New Wave, and Jean-Luc Godard gave him a cameo in Pierrot le Fou (1965).