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IMDbPro

Budd Boetticher(1916-2001)

  • Director
  • Writer
  • Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
IMDbProStarmeter
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Budd Boetticher
Brilliant, distinguished American director, particularly of Westerns, whose simple, bleak style disguises a complex artistic temperament. The adopted son of a wealthy hardware retailer, Boetticher attended Culver Military Academy and Ohio State University, where he excelled in football and boxing.

Following his schooling Boetticher, something of an adventurer, went to Mexico and transformed himself into a formidable professional matador. His school chum, Hal Roach Jr., used his film connections to get Boetticher minor jobs in the film industry, most importantly the job of technical adviser on the bullfighting romance Blood and Sand (1941). By studying the work of the film's director, Rouben Mamoulian, and from editor Barbara McLean, he gained a thorough grounding in filmmaking.

After an apprenticeship as a studio messenger and assistant director, he was given a chance to direct, first retakes of scenes from other directors' films, then his own low-budget projects. For producer John Wayne Boetticher filmed his first prominent work, a fictionalization of his own experiences in Mexico, Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), although the work was re-edited without Boetticher's approval by his mentor, John Ford (the director's cut was restored several decades later).

Following a number of sprightly but inconsequential programmers in the early 1950s, Boetticher formed a partnership with actor Randolph Scott which, with the participation of producer Harry Joe Brown and writer Burt Kennedy, led to a string of the most memorable Western films of the 1950s, including 7 Men from Now (1956) and The Tall T (1957). He directed a sharp gangster film, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), then, with his wife Debra Paget, left for Mexico to film a monumental documentary on famed matador Carlos Arruza. The travail of the next seven years, which Boetticher detailed in his autobiography "When In Disgrace", included near-fatal illness, divorce, incarceration in jails, hospitals and an insane asylum, and the accidental deaths of Arruza and most of the film crew. The film, Arruza (1972), was both an exquisite documentary and a testament to Boetticher's immutable drive. Though he returned to Hollywood to form a partnership with Audie Murphy, they completed only one film together before Murphy's death in 1971.

Since then Boetticher completed another documentary and had announced several feature films in preparation. He died at age 85.
BornJuly 29, 1916
DiedNovember 29, 2001(85)
BornJuly 29, 1916
DiedNovember 29, 2001(85)
IMDbProStarmeter
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  • Nominated for 1 Oscar

Photos

Budd Boetticher
Budd Boetticher
Rock Hudson with Julie Adams and director, Budd Boeticher, on the set of "Horizons West," 1952.

Known for

Joy Page and Robert Stack in Bullfighter and the Lady (1951)
Bullfighter and the Lady
6.8
  • Director
  • 1951
Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine in Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)
Two Mules for Sister Sara
7.0
  • Writer
  • 1970
Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kurt Russell in Tequila Sunrise (1988)
Tequila Sunrise
6.0
  • Judge Nizetitch
  • 1988
The Magnificent Matador (1955)
The Magnificent Matador
5.6
  • Director
  • 1955

Credits

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IMDbPro

Director

  • My Kingdom for...
  • Arruza (1972)
    Arruza
  • A Time for Dying (1969)
    A Time for Dying
  • The only authorized DVD edition of all episodes in  Season One.
    The Rifleman
  • Death Valley Days (1952)
    Death Valley Days
  • Dick Powell in Zane Grey Theatre (1956)
    Zane Grey Theatre
  • Rod Taylor in Hong Kong (1960)
    Hong Kong
  • Ray Danton in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960)
    The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond
  • Comanche Station (1960)
    Comanche Station
  • Randolph Scott and Karen Steele in Ride Lonesome (1959)
    Ride Lonesome
  • Randolph Scott, Virginia Mayo, and Karen Steele in Westbound (1958)
    Westbound
  • Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
    Buchanan Rides Alone
  • Randolph Scott and Karen Steele in Decision at Sundown (1957)
    Decision at Sundown
  • James Garner and Jack Kelly in Maverick (1957)
    Maverick
  • The Tall T (1957)
    The Tall T

Writer

  • My Kingdom for...
  • Arruza (1972)
    Arruza
  • Clint Eastwood and Shirley MacLaine in Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970)
    Two Mules for Sister Sara
  • A Time for Dying (1969)
    A Time for Dying
  • The Magnificent Matador (1955)
    The Magnificent Matador
  • Joy Page and Robert Stack in Bullfighter and the Lady (1951)
    Bullfighter and the Lady

Second Unit or Assistant Director

  • Janis Carter and Edmund Lowe in The Girl in the Case (1944)
    The Girl in the Case
    • (as Oscar Boetticher Jr.)
  • Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl (1944)
    Cover Girl
    • (as Oscar Boetticher Jr.)
  • Glenn Ford and Marguerite Chapman in Destroyer (1943)
    Destroyer
    • (uncredited)
  • Randolph Scott, Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, Claire Trevor, and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams in The Desperadoes (1943)
    The Desperadoes
    • (uncredited)
  • Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn, and Joel McCrea in The More the Merrier (1943)
    The More the Merrier
    • (uncredited)
  • Military Training
    • (as Oscar Boetticher)

Personal details

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    • July 29, 1916
    • Chicago, Illinois, USA
    • November 29, 2001
    • Ramona, California, USA(multiple organ failure)
    • Mary Chelde1971 - November 29, 2001 (his death)
  • Publicity listings
    • 5 Biographical Movies
    • 2 Print Biographies
    • 1 Interview

Did you know

Edit
  • Trivia
    Preferred to film his westerns around Lone Pine, California.
  • Quotes
    The characters are more important to me than the ideas, because it's through the mind and the sayings and the actions of the characters that the ideas are born. I'm not concerned with what people stand for, I'm concerned with what they do about it.
    • His Westerns are usually set in isolated locales

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