W. Lee Wilder

W. Lee Wilder
Born
Wilhelm Wilder

(1904-08-22)August 22, 1904
Sucha, Austria-Hungary
DiedFebruary 14, 1982(1982-02-14) (aged 77)
Los Angeles, California, United States
OccupationsFilm producer, director, screenwriter
ChildrenMyles Wilder
RelativesBilly Wilder (brother)

Wilhelm Wilder, also known as William Wilder, Willy Wilder and W. Lee Wilder, (August 22, 1904 – February 14, 1982) was an Austrian-American screenwriter, film producer and director.[1] He was the brother of the film director Billy Wilder and father of television comedy writer and producer Myles Wilder.[2]

Biography

The son of Jewish parents Maximillian Wilder and his wife Eugenia Wilder, Wilhelm Wilder was born on August 22, 1904 in Sucha Beskidzka.[2] His mother, who had spent time living in New York City, nicknamed him Willy. He was the older brother of Billy Wilder. Their father owned a chain of railway restaurants. The family moved to Vienna at the onset of World War I.[3]

Willy Wilder moved to London to live with relatives there in 1922 immediately following his graduation from high school in Vienna.[2] He then went to the United States several year before his brother;[3] arriving sometime in the mid 1920s.[2] He originally worked in New York City as a maker of high end purses, under the corporate name of Wm. Wilder Co., Inc.[3] This business was successful, and by the time his brother came to America in 1934 he accrued a considerable amount of wealth and was living in a mansion in Manhattan with his wife, his young son Myles, and several servants.[2]

Billy Wilder went to Hollywood to work in films while Willy stayed in New York. With the huge success of his brother's film Double Indemnity (1944), Willy, who was then bored with life in New York, decided to uproot his life and move to Hollywood to follow his brother into a career in film. There he started his own film production company, W. Lee Wilder Productions, and produced his first film The Great Flamarion in 1945. He directed his first film The Glass Alibi the following year; the first of eight film noir works that he directed.[2]

From 1949 to 1950, Wilder directed, wrote and produced 16 musical short subjects featuring traditional spirituals and folk-music. During the 1950s he formed a film production company called Planet Filmplays where he produced and directed several low budget science fiction films with screenplays cowritten by his son Myles.[4]

Wilder died in Los Angeles on February 14, 1982 at the age of 77.[5]

Selected filmography

Director unless otherwise noted

References

  1. ^ "W. Lee Wilder". British Film Institute. 2016. Archived from the original on January 18, 2009. Retrieved February 29, 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Brook, Vincent. "Viennese Twins: Billy and Willie Wilder". Driven to Darkness: Jewish Emigre Directors and the Rise of Film Noir. Rutgers University Press. pp. 9, 16, 124–146. ISBN 9780813546292.
  3. ^ a b c Phillips, Gene D. (2010). Some Like it Wilder: The Life and Controversial Films of Billy Wilder. University Press of Kentucky. pp. 2, 10–12. ISBN 9780813125701.
  4. ^ Ramshaw, Andre (January 4, 2022). "Shlock Tactics: Sci-Fi Films of the 1950s Played on Our Cold War Anxieties With Cheesy Plots and Comical Monsters". National Post. p. F12.
  5. ^ "Funeral Announcements: William Wilder". The Los Angeles Times. February 16, 1982. p. 2, part II.
  6. ^ Grant, John (2013). A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Film Noir: The Essential Reference Guide. Limelight Editions. p. 272. ISBN 978-1557838315.
  7. ^ Lyons, Arthur (2000). Death on the Cheap: The Lost B movies of Film Noir. Da Capo Press. p. 142. ISBN 9780306809965.
  8. ^ Maltin, Leonard, ed. (2015). Turner Classic Movies Presents Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide. Plume. p. 254. ISBN 978-0147516824.
  9. ^ Lentz, Harris M. (1996). Western and Frontier Film and Television Credits 1903-1995. McFarland & Company. p. 1508. ISBN 9780786401581.
  10. ^ Dixon, Wheeler W. (2009). Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia. Rutgers University Press. p. 26. ISBN 9780748623990.
  11. ^ Stevens, Matthew, ed. (1992). Jewish Film Directory: A Guide to More Than 1200 Films of Jewish Interest from 32 Countries Over 85 Years. Flicks Books / Greenwood Press. p. 215.
  12. ^ Dawson, Jim (2012). Los Angeles's Bunker Hill: Pulp Fiction's Mean Streets and Film Noir's Ground Zero!. The History Press. pp. 143–144. ISBN 9781609495466.
  13. ^ Langman, Larry (1995). A Guide to American Crime Films of the Forties and Fifties. Greenwood Press. p. 282. ISBN 9780313292651.
  14. ^ Jones, Matthew (2017). Science Fiction Cinema and 1950s Britain - Recontextualising the Golden Age. Bloomsbury Academic. p. 218. ISBN 978-1501322532.
  15. ^ Bogue, Mike (2017). Apocalypse Then: American and Japanese atomic Cinema, 1951-1967. McFarland & Company. p. 122. ISBN 978-1476668413.
  16. ^ Barsanti, Chris (2015). The Sci-fi Movie Guide: The Universe of Film from Alien to Zardoz. Visible Ink Press. p. 333. ISBN 9781578595037.
  17. ^ a b c d e Pitts, Michael R. (2011). Allied Artists Horror, Science Fiction And Fantasy Films. McFarland & Company. pp. 27, 71, 156. ISBN 978-0-7864-6046-5.
  18. ^ Smith, Don G. (2003). The Poe Cinema: A Critical Filmography of Theatrical Releases Based on the Works of Edgar Allan Poe. McFarland & Company. p. 91. ISBN 9780786404537.
  19. ^ Preston, Ben, ed. (2015). RadioTimes Guide to Films 2015. Immediate Media Company. p. 771-772. ISBN 9780992936402.
  20. ^ Thomson, David (2014). The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. Alfred A. Knopf. p. 922. ISBN 9780375711848.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.