Quick Facts
| Intro | American film director | ||
| Known for | The Magnificent Seven, The Old Man and the Sea, Marooned, Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape, Escape from Fort Bravo, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral | ||
| A.K.A. | John Eliot Sturges, John Elliott Sturges, Capt John Sturges | ||
| Was | Film director Screenwriter Film producer Writer Film editor Editor Actor | ||
| From | United States of America | ||
| Field | Film, TV, Stage & Radio Journalism Literature | ||
| Gender | male | ||
| Birth | 3 January 1910, Oak Park, USA; San Luis Obispo, USA | ||
| Death | 18 August 1992, San Luis Obispo, USA (aged 82 years) | ||
| Star sign | Capricorn | ||
| Stats |
|
Biography
John Eliot Sturges (/ˈstɜːrdʒɪs/; January 3, 1910 – August 18, 1992) was an American film director. His films include Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), and Ice Station Zebra (1968). In 2013, The Magnificent Seven was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". He was not related to director Preston Sturges.
Career
Sturges started his career in Hollywood as an editor in 1932. During World War II, he directed documentaries and training films for the United States Army Air Forces. Sturges's mainstream directorial career began in 1946 with The Man Who Dared, the first of many B movies. He made imaginative use of the widescreen CinemaScope format by placing Spencer Tracy alone against a vast desert panorama in the suspense film Bad Day at Black Rock, for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination in 1955. Over the course of his career, Sturges developed a reputation for elevated character-based drama within the confines of genre filmmaking. He was awarded the Golden Boot Award in 1992 for his lifetime contribution to Westerns.
He once met Akira Kurosawa, who told him that he loved The Magnificent Seven (which was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai). Sturges considered this the proudest moment of his professional career. The Magnificent Seven was an inductee in the 2013 National Film Registry list. Sturges commented that its popularity is due in part as a springboard for several young actors, transporting the locale from Japan to Mexico, putting a twist into the career of Yul Brynner, and having part of its score used as the Marlboro cigarette commercial theme.
Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges, by Glenn Lovell, former film critic for the San Jose Mercury News, was published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2008.
Awards
- Nominee Best Director — Academy Awards (Bad Day at Black Rock)
- Nominee Palme d'Or — Cannes Film Festival (Bad Day at Black Rock)
- Nominee Best Director — Directors Guild of America (Bad Day at Black Rock)
- Nominee Best Director — Directors Guild of America (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral)
- Winner Best Foreign Language Film — Blue Ribbon Awards (Japan) (The Old Man and the Sea)
- Nominee Best Picture — Hugo Awards (Marooned) (also, screenwriter Mayo Simon, author Martin Caidin)
- Nominee Grand Prix — Moscow International Film Festival (The Great Escape)
- Winner "Golden Eddie" Filmmaker of the Year — American Cinema Editors (1970)
- Winner Golden Boot Award (1992)
