Tequila Sunrise
1988
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- Budd Boetticher (born July 29, 1916, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died November 29, 2001, Ramona, California) was an American film director who was best known for a series of classic westerns that starred Randolph Scott.
Budd Boetticher. Director: Bullfighter and the Lady. Brilliant, distinguished American director, particularly of Westerns, whose simple, bleak style disguises a complex artistic temperament.
- July 29, 1916
- November 29, 2001
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- Overview
- Early life and work
- Westerns
- Late work
Budd Boetticher (born July 29, 1916, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died November 29, 2001, Ramona, California) American film director who was best known for a series of classic westerns that starred Randolph Scott.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
Boetticher attended the Ohio State University, where he played varsity football and boxed. While recuperating from a football injury in Mexico, he began to study bullfighting with Carlos Arruza, and in the late 1930s he became a professional matador. His experience in the ring led to him working as a technical consultant on Rouben Mamoulian’s epic Blood and Sand (1941).
Deciding to pursue a career in Hollywood, Boetticher became a messenger for Hal Roach Studios, and in 1943 he broke in as an assistant director at Columbia, eventually working on such movies as Destroyer (1943), The More the Merrier (1943), and Cover Girl (1944). That earned him a chance to helm B-films on his own, and his first solo-directing credit was One Mysterious Night (1944), an installment in the Boston Blackie mystery series. Boetticher made four more films before being drafted in 1946; he spent the next two years in the service. When he returned to Hollywood, he began working for various studios, and his films from this period include the crime dramas Assigned to Danger and Behind Locked Doors (both 1948).
In 1952 Boetticher began working in the genre that would come to define his career: the western. That year he directed The Cimarron Kid, which starred Audie Murphy; Bronco Buster; and Horizons West, with Rock Hudson, Raymond Burr, and James Arness. Boetticher changed gears for Red Ball Express (1952), a solid World War II drama, and City Beneath the Sea (1953), which starred Robert Ryan and Anthony Quinn as divers searching for sunken gold. Adventure films were not Boetticher’s forte, however, and he returned to westerns with Seminole (1953), an atypically pro-Native American story set in Florida’s Everglades. Hudson starred as a cavalry officer who tries (unsuccessfully) to help his old friend Osceola (Quinn) resist the army’s efforts to wipe out the native Seminole population. The Man from the Alamo (1953) is a tale of redemption starring Glenn Ford as a man who, at the request of his fellow fighters, leaves before the Alamo attack in order to warn Texans about Mexican Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna and is subsequently branded a deserter. Boetticher went back into the ring for The Magnificent Matador (1955), with Quinn as an aging bullfighter who wonders if his nerves are eroding along with his skills. He next helmed The Killer Is Loose (1956), a crime drama about a psychopathic ex-convict (Wendell Corey) swearing revenge on the policeman (Joseph Cotten) who sent him to prison and accidentally caused the death of his wife.
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To this point in his career, Boetticher had demonstrated that he was a capable—though hardly extraordinary—action director with a taste for period material. However, he rose to a higher level when he aligned himself with writer Burt Kennedy and actor Randolph Scott for a series of taut, psychologically complex westerns. The first was Seven Men from Now (1956), with Scott as an ex-sheriff who methodically tracks down the seven criminals who killed his wife; Lee Marvin was impressive as an opportunistic villain. The Tall T (1957), which was based on an Elmore Leonard short story, was better still, a suspenseful tale about an outlaw trio holding several people for ransom. Scott portrayed a hostage who uses his wits to triumph over his kidnappers.
Boetticher’s success continued with the crime classic The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), which starred Ray Danton as the New York mobster. The director then began working on a documentary about Arruza’s life as a matador. As Boetticher related in his memoir, When in Disgrace (1989), financial and other problems plagued the production, and, as time dragged on, his personal life collapsed. He was divorced, was jailed for a week, was nearly bankrupted, and finally suffered a nervous breakdown. In the midst of this, Arruza and most of the film crew were killed in a car crash.
Boetticher took a break from directing, not returning until 1969 with A Time for Dying, an offbeat western starring Audie Murphy in his last role. It also proved to be Boetticher’s final feature film. He later wrote the story for Don Siegel’s Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), which starred Clint Eastwood. Arruza was finally released in 1972. His last directorial credit was the documentary My Kingdom For… (1985), which focuses on horses. Boetticher also appeared as a judge in the 1988 crime drama Tequila Sunrise.
- Michael Barson
Budd Boetticher. Director: Bullfighter and the Lady. Brilliant, distinguished American director, particularly of Westerns, whose simple, bleak style disguises a complex artistic temperament.
- January 1, 1
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- January 1, 1
- Ramona, California, USA
Dec 1, 2001 · Budd Boetticher, who directed a series of stark, low-budget westerns regarded by film scholars as classics of the genre, died on Thursday at his home in Ramona, Calif. He was 85.
Dec 1, 2001 · The Chicago-born Boetticher, a onetime professional matador whose fascination with bullfighting served as his entre to filmmaking in the ‘40s, died of multiple organ failure Thursday at his home...
Jun 22, 2017 · Budd Boetticher (pronounced “bettiker”) was primarily known for his work as a director in the Western genre, but I didn’t want to tell him that. Boetticher refused to be pinned down with any labels, and described any attempts to pigeonhole his talents as “laziness on the part of all those critics.”
Budd Boetticher Biography (1916-2001) Born Oscar Boetticher, July 29, 1916 (one source cites 1918), in Chicago, Illinois; son of Oscar Boetticher; married; wife's name, Mary. Addresses: Office--P.O. Box 1137, Ramona, CA 92065.
