TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Romance, Comedy, Drama, Romantic Comedy, Farce, Film Noir, Crime, Crime Drama, Screwball Comedy, Thriller
Key Collaborators: George Duning (Composer), Jack Lemmon (Leading Actor), Kim Novak (Leading Actress), Charles Lang (Cinematographer), Charles Nelson (Editor), Walter Holscher (Production Designer), William Holden (Leading Actor), Ernie Kovacs (Leading Actor), Blake Edwards (Screenwriter), George Axelrod (Screenwriter/Producer), Charles Lawton Jr. (Cinematographer), David Wages (Editor)

"Second rank Hollywood director, former actor and scriptwriter, at his best with light comedy and musicals - My Sister Eileen (55), The Solid Gold Cadillac (56), Full of Life (57), Bell, Book and Candle (58) - rather than with dramatic comedies or melodramas such as The World of Suzie Wong (60), Strangers When We Meet (61), Hotel (67)." - Georges Sadoul (Dictionary of Film Makers, 1972)

"A prolific director of over thirty Hollywood features made between 1948 and 1979, Richard Quine’s career achieved a sustained peak during the 1950s and 1960s while working at Columbia Pictures. A specialist in comedy who was instrumental in launching the careers of Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon and Blake Edwards, Quine has long been overshadowed by the other great directors of late studio era comedy: Billy Wilder, Frank Tashlin and Edwards himself. Only recently has Quine been rediscovered as a filmmaker of equal rank, an artist able to infuse studio comedy and melodrama with unexpected warmth and melancholy." - Harvard Film Archive, 2009

"An actor's son, he began performing in vaudeville and on radio as a child-singer-dancer-actor, making his screen debut at 12. He played supporting parts in films through the 40s, then turned director. His films were often lively and handled intelligently but were rarely original." - The Film Encyclopedia, 2012

"When the director Richard Quine died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in June of 1989, it was said he had long been despondent over poor health, depression and his inability to keep making the kind of light, screwball comedies for which he was best known. But Quine was no less adept at film noir and romantic melodrama… That said, Quine’s comedies are nothing to sniff at, the best of them almost balletic in their precise construction and elaborately choreographed camera movements. Among them is the hilarious service farce Operation Mad Ball (1957), with Jack Lemmon as an enterprising Army private trying to throw a blow-out party behind the back of Ernie Kovacs’ uptight captain. Best of all may be the blissful The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), where Judy Holliday’s Laura Partridge navigates her way from the annual shareholder meeting all the way to the executive suite of a U.S. manufacturing giant." - Scott Foundas (LA Weekly, 2008)

"Richard Quine's early Columbia films possessed a discreet charm that seemed promising as late as 1957 with Operation Mad Ball. The promise has never been fulfilled. At best, Quine has functioned as an inoffensive imitator of his betters. Pushover is a poor man's Double Indemnity. Solid Gold Cadillac and Full of Life are pale copies of Cukor's It Should Happen to You and The Marrying Kind respectively." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

"Fifties comedies constitute his finest films (My Sister Eileen, 55; Operation Mad Ball, 57; Bell, Book and Candle, 58)." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)