TSPDT

Key Production Country: USA
Key Genres: Drama, Western, Action, Crime Drama, Adventure, Crime, Melodrama, Combat Films, War, Adventure Drama, Message Movie, Comedy Drama
Key Collaborators: Cedric Gibbons (Production Designer), Robert Lord (Screenwriter), Sidney Hickox (Cinematographer), Andy Devine (Leading Character Actor), Alfred Newman (Composer), Jack Okey (Production Designer), James Basevi (Production Designer), Barbara Stanwyck (Leading Actress), Adolphe Menjou (Leading Actor), John Wayne (Producer/Leading Actor), Dore Schary (Producer), Robert Fellows (Producer)

"William Wellman’s critical reputation is in many respects still in a state of flux long after re-evaluations and recent screenings of his major films should have established some consensus of opinion regarding his place in the pantheon of film directors. While there is some tentative agreement that he is, if nothing else, a competent journeyman director capable of producing entertaining male-dominated action films, other opinions reflect a wide range of artistic evaluations, ranging from comparisons to D.W. Griffith to outright condemnations of his films as clumsy and uninspired. His own preferred niche, as indicated by his flamboyant personality and his predilection for browbeating and intimidating his performers, would probably be in the same general class as highly masculine filmmakers like Howard Hawks, John Ford, and Raoul Walsh." - Stephen L. Hanson (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

"Although William Wellman's name is most often associated with action pictures, gaining him a reputation for working mainly with men, he brought his expertise to bear on a range of genres in the best Hollywood manner. Wellman earned the nickname "Wild Bill" for his impatience with actors, his devil-may-care personality, and his spell as a pilot in World War I." - Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006)

"Wellman was an efficient, erratic journeyman, as good as his material. Though praised for his handling of vigorous masculine action in war movies (Wings, The Story of GI Joe), thrillers (The Public Enemy), westerns and outdoor adventures (Beggars of Life, Wild Boys of the Road), he was at his best with dark satire and melodrama, where his cynicism about modern mores enhanced sparkling scripts by Dorothy Parker (A Star is Born), Ben Hecht (Nothing Sacred), and Nunnally Johnson (Roxie Hart)." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

"Given the name ‘Wild Bill’ as a result of his reckless flying during the war, his reputation as a brawling ladies’ man ensured it stuck through his career as a filmmaker. Known for his tough, no-nonsense way with actors – Louise Brooks, who he directed in Beggars of Life (1928), had little good to say about him in her memoirs – and attraction to projects heavy on the machismo, Wellman was every bit a member of Hollywood’s golden age boy’s club as Howard Hawks or John Ford. Yet his reputation today, as a filmmaker, is nowhere near as revered as those two titans. Instead, he’s seen as a journeyman director with a handful of impressive films to his name. Yet while there’s no escaping the crudity of much of his output, the sweeping disregard for so much of Wellman’s output bears some re-thinking. He could be a muscular director of action, a sharply satirical and cynical social commentator, as well as a smart collaborator, especially with writers… Not all filmmakers get to be John Ford, but there are hundreds more who can only aspire to a career like Wild Bill Wellman’s." - Matthew Thrift (BFI, 2016)

"With Wellman, crudity is too often mistaken for sincerity. What is at issue here is not the large number of bad films he has made, but a fundamental deficiency in his direction of good projects. On parallel subjects, he runs a poorer second to good directors than he should... Wellman, like Wyler, Huston, and Zinnemann, is a recessive director, one whose images tend to recede from the foreground to the background in the absence of s strong point of view." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

"Expressing themes of courage, loyalty, and rugged individualism in a stark, semirealist style was the essence of Wellman's career. He lensed classic crime dramas, Westerns, war films, social explorations, and comedies with the same hard, sentimental simplicity." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

“A director of 76 movies, a number of them Hollywood milestones… In the end, Wellman was not so much a stylist or an artist as a man who saw excitement in the movie business and jumped on board for the ride.” - The Encyclopedia of Hollywood, 2004