Robert Aldrich

His father, Edward Burgess Aldrich (1871–1957) was the publisher of The Times of Pawtucket and an influential operative in state Republican politics.

His mother, Lora Elsie (née Lawson) of New Hampshire (1874–1931), died when Aldrich was 13 and was remembered with fondness by her son.

A Republican member of the U.S. Senate for thirty years (1881–1911), he was dubbed "General Manager of the Nation" by the press for his dominant role in framing federal monetary policy.

A number of Aldrich's paternal uncles had impressive careers, among them a successful investment banker, an architect and Harvard instructor, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and a chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank who also served as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain.

An aunt, Abigail Greene "Abby" Aldrich married John D. Rockefeller Jr., scion of the Standard Oil fortune, and was a leading figure in the establishment of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Nelson Rockefeller, a four-term governor of New York State and U.S. vice-president under Gerald Ford, and Rockefeller's four brothers were the director's first cousins.

As the only male heir to the Lawson-Aldrich family line, Aldrich was under considerable pressure to compete successfully with his numerous cousins in a family of high achievers.

Ruth Aldrich Kaufinger (1912–1987) was his elder sister and only sibling.

Among his notable ancestors were the American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene and the theologian Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island Colony.

His grandfather, Nelson Wilmarth Aldrich, was a self-made millionaire and art investor.

Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter.

An iconoclastic and maverick auteur working in many genres during the Golden Age of Hollywood, he directed mainly films noir, war movies, westerns and dark melodramas with Gothic overtones.

During the Great Depression, the adolescent Aldrich began to question the justice of his family's "politics and power" which clashed with his growing sympathies with left-wing social and political movements of the 1930s.

Aldrich's disaffection from the Aldrich-Rockefeller right-wing social and political orientation contributed to a growing tension between father and son.

Having satisfactorily demonstrated his aptitude for a career in finance, Aldrich defied his father by dropping out of college in his senior year without taking a degree.

Aldrich approached his uncle Winthrop W. Aldrich, who got his 23-year-old nephew a job at RKO Studios as a production clerk at $25 a week.

For this act of defiance, Aldrich was promptly disinherited.

Aldrich reciprocated by expunging public records of his connection with the Aldrich-Rockefeller clan, while stoically accepting the breach.

He rarely mentioned or invoked his family thereafter.

It has been said that "No American film director was born as wealthy as Aldrich — and then so thoroughly cut off from family money."

At the age of 23, Aldrich began work at RKO Pictures as a production clerk, an entry-level position, after declining an offer through his Rockefeller connections to enter the studio as an associate producer.

Following family tradition and expectations, Aldrich was educated at Moses Brown School in Providence from 1933 to 1937.

There he served as captain of the track and football teams and was elected president of his senior class.

Failing to matriculate to Yale due to mediocre grades, Aldrich attended the University of Virginia from 1937 to 1941, majoring in economics.

He continued to excel in sports and played a leading role in campus clubs and fraternities.

He married his first wife, Harriet Foster, a childhood sweetheart, shortly before he departed for Hollywood in May 1941.

Though the smallest of Hollywood's top studios, RKO could boast an impressive roster of directors (George Cukor, John Ford and Howard Hawks) as well as movie stars (Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and the Marx Brothers).

The 23-year-old Aldrich assumed his duties shortly after Orson Welles, at 26, signed a six-movie contract with RKO after the release of the widely acclaimed Citizen Kane (1941).

When the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941, Aldrich was inducted into the Air Force Motion Picture Unit, but was quickly discharged when an old football injury disqualified him for military service.

The film studios' manpower shortage allowed Aldrich to win assignments as third- or second-tier director's assistant to learn the basics of filmmaking.

In just two years he participated on two dozen movies with well-known directors.

He was second assistant director on Joan of Paris (1942, directed by Robert Stevenson), The Falcon Takes Over (1942, directed by Irving Reis), The Big Street (1942), directed by Reis, Bombardier (1943, directed by Richard Wallace), Behind the Rising Sun (1943, directed by Edward Dmytryk), A Lady Takes a Chance (1943, directed by William A. Seiter), The Adventures of a Rookie (1943, directed by Leslie Goodwins), Gangway for Tomorrow (1943, directed by John H. Auer), and Rookies in Burma (1943, directed by Goodwins).

Towards the end of the war, Aldrich had risen to first assistant director making comedy shorts with director Leslie Goodwins.

In 1944, Aldrich departed RKO to begin free-lancing on feature films at other major studios, including Columbia, United Artists, and Paramount.

His most notable credits include Vera Cruz (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955), Autumn Leaves (1956), Attack (1956), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and The Longest Yard (1974).

Aldrich's directorial style combined "macho mise-en-scene and resonant reworkings of classic action genres" and were known for pushing the boundaries of violence in mainstream cinema, as well as for their psychologically-complex interpretations of genre film tropes.

The British Film Institute wrote that Aldrich's films "subversive sensibility in thrall to the complexities of human behaviour."

Several of his films later proved influential to members of the French New Wave.

Aside from his directorial work, Aldrich was also noted for his advocacy as a member of the Directors Guild of America, serving as its President for two terms, and becoming the namesake for its Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award.

Robert Burgess Aldrich was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, into a family of wealth and social prominence – "The Aldriches of Rhode Island".