Sam Peckinpah

Was voted the 32nd Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

He died on the same day his wife Begoña Palacios was having her 44th birthday. They married three times.

He married Marie Selland in Las Vegas in 1947 and they moved to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in the graduate Theater Department of the University of Southern California the next year.

Upon returning to the US he enrolled in Fresno State College, graduating in 1948 with a B. A. in Drama.

In an interview with Jim Silke, Peckinpah listed the following as his favorite films: Rashômon (1950); The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), which he called "possibly the finest motion picture ever made"; La Strada (1954), a film that he named as one he would have liked to have made; Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959); Billy Wilder's Ace In The Hole (1951); Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947); Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948); La Dolce Vita (1960); On the Waterfront (1954); Last Year at Marienbad (1961); Pather Panchali (1955), the first film in Satyajit Ray's "Apu" trilogy; John Ford's Tobacco Road (1941); A Place in the Sun (1951); My Darling Clementine (1946); Viva Zapata (1952); Shane (1953); Jirí Sequens' Zakázané hry (1959); High Noon (1952); The Great Armored Car Swindle (1961), Howard Hawks' adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (1944); and Ingmar Bergman's The Magician (1958).

He eventually took his Masters in 1952.

After drifting through several jobs -- including a stint as a floor-sweeper on Liberace Christmas Show (1952) -- Sam got a job as Dialogue Director on Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) for director Don Siegel.

In 1954 director Don Siegel and producer Walter Wanger had been desperately trying to persuade the warden of San Quentin Prison to allow the use of the facility to film Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), but the warden had adamantly refused. After the final meeting in the prison, when the warden had said there was nothing Siegel or Wanger could do to persuade him to allow filming there, Siegel turned to speak to Peckinpah, who at the time was his assistant. When the warden heard Peckinpah's name, he asked, "Are you related to Denver Peckinpah?". Sam replied that Denver was his brother. Denver Peckinpah was a well-known judge in northern California who had a reputation as a "hanging judge" and the warden had long been an admirer of his. He immediately granted the company permission to shoot the movie in San Quentin.

Peckinpah eventually became a scriptwriter for such TV programs as Gunsmoke (1955) and The Rifleman (1958) (which he created as an episode of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater (1956) titled "The Sharpshooter' in 1958).

He worked for Siegel on several films, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), in which Sam played Charlie Buckholtz, the town meter reader.

Ida Lupino hired him to work on her series Mr. Adams and Eve (1957) after she found him living in a shack behind her property. He paid her back by casting her in Junior Bonner (1972) some years later.

In 1961, as his marriage to Selland was coming to an end, he directed his first feature film, a western titled The Deadly Companions (1961) starring \Brian Keith and Maureen O'Hara.

However, it was with his second feature, Ride the High Country (1962), that Peckinpah really began to establish his reputation. Featuring Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott (in his final screen performance), its story about two aging gunfighters anticipated several of the themes Peckinpah would explore in future films, including the controversial "The Wild Bunch".

Following "Ride the High Country" he was hired by producer Jerry Bresler to direct Major Dundee (1965), a cavalry-vs. -Indians western starring Charlton Heston. It turned out to be a film that brought to light Peckinpah's volatile reputation. During hot, on-location work in Mexico, his abrasive manner, exacerbated by booze and marijuana, provoked usually even-keeled Heston to threaten to run him through with a cavalry saber. However, when the studio later considered replacing Peckinpah, it was Heston who came to Sam's defense, going so far as to offer to return his salary to help offset any overages. Ironically, the studio accepted and Heston wound up doing the film for free. Post-production conflicts led to Sam engaging in a bitter and ultimately losing battle with Bresler and Columbia Pictures over the final cut and, as a result, the disjointed effort fizzled at the box office. It was during this period that Peckinpah met and married his second wife, Mexican actress Begoña Palacios.

However, the reputation he earned because of the conflicts on "Major Dundee" contributed to Peckinpah being replaced as director on his next film, the Steve McQueen film The Cincinnati Kid (1965), by Norman Jewison. His second marriage now failing, Peckinpah did not get another feature project for two years.

However, he did direct a powerful adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's 'Noon Wine" for ABC Stage 67: Noon Wine (1966)). This, in turn, helped relaunch his feature career. He was hired by Warner Bros. to direct the film for which he is, justifiably, best remembered.

"If they move", commands stern-eyed William Holden, "kill 'em". So begins The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah's bloody, high-body-count eulogy to the mythologized Old West. "Pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle", observed critic Pauline Kael. That exploding bottle also christened the director with the nickname that would forever define his films and reputation: "Bloody Sam". David Samuel Peckinpah was born and grew up in Fresno, California, when it was still a sleepy town. Young Sam was a loner. The child's greatest influence was grandfather Denver Church, a judge, congressman and one of the best shots in the Sierra Nevadas. Sam served in the US Marine Corps during World War II but - to his disappointment - did not see combat.

The success of "The Wild Bunch" rejuvenated his career and propelled him through highs and lows in the 1970s.

Between 1970-1978 he directed The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Straw Dogs (1971), Junior Bonner (1972), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Cross of Iron (1977) and Convoy (1978). Throughout this period controversy followed him. He provoked more rancor over his use of violence in "Straw Dogs", introduced Ali MacGraw to Steve McQueen in "The Getaway", fought with MGM's chief James T. Aubrey over his vision for "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" that included the casting of Bob Dylan in an unscripted role as a character called "Alias. " His last solid effort was the WW II anti-war epic "Cross of Iron", about a German unit fighting on the Russian front, with Maximilian Schell and James Coburn, bringing the picture in successfully despite severe financial problems. Peckinpah lived life to its fullest. He drank hard and abused drugs, producers and collaborators. At the end of his life he was considering a number of projects including the Stephen King-scripted "The Shotgunners".

He agreed to direct Duck You Sucker (1971) after Peter Bogdanovich had turned the project down, but for financial reasons he was turned down by United Artists. Sergio Leone's collaborators (especially writers Sergio Donati and Luciano Vincenzoni), noting the director's frequent embellishment of the facts concerning his films, claim that Peckinpah did not even consider it--Donati claimed Peckinpah was "too shrewd to be produced by a fellow director".

In his January 1972 Playboy interview, Peckinpah was asked to comment about critic Pauline Kael's assertion that in Straw Dogs (1971), he endorsed rape by having the protagonist's wife seemingly enjoy being violated by her ex-boyfriend. Pointing out that the scene in question was actually the first stage of a gangbang and that the wife clearly did not enjoy being taken by the second man, he went on to gently criticize Kael, who was a great admirer and supporter of his. Noting that he had shared a drink with Kael and liked her personally, Peckinpah said that on the subject of his movie endorsing rape, "she's cracking walnuts with her ass.".

In 1976 he signed a contract to film "Cukoo's Progress", a novel by Swedish author Sture Dahlström. The novel is about Xerxes Sonson Pickelhaupt, whose life's ambition is to impregnate every women on the face of the earth. He died before the movie was made, but Dahlstrom still got paid.

He wanted to direct The Gauntlet (1977) with Kris Kristofferson as the male lead.

Was originally offered to direct Superman (1978) but dropped out of the running when he produced a gun during a meeting with Ilya Salkind.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 631-633. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.

Worked for 12 days as second-unit director in Jinxed! (1982) while director Don Siegel was recovering from a heart-attack while shooting the movie. Though Peckinpah wasn't popular--or even liked very much--in Hollywood in the late 1970s due to his many troubled productions, Siegel insisted on hiring him (as he had been a mentor to the future director many years earlier) and he wanted to help his friend. Though working uncredited in Siegel's film, their collaboration was noted in the movie industry, and that resulted in Peckinpah returning to directing with The Osterman Weekend (1983), which would be his final film.

Was originally scheduled to direct Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983) at the behest of star Richard Harris (both had previously worked together on Major Dundee (1965)). Due to Peckinpah's unofficial blacklist after his erratic behavior whilst directing Convoy (1978); he was later replaced by John Hough.

The last projects he directed were two music videos for John Lennon's son Julian Lennon: Julian Lennon: Too Late for Goodbyes (1984) and Julian Lennon: Valotte (1984) both from Julian's album "Valotte" (1984).