BOETTICHER, Budd

(1916–2001)

   Born Oscar Boetticher Jr. in Chicago, Illinois, Budd Boetticher directed films that are only recently gaining a reputation comparable to the movies of John Ford and Anthony Mann. Like Ford and Mann, Boetticher is now considered one of the great directors of the classic era. While in college at Ohio State University, Boetticher visited Mexico, where he developed a lifelong passion for bullfighting and became a matador himself. His personal life, Hemingway-like, was often reflected in his films. His entry to Hollywood came in 1941 as a technical advisor on a bullfighting film. By 1943, after some general studio work, he became an assistant director. Boetticher began directing his own films in 1944, but it was not until 1951 that he began directing Westerns, starting with The Cimarron Kid, a Universal picture starring Audie Murphy. Boetticher is often characterized as a maverick filmmaker who was frequently at odds with the Hollywood establishment. Only in recent years has he been recognized for artistically significant work on a series of Westerns from the 1950s starring Randolph Scott, produced by Harry Joe Brown, and most written by Burt Kennedy. These films, sometimes viewed as a series, are Seven Men from Now (1956), The Tall T (1957), Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Ride Lonesome (1959), and Comanche Station (1960). These films were commercial successes and early on were critically acclaimed by French critics such as Alfred Bazin, who called Seven Men from Now an “exemplary Western.”

   Unlike the often dark, tragic vision of Anthony Mann, Boetticher’s comedy reflected the complexity of all his characters—villains, heroes, and women. Yet his comedy also reflected the similar absurdist comic vision of his contemporaries in French intellectual life. For Boetticher, nothing was simple—no villain is all bad, no hero is all good, no woman is all virtuous. Randolph Scott exemplified the Boetticher vision of masculinity while Karen Steele, especially, and Maureen O’Hara were two of the most complex female characters in 1950s Westerns.

   In 1960, at the height of his career, Boetticher left Hollywood for seven years to research and develop the film he hoped would secure his reputation, a film based on the life of matador Carlos Aruza. This move was interpreted as turning his back on Hollywood, and he suffered greatly for this personal quest. Aruza was released in 1971. Together with Audie Murphy, he attempted one last Western, A Time For Dying(1969), and had other mutual projects planned before Murphy’s death in 1971. Thereafter, Boetticher maintained steady work in television production, away from Westerns, until his death in 2001.

   See also FRENCH CRITICISM.