Posted on 08/17/2016 12:06:10 PM PDT by Borges
Canadian-born director Arthur Hiller, who spent more than a decade mostly working in television before a career in feature helming that included “Love Story,” “The Americanization of Emily” and comedy “Silver Streak,” died Wednesday. He was 92.
“Love Story,” based on the bestseller by Erich Segal, was an enormous box office hit in 1970 and was nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture. Though many critics dismissed the movie as too sentimental, it is No. 9 on the AFI’s list of the most romantic films of all time.
Hiller served as president of the Directors Guild of America from 1989-93 and of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences from 1993-97. He received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2002 Academy Awards ceremony.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued a statement. “We are deeply saddened by the passing of our beloved friend Arthur Hiller,” said Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “I was a member of the Board during his presidency and fortunate enough to witness firsthand his dedication to the Academy and his lifelong passion for visual storytelling.”
The helmer went on a hot streak in 1970 and 1971 with Neil Simon’s “The Out of Towners”; “Love Story”; much-lauded black comedy “The Hospital,” for which Paddy Chayefsky won best screenplay and George C. Scott received an actor nom; and “Plaza Suite,” a Simon adaptation of his own play.
The streak ended with 1972’s “Man of La Mancha,” starring Peter O’Toole and Sophia Loren, which drew neither critical acclaim nor significant box office. Hiller continued to direct until 2006 but never achieved the same level of success again.
Hiller directed a number of high-profile films in the ’60s, including “The Wheeler Dealers,” with James Garner and Lee Remick and, in 1964, well-received big-budget “The Americanization of Emily,” with Garner and Julie Andrews.
He made “Promise Her Anything,” with Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron, in 1965, and the light-hearted “Penelope,” with Natalie Wood, in 1966. The next year Hiller directed his only war movie, “Tobruk,” with Rock Hudson and George Peppard.
In 1976 Hiller helmed the biopic “W.C. Fields and Me,” starring Rod Steiger, and the popular comedy “Silver Streak,” with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Also successful was his 1979 action-comedy “The In-Laws,” with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin, although his foray into horror that year, “Nightwing,” was a dud.
Hiller’s 1982 romantic-triangle drama “Making Love” wasn’t a hit but courageously addressed homosexual themes. He followed it up with “Author! Author!” with Al Pacino. His other films of the ’80s included Steve Martin’s “The Lonely Guy,”; “Outrageous Fortune,” with Shelley Long and Bette Midler; and 1989’s “See No Evil, Hear No Evil,” which reunited Wilder and Pryor but failed to live up to its high concept (Wilder’s character is deaf, Pryor’s blind).
Hiller continued with comedies, making “Take Care of Business” in 1990 and “Married to It” in 1991.
He switched genres and made historical sports pic “The Babe,” with John Goodman, in 1992, then returned to comedy with “Carpool,” in 1996.
In 1997 came the complicated, Joe Eszterhas-scripted mess known as “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn,” a movie about making a bad movie that was as bad as its pic-within-a-pic.
Hiller’s last film was the similarly unsuccessful “National Lampoon’s Pucked.”
Born in Edmonton, Alberta, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force from 1942-45, graduated from University College, U. of Toronto, in 1947 and received a Master of Arts degree in psychology in 1950. He began his show business career working for the CBC in Toronto in the early ’50s but eventually left for American television.
Hiller was kept busy as a director working in the episodic anthology series of the ’50s and early ’60s beginning with four episodes of “Matinee Theatre” in 1955-56. He also did six episodes of “Playhouse 90” from 1956-58 and three episodes of “Telephone Time” from 1957-58.
During this time he made his feature directorial debut with 1957’s “The Careless Years,” a story of teen love that starred Dean Stockwell and Natalie Trundy.
He directed seven episodes of “The Third Man” series in 1959. He also worked on “Perry Mason,” “The Rifleman” and “Gunsmoke” and many other shows.
He made the Disney film “Miracle of the White Stallions” in 1963, after which he became a director of high-profile films.
Hiller is survived by his daughter, Erica Hiller Carpenter, his son, Henryk, and five grandchildren. Gwen Hiller, his wife of 68 years, died in June.
The film wasn’t based on the novel. The novel was written quickly based on the screenplay to drum up some publicity.
A very, very funny movie. "Serpentine!"
He seemed like a nice guy but he was really the quintessential anonymous Hollywood hack. Silver Streak is a badly directed slog only partially saved by Richard Pryor (who only shows up half way though). His better films were saved by good scripts (The Hospital, The In-Laws).
Yeah coming from before the age of auteurs there were a lot of those directors. And I respect their ability to just get the job done. It’s amazing how bad the Wilder-Pryor movies are, both of them were so funny, but they just weren’t a good team. Unless you were the studio, I think they all made money, though I’ll never figure out why.
It is a very age-sensitive movie, I think.
It was aimed at teenaged female baby-boomers who valued an education.
For teenaged male baby-boomers, it was kind of a yawner.
If you are a male babe-boomer and watch it today, it is awful. Unwatchable. Unless perhaps you happen to be still married to your girlfriend from back then. Then I suppose it might be nostalgic in a good way.
I don't know whether a female baby-boomer in her 60s or 70s would like it today. I suspect not. It's kind of tough to look at beautiful Ally MacGraw and not feel a bit depressed.
I think it would not have much meaning for gen-X or millennial viewers today. For one thing, I don't think fathers like Ray Milland are very common today. The gentry of today were all once hippies, so its hard for me to see the "you can't marry a girl who doesn't have a trust fund" thing being something that a millennial could really relate to.
The age of auteurs goes back to the very beginning. :) Stir Crazy was ok...
I wouldn’t say it hasn’t been remade. They might not have given the credit or cut out the check, but sappy love stories where one of the couple dies are basically a genre at this point. There’s an entry in that list almost every year, this year’s rendition being Me Before You, starring the Queen of Dragon oddly enough.
ahhhh The Al and Tipper story.
There’s always been a few, but the 70s was when they took over. And now we like to treat directors like they’re auteurs even though most of the time they’re just company men doing the job. Stir Crazy had its moments but most of it just a slog.
What’s kind of fun to watch “Silver Streak” is that it has Canada written all over it in a number of instances, with background scenes with the Canadian Rockies, as well as at the end with Toronto’s Union Station standing in for Chicago, lol.
Well the French New Wave guys identified a whole bunch of auteurs from the Studio System days. In the 70s, it just entered the mainstream and directors had more power than they did before.
Love Story was phenomenally successful. It reinvigorated Hollywood, which was kinda-sorta dying at the time. It cast a spell on audiences - and Academy voters.
Even though it was drivel.
And then squandered it.
Only if you’re a leftist. ;)
I don’t know if it really reinvigorated Hollywood. In some ways it was the last big success of that style of studio production. Movies of that mold had been bombing badly for years, giving room for the New Hollywood auteur driven model that ruled so much of the 70s until the auteurs crashed and the studios figured out the numbers to paint by leaving us in the modern tent poll franchise system. Which is a big reason why the Academy voters liked it, it was a success of the “old model” that had made them all rich and was being threatened by those young turks with long making movies that didn’t make sense.
Yet the film that beat it for Best Picture, Patton, was a combination of both. A poetic formless script by an up coming hippie writer-director (Francis Ford Coppola) that was molded into standard narrative form by an old Hollywood studio hack writer (Edmund H North) and which played to both sides by appealing to both the Hawks and, by positioning Patton as some sort of Rebel against the Establishment, appealed to the youth audience of the time.
Patton is a funny movie because it really is all things to all people. It’s so anti-war for the leftists and so glory of war for the conservatives, it’s really whatever movie the viewer wants to see. Academy voters probably saw a massive war epic, ie an “old style” movie, they could get behind that.
Patton was made with the same intention as “All In the Family”, to portray a more conservative character in a negative light, but like All in the Family, it backfired because people actually rooted for the protagonist.
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