LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Robert Wise: Hollywood
built 237 days ago
Born September 10, 1914, in Winchester, Indiana, the son of a meatpacker, Wise loved movies from the earliest years of the medium. He visited the dime matinees several times a week, and dreamed of becoming part of the magic that he saw on the screen. When he found himself in Hollywood, he got himself a job as a messenger in the RKO Studio film editing department, on the grounds which now make up the west side of the Paramount Studios lot. He came to learn how movies are cut and patched together, and worked his way up to be a film editor.
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The evening opened with Guild Board member Sharon Smith Holley welcoming the audience and introducing a tribute videotape made when the AFI recently presented Robert Wise with a Lifetime Achievement Award. When the narrator described a wide-eyed 19-year-old Wise in Hollywood asking "What kind of job do you get with no experience?" the audience jokingly responded, "Film editing!"
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It was in the small town's moviehouse that a young Robert immersed himself in as many films as he could, viewing one dime matinee after another. One summer, he even won a season pass to the theater, favoring the Hollywood light on the the screen to the hot Indiana summer sun.
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Wise adds yet another layer to Wild, not to mention this film – and by extension the noir genre – through his use of gay and bisexual characters. As with so many Hollywood genres, the GLBT characters which populate film noir are there, just waiting to be outed (and, more importantly, put into a historical and social context as a reflection of their audiences' fears and loathings). It seems no accident that Wise introduces Wild's adoring partner, Mart Waterman, in his undershirt in a bedroom alone with Wild. And is that expository dialogue or (discreetly filmed) pillow talk, or both?
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The acting is pretty good, too, and Wise was ingenious in casting generally low-profile actors as the scientists, which contributes to making the characters seem true-to-life. One of the most brilliant examples of this is the casting of brash, average-looking Kate Reid as the gritty Dr. Ruth Leavitt. As is common practice in Hollywood, Wise could have chosen a sexy starlet (think Raquel Welch in 1966's FANTASTIC VOYAGE or, more recently, Rene Russo in 1995's OUTBREAK) in hopes of increasing the box-office draw. But Wise knows that in order to sell the plausibility of the plot, the characters must ... feel genuine, and the wise (no pun intended) casting of non-glamour actors like Reid in this type of role more accurately reflects the real world and therefore enhances the film's overall sense of realism.
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