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Robert Wise will be honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Directing
from the Palm Beach International Film Festival Saturday, April 12th, 1997
at the Festival's "Grand Gala" to be held at the Boca Raton Resort
& Club. This award will be one of several presented for cinematic excellence
and achievement during the night's festivities.
In a truly remarkable career that has spanned more than 60 years, Robert
Wise earned his first Academy Award nomination in 1941 as editor of Citizen
Kane, Orsen Welles' cinematic masterpiece. Three years later, Val Lewton
put Wise in the director's chair halfway through the production of Curse
of the Cat People. With a short but difficult drive from "B"
movies to "A" movies, Wise succeeded with the western Blood
on the Moon in 1948.
The 1950s saw Robert Wise further establish his directing talent with a
variety of personal dramas including The Day the Earth Stood Still
(1951), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and Run Silent, Run
Deep (1958). Wise's talent was fully realized in the 1960s when his
blockbusters West Side Story (1961 winner of 10 Academy Awards)
and The Sound of Music (1965 winner of 5 Academy Awards) both earned
for him double Oscars as Best Director (with co-director Jerome Robbins
on West Side Story) and, as the producer, Best Picture Awards. Other
popular films such as The Haunting (1963), The Sand Pebbles
(1966), The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Hindenburg (1975),
and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) have consistently proven
his gifts for entertaining, storytelling, his editor's sense of timing
and rhythm, and, obviously, his great versatility.
Robert Wise has been honored with a number of awards, appointments, honorary
degrees, memberships and elections. He has served as President of the Directors
Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and
has received the Academy's prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award and the National
Medal of Arts. A true legend in the history of cinema, the Palm Beach International
Film Festival is honored to welcome Robert Wise to its second annual celebration
of cinematic theater with 10 days of world premieres, parties, feature
films, shorts, documentaries, seminars and gala events. |
