It is hard to believe that Raoul Walsh, the man who directed The Roaring Twenties (1939), High Sierra (1941), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Objective, Burma! (1945), White Heat (1949) and other classic genre films for Warner Brothers, never received an Oscar nomination. Film historian David Thomson pondered this in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, writing, “Was it just that he was so reliable, so direct and “simple” an entertainer? Or was it a matter of not making the proper “big” pictures?” Even after his peak years at Warners, Walsh continued to make audience pleasing hits such as Battle Cry (1955), the fourth biggest box office success of its year. Even some of the B-pictures Walsh made during his final years in Hollywood look like A-pictures now such as the 1953 western, Gun Fury.
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Cinema Sojourns 