Andrew V. McLaglen | WatchedThis
Andrew V. McLaglen
Directing
Biography
Andrew Victor McLaglen ((July 28, 1920 – August 30, 2014) was a British-American film and television director and former actor. Andrew McLaglen was born in London, the son of British actor Victor McLaglen and Enid Lamont. He was from a film family that included eight uncles and an aunt, and he grew up on movie sets with his parents as well as John Wayne and John Ford. After working as an assistant director on a few smaller films, Ford gave him the assistant director job on the film The Quiet Man (1952). After a few more assistant or second director jobs, McLaglen directed his first film Gun The Man Down in 1956 - a western B-movie with James Arness, Angie Dickinson and Harry Carey, Jr.. He went on to work extensively in television directing, directing episodes of Perry Mason (7), Gunslinger (5), Rawhide (6), and then 99 episodes of Have Gun – Will Travel, The Lieutenant (4), The Virginian (2), and 96 episodes of Gunsmoke. Returning to films - directing Shenandoah (1965) and The Rare Breed (1966), both with James Stewart; The Devil's Brigade (1968), Mitchell (1975), The Wild Geese (1978), North Sea Hijack (1979), and The Sea Wolves (1980), mostly westerns, but later specializing in war or action films, his last being Return from the River Kwai (1989). He also worked many times with John Wayne in such films as McLintock! (1963), Hellfighters (1968), The Undefeated (1969), Chisum (1970), and Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973). He also directed The Last Hard Men (1976) which starred Charlton Heston and James Coburn. McLaglen directed films in an assortment of categories, including crime, war, historical and comedy, but he was most frequently a director of Westerns, and would be among the last of the American film directors to specialize in the Western genre.
Filmography Movies
Acting
John Wayne - Eine amerikanische Legende
Film traces the career of the actor who embodied classic American values like no other - in his film and television roles as well as in his private life. In a career spanning more than 50 years, he became an icon of the western. The documentary follows Wayne from his first steps in the film business, when he was still honing his image as an upright hero, through his great successes to the end of his career, when even the US Congress bowed to his lifetime achievement and awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal. His colleague Maureen O'Hara, who stood in front of the camera with him in Rio Grande (1950), said that the medal should bear the following engraving to do justice to Duke: "John Wayne - American".
Since You Went Away
In 1943, several people enter, re-enter, and exit the difficult life of a Midwestern family whose patriarch has been called up to war, leaving behind his wife and two teen daughters.
Paris Underground
Constance Bennett both produced and starred in the espionager Paris Underground. Bennett and Gracie Fields play, respectively, an American and an English citizen trapped in Paris when the Nazis invade. The women team up to help Allied aviators escape from the occupied city into Free French territory. The screenplay was based on the true wartime activities of Etta Shiber, who engineered the escape of nearly 300 Allied pilots. British fans of comedienne Gracie Fields were put off by the scenes in which she is tortured by the Gestapo, while Constance Bennett's following had been rapidly dwindling since the 1930s; as a result, the heartfelt but tiresome Paris Underground failed to make a dent at the box-office. It would be Constance Bennett's last starring film--and Gracie Fields' last film, period.
Stars' War: The Flight of the Wild Geese
Promotional short film about the making of the 1978 film The Wild Geese.
The Quiet Man: The Joy of Ireland
Maureen O'Hara, Andrew McLaglen, and others recollect how The Quiet Man came to be in this documentary.
The Man Behind the Star
Promotional short film on the making of Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973).
Production
Breakthrough
Starting in late May 1944, during the German retreat on the Eastern Front, Captain Stransky (Helmut Griem) orders Sergeant Steiner (Richard Burton) to blow up a railway tunnel to prevent Russian forces from using it. Steiner's platoon fails in its mission by coming up against a Russian tank. Steiner then takes a furlough to Paris just as the Allies launch their invasion of Normandy.
Shenandoah
Charlie Anderson, a farmer in Shenandoah, Virginia, finds himself and his family in the middle of the Civil War he wants nothing to do with. When his youngest boy is taken prisoner by the North, the Civil War is forced upon him.
Cahill: United States Marshal
J.D. Cahill is the toughest U.S. Marshal they've got, just the sound of his name makes bad guys stop in their tracks, so when his two young boy's want to get his attention they decide to rob a bank. They end up getting more than they bargained for.
The Wild Geese
A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.
The Devil's Brigade
At the onset of World War II, American Lt. Col. Robert Frederick is put in charge of a unit called the 1st Special Service Force, composed of elite Canadian commandos and undisciplined American soldiers. With Maj. Alan Crown leading the Canadians and Maj. Cliff Bricker the acting head of the American contingent, there is initial tension -- but the team comes together when given a daunting mission that few would dare to attempt.
Hellfighters
The adventures of oil well fire specialist Chance Buckman (based on real-life Red Adair), who extinguishes massive fires in oil fields around the world.
Mitchell
A tough-guy cop pursues two drug runners across the city to bust a large syndicate. Very much an anti-hero, Mitchell often ignores the orders of his superiors and demonstrates disdain for by-the-book development work as well as normal social graces.
7 Men from Now
A former sheriff relentlessly pursuing the 7 men who murdered his wife in Arizona crosses paths with a couple heading to California.
Bandolero!
Posing as a hangman, Mace Bishop arrives in town with the intention of freeing a gang of outlaws, including his brother, from the gallows. Mace urges his younger brother to give up crime. The sheriff chases the brothers to Mexico. They join forces, however, against a group of Mexican bandits.
The Way West
In the mid-19th century, Senator William J. Tadlock leads a group of settlers overland in a quest to start a new settlement in the Western US. Tadlock is a highly principled and demanding taskmaster who is as hard on himself as he is on those who have joined his wagon train. He clashes with one of the new settlers, Lije Evans, who doesn't quite appreciate Tadlock's ways. Along the way, the families must face death and heartbreak and a sampling of frontier justice when one of them accidentally kills a young Indian boy.
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