Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director

Marilyn Moss

jun 2011 · University Press of Kentucky

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Raoul Walsh (1887Ð1980) was known as one of HollywoodÕs most adventurous, iconoclastic, and creative directors. He carved out an illustrious career and made films that transformed the Hollywood studio yarn into a thrilling art form. Walsh belonged to that early generation of directorsÑalong with John Ford and Howard HawksÑwho worked in the fledgling film industry of the early twentieth century, learning to make movies with shoestring budgets. WalshÕs generation invented a Hollywood that made movies seem bigger than life itself. In the first ever full-length biography of Raoul Walsh, author Marilyn Ann Moss recounts WalshÕs life and achievements in a career that spanned more than half a century and produced upwards of two hundred films, many of them cinema classics. Walsh originally entered the movie business as an actor, playing the role of John Wilkes Booth in D. W. GriffithÕs The Birth of a Nation (1915). In the same year, under GriffithÕs tutelage, Walsh began to direct on his own. Soon he left GriffithÕs company for Fox Pictures, where he stayed for more than twenty years. It was later, at Warner Bros., that he began his golden period of filmmaking. Walsh was known for his romantic flair and playful persona. Involved in a freak auto accident in 1928, Walsh lost his right eye and began wearing an eye patch, which earned him the suitably dashing moniker Òthe one-eyed bandit.Ó During his long and illustrious career, he directed such heavyweights as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Errol Flynn, and Marlene Dietrich, and in 1930 he discovered future star John Wayne.

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Marilyn Ann Moss is the author of Giant: George Stevens, A Life on Film and has published numerous articles on writers such as Paul Bowles, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris. She was a television critic for The Hollywood Reporter from 1995 to 2009. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.