Wise, Robert (1914-2005), was an American motion-picture director who directed a wide range of films but is perhaps best known for musicals and horror pictures. He shared the 1961 Academy Award as best director with Jerome Robbins for the musical West Side Story. Wise won the 1965 Academy Award as best director for The Sound of Music. He also was nominated for best director for the prison drama I Want to Live (1958).
Robert Earl Wise was born on Sept. 10, 1914, in Winchester, Indiana. He began his motion-picture career in 1933 as an assistant cutter. Before becoming a director in 1944, Wise was a leading Hollywood film editor. He edited the Orson Welles classics Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942).
Early in his directing career, Wise directed two notable horror movies, The Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945). He also directed The Set-Up (1949), one of the finest boxing films ever made. Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) has become a science-fiction classic. His other films as a director include Executive Suite (1954) and Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). Wise served as both producer and director of Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), The Haunting (1963), The Sand Pebbles (1966), and The Andromeda Strain (1971). Wise died on Sept. 14, 2005.
