Fred M. Wilcox (director)

Last updated
Fred M. Wilcox
Born(1907-12-22)December 22, 1907
Tazewell, Virginia, United States
DiedSeptember 23, 1964(1964-09-23) (aged 56)
Occupation Film director

Fred McLeod Wilcox (December 22, 1907 – September 23, 1964) was an American motion picture director. He worked for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for many years and is best remembered for directing Lassie Come Home (1943) and Forbidden Planet (1956). These films were entered in the National Film Preservation Board's National Film Registry in 1993 and 2013 respectively.

Filmography

Screenshot of Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis from the trailer of the motion picture Forbidden Planet. ForbiddenPlanet1.jpg
Screenshot of Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis from the trailer of the motion picture Forbidden Planet.


Related Research Articles

<i>Forbidden Planet</i> 1956 science fiction movie by Fred M. Wilcox

Forbidden Planet is a 1956 American science fiction film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, produced by Nicholas Nayfack, and directed by Fred M. Wilcox from a script by Cyril Hume that was based on an original film story by Allen Adler and Irving Block. It stars Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Leslie Nielsen. Shot in Eastmancolor and CinemaScope, it is considered one of the great science fiction films of the 1950s, a precursor of contemporary science fiction cinema. The characters and isolated setting have been compared to those in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and the plot contains certain happenings analogous to the play, leading many to consider it a loose adaptation.

<i>Lassie Come Home</i> 1943 film by Fred M. Wilcox

Lassie Come Home is a 1943 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolor feature film starring Roddy McDowall and canine actor Pal, in a story about the profound bond between Yorkshire boy Joe Carraclough and his rough collie, Lassie. The film was directed by Fred M. Wilcox from a screenplay by Hugo Butler based upon the 1940 novel Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight. The film was the first in a series of seven MGM films starring "Lassie."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roddy McDowall</span> British actor (1928–1998)

Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was a British and American actor, whose career spanned over 270 screen and stage roles across over 60 years. Born in London, he began his acting career as a child in his native England, before moving to the United States at the outbreak of World War II. He achieved prominence for his starring roles in How Green Was My Valley (1941), My Friend Flicka (1943), and Lassie Come Home (1943). Unlike many of his contemporaries, McDowall managed to transition his child stardom into adulthood, and began to appear on Broadway as well as in films, winning a Tony Award for his performance in Jean Anouilh's The Fighting Cock. For portraying Octavian in the historical epic Cleopatra (1963), he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lassie</span> Fictional female collie dog

Lassie is a fictional female Rough Collie dog and is featured in a 1938 short story by Eric Knight that was later expanded to a 1940 full-length novel, Lassie Come-Home. Knight's portrayal of Lassie bears some features in common with another fictional female collie of the same name, featured in the British writer Elizabeth Gaskell's 1859 short story "The Half Brothers". In "The Half Brothers", Lassie is loved only by her young master and guides the adults back to where two boys are lost in a snowstorm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Wilding</span> English actor

Michael Charles Gauntlet Wilding was an English stage, television, and film actor. He is best known for a series of films he made with Anna Neagle; he also made two films with Alfred Hitchcock, Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950); and he guest starred on Hitchcock's TV show in 1963. He was married four times, including to Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he had two sons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pal (dog)</span> Rough Collie dog

Pal was a male Rough Collie performer and the first in a line of such dogs to portray the fictional female collie Lassie in film, on radio, and on television. In 1992, The Saturday Evening Post said Pal had "the most spectacular canine career in film history".

Eric Mowbray Knight was an English novelist and screenwriter, who is mainly known for his 1940 novel Lassie Come-Home, which introduced the fictional collie Lassie. He took American citizenship in 1942 shortly before his death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milton Krasner</span> American cinematographer (1904–1988)

Milton R. Krasner, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer who won an Academy Award for Three Coins in the Fountain (1954).

Daniele Alexandrovich Amfitheatrof was a Russian, American, and Italian composer and conductor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dan White (actor)</span> American actor (1908–1980)

Dan White was an American actor, well known for appearing in Western films and TV shows.

<i>Son of Lassie</i> 1945 film by S. Sylvan Simon

Son of Lassie is a 1945 American Technicolor feature film produced by MGM based on characters created by Eric Knight, and starring Peter Lawford, Donald Crisp, June Lockhart and Pal. A sequel to Lassie Come Home (1943), the film focuses on the now adult Joe Carraclough after he joins the Royal Air Force during World War II and is shot down over Nazi-occupied Norway along with a stowaway, Lassie's son "Laddie" – played by Pal. Son of Lassie was released theatrically on April 20, 1945, by Loew's.

<i>The Sun Comes Up</i> 1949 film by Richard Thorpe

The Sun Comes Up is a 1949 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Technicolor picture with Lassie. Jeanette MacDonald had been off the screen for five years until her return in Three Daring Daughters (1948), but The Sun Comes Up was to be her last. In it, she had to share the screen not with an up-and-coming younger actress but with a very popular animal star. Although her retreat from a film career can be blamed largely on an increasingly debilitating heart ailment, MacDonald continued to make concert and TV appearances after this. Her last radio performance was a broadcast version of this same story on The Screen Guild Theater in March 1950.

<i>Family Classics</i> American TV series or program

Family Classics is a Chicago television series which began in 1962 when Frazier Thomas was added to another program at WGN-TV. Thomas not only hosted classic films, but also selected the titles and personally edited them to remove those scenes which he thought were not fit for family viewing. After Thomas' death in 1985, Roy Leonard took over the program. The series continued sporadically until its initial cancellation in 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eddy Waller</span> American actor (1889–1977)

Edward Waller was an American stage, film and television actor.

<i>Hills of Home</i> (film) 1948 film by Fred M. Wilcox

Hills of Home is a 1948 American Technicolor drama film, the fourth in a series of seven MGM Lassie films. It starred Edmund Gwenn, Donald Crisp, and Tom Drake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nelson Leigh</span> American actor (1905–1985)

Nelson Leigh was an American motion picture actor of the 1940s and 1950s.

<i>Lassie Come-Home</i> Novel by Eric Knight

Lassie Come-Home is a novel written by Eric Knight about a rough collie's trek over many miles to be reunited with the boy she loves. Knight had introduced the reading public to the canine character of Lassie in a magazine story published on 17 December 1938, in The Saturday Evening Post, a story which he later expanded to the novel and published in 1940 to critical and commercial success. In 1943, the novel was adapted to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feature film Lassie Come Home starring Roddy McDowall as the boy Joe Carraclough, Pal as Lassie, and featuring Elizabeth Taylor. The motion picture was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry. A remake of Lassie Come Home, entitled Lassie, was released in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Wilcox</span> American actor (1907–1974)

Frank Reppy Wilcox was an American actor. He appeared in numerous films and television series, as well as Broadway plays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Newell (actor, born 1905)</span> American actor

David Newell was primarily known as an American character actor, whose acting career spanned from the very beginning of the sound film era through the middle of the 1950s. He made his film debut in a featured role in The Hole in the Wall, a 1929 film starring Edward G. Robinson and Claudette Colbert.

Ben Lewis (1894–1970) was an American film editor who worked in Hollywood for several decades. He was employed by MGM for many years, beginning his career with them in the silent era. An early credit was for Quality Street (1927) starring Marion Davies.