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Don Siegel
Life Time
26 October 1912 - 20 April 1991
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One of the most famous American filmmakers of the 50s and 70s, Don Siegel was born in Chicago. His film career began in 1933 when he joined the editing department of Warner Bros.. After several training shorts, Siegel made his film debut in 1945 with the documentary Hitler Live? and the cartoon Star in the Night, and in 1946 he directed his first feature film Verdict. Siegel became famous primarily as a director of genre, action film. His action films, thrillers and westerns are distinguished by
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One of the most famous American filmmakers of the 50s and 70s, Don Siegel was born in Chicago. His film career began in 1933 when he joined the editing department of Warner Bros.. After several training shorts, Siegel made his film debut in 1945 with the documentary Hitler Live? and the cartoon Star in the Night, and in 1946 he directed his first feature film Verdict. Siegel became famous primarily as a director of genre, action film. His action films, thrillers and westerns are distinguished by powerful energy and dynamism, as well as the fact that the director managed to invest deep subtext even in the most simple plots. In 1956, Siegel directed the fantastic thriller Invasion of Body Snatchers, recognized as an absolute masterpiece of film fiction and spawned two remakes (although this was his only SF film). It was Siegel who played his last role as future U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the film “Assassins” (1964). It was Siegel who was the first director to replace his name in the credits with the now very famous pseudonym of the U.S. Film Directors Guild Alan Smithy - it was the film Death of the Gunman (1969). Finally, it was Siegel who directed the last film with the "king of the western" of the 40s - 50s John Wayne - the western "The most accurate" (1976); shortly after the filming of this film Wayne died of cancer. However, the most significant influence Don Siegel had on the cinematic fate of Clint Eastwood, shooting with his participation such films as “Bluff Coogan” (1968), “Two mules for Sister Sarah” (1970), “Escape from Alcatraz” (1979), as well as the legendary police action movie “Dirty Harry” (1971), which marked the beginning of a series of five films about the cool police detective Harry Callahan. At the end of his life, Siegel appeared in several episodic roles in the films of his young fellow directors - Clint Eastwood (Play Me in the Fog, 1971), Philip Kaufman (Invasion of Body Snatchers, 1978) and John Landis (In the Night, 1985).