Actor and director Sam Wanamaker was born on June 14, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois. His real name is Samuel Watenmaker. He received an acting education at the School of Dramatic Art at the Goodman Theatre, where, when he was seventeen years old, his theatrical debut took place. Later, he played in various theater companies, toured the country, participated in many popular Broadway productions, combining acting work with studies at Drake University. From 1943 to 1946, Wanamaker served in the army. After
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Actor and director Sam Wanamaker was born on June 14, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois. His real name is Samuel Watenmaker. He received an acting education at the School of Dramatic Art at the Goodman Theatre, where, when he was seventeen years old, his theatrical debut took place. Later, he played in various theater companies, toured the country, participated in many popular Broadway productions, combining acting work with studies at Drake University. From 1943 to 1946, Wanamaker served in the army. After demobilization, he worked on the radio, continued to play in the theater, and in 1948 he made his film debut, starring in the film directed by Elliot Nugent “My Girl Tice”. Despite the fact that his first appearance on the screen did not go unnoticed, Wanamaker was not destined to make a career in Hollywood. During the time of the Commission of Inquiry into Un-American Activities, many filmmakers (Chaplin, Lowsey, etc.), suspected of sympathizing with the Communists, lost their right to work and were forced to move to Europe. Never concealing his leftist views, Wanamaker did not wait for his name to appear on the so-called blacklists and moved to Britain in the summer of 1949. That same year, he starred in the social drama Give Us a Day directed by Edward Dmitrik as the father of an Italian immigrant family struggling to survive the economic crisis.
Soon Wanamaker was actively involved in theatrical life of the UK - for several decades he was known as an actor, director and theater producer. He headed the New Shakespeare Theatre in Liverpool in the second half of the fifties, later played in the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stradford and performed a number of theatrical productions, including on the stage of London’s Covent Garden. In the sixties, the actor starred in one of the early British films of Joseph Lawsey “Criminal” (1960, also known as “Concrete Jungle”) and in several major international films with the participation of European and American film stars – “Taras Bulba” (1962, dir. J. Lee Thompson), “The Spy Who Came from the Cold” (1965, dir. Martin Ritt), “These Amazing Men and Their Flying Machines” (1965, dir. Ken Annakin).
Wanamaker’s first directorial work was the crime drama The Golden Goose Dossier (1969) with American actor Yul Brynner in the title role. It was followed by the spy thriller “The Executioner” (1970), the comedy western “Katlow” (1971) and the adventure fairy tale “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” (1977) created in collaboration with the famous specialist in special effects and producer Ray Harrihausen, who became the screenwriter of the film. In 1976, he played the role of a lawyer Rosen, escaping with his family from the Nazi regime in the film Stuart Rosenberg’s “Journey of the Damned”, then appeared in the classic detective novel by Agatha Christie “Death on the Nile” (1978) by John Gillermin, and with the beginning of the eighties again began working in Hollywood. Among his other American films are the comedy "Baby Boom" (1987, dir. Charles Shier), another fantastic picture about the adventures of Superman "Superman VI: The Search for Peace" (1987, dir. Sidney J. Fury), and the political drama "Guilty by Suspicion" (1991, dir. Irwin Winkler), which described the events familiar to Wanamaker firsthand - Hollywood of the McCarthy era, witch hunts and "black lists". In the eighties he made a number of television films, including "The Murder of Randy Webster" (1981) and "Colombo: The Great Frauds" (1989) with Peter Falk, the star of the films about Lieutenant Colombo. The main idea of Wanamaker was to recreate the theater in its original form, as close as possible to the original. Back in 1970, he founded a charity fundraising fund for restoration work, which was headed by Prince Philip. After years of fighting bureaucratic obstacles, the new Globe finally opened its doors to visitors in 1997. Unfortunately, Wanamaker himself never saw the final result of his many years of work - the actor died of cancer on December 18, 1993. His daughter Zoe Wanamaker is a theater and film actress, working mainly in the UK.
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