Bob Clark directed both Porky’s and A Christmas Story. That would be quite the double bill.
Plus, Black Christmas, Baby Geniuses, Ransom of Red Chief, Rhinestone — the man was all over the map with some respectable work.
Good info! I was not aware of that whole story. But yeah Spielberg’s involvement was obvious.
In the '90s, there was a sketch comedy show in Seattle which launched the careers of Bill Nye and Joel McHale. One of the cast members was Bob Nelson, who played a bitter children’s show host.
That’s the same Bob Nelson who was nominated for an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Nebraska in 2013.
Peter Jackson made some movies of questionable taste early in his career, like Meet the Feebles, which was an R-rated take on a troupe of theatrical puppets, very much like The Muppet Show. If it wasn’t done with puppets, it would have been rated X. Then he came to Hollywood and made the Lord of the Rings films.
For disparate in time, there’s Harold Russell. He won two Academy Awards for his first role in 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives, then didn’t appear in another movie until 1980.
Orson Welles did the voiceover for a fundamentalist Christian documentary in 1978 (for the money, not out of conviction) and was the voice of Unicron in the 1986 Transformers movie.
Marilyn Chambers: Soap Box Mommy Model, Porn Star
But NOT the comedian Bob Nelson who became fairly well known in the 80s and 90s. I had to check.
Harlan Ellison wrote TV scripts for Star Trek and Outer Limits, and for the offbeat detective series Burke’s Law. But he also wrote an episode of The Flying Nun.
In addition, he wrote a piece praising the children’s comic book Jingle Jangle Comics from the 1940s that is so completely unlike his other work that it blows you away. Ellison was a comics geek with a huge collection. It’s not surprising that he wrote a two-parter for Marvel comics, spanning The Avengers and The Incredible Hulk (and with a one-eyed character named Psychlop), but that’s what you’d expect from him. Not a Funny Animal appreciation. It’s in the Dick Lupoff’s anthology All in Color for a Dime.
At least three directors known for gritty crime dramas also directed one musical comedy:
- Carol Reed: Oliver!
- Sidney Lumet: The Wiz
- John Huston: Annie
Robert Wise still fascinate me. He was assistant to Orson Welles for The Magnificent Ambersons.
He did classic science fiction like
The Day the Earth Stood Still (!!)
The Andromeda Strain
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
He directed musicals
West Side Story
Sound of Music
Star!
He did historical dramas
The Sand Pebbles
The Hindenburg
Run Silent Run Deep
Helen of Troy
He did horror
The Haunting
Curse of the Cat People
Audrey Rose
My wife’s parents went to high school with him.
Sheldon Leonard is probably most famous for playing Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls and bartender Nick in It’s a Wonderful Life. He had a long acting career, playing many tough guys and henchmen. In the 50s he started producing, directing, and writing for TV shows, often working with Danny Thomas. He was the producer of the following shows: The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle: USMC, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I Spy plus many others.
He’s also credited for inventing the spin-off, and the characters of Leonard and Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory were named after him.