At RKO, Wise got his first credited directing job in 1944 while working for Hollywood horror film producer Val Lewton. Wise replaced the original director on the horror film The Curse of the Cat People (1944), when it fell behind schedule.[26][27] The film, a well received "dark fantasy about a solitary child and her imaginary friend", was a departure from the horror films of the day.[28] In many of Wise's films, but especially in Curse of the Cat People and Audrey Rose (1977), the melodrama used a vulnerable child or childlike character to challenge a dark, adult world.[29] Lewton promoted Wise to his superiors at RKO, beginning a collaboration that produced the notable horror film The Body Snatcher (1945), starring Boris Karlof with Bela Lugosi.[30] The film's stylization and atmosphere deliberately evoked the groundbreaking horror films of the 1930s, while presenting a psychological horror film more in tune with the uncertainty of the 1940s.[citation needed] Wise identified the film as a personal favorite and its rave reviews also helped establish his career as a director.[31]
Between Curse and Snatcher, Wise directed Mademoiselle Fifi (1944), an adaptation of two Guy de Maupassant short stories that explored man's darker side with a political subtext.[32] Fifi's feminist perspective and a memorable chase sequence helped make it a "template picture for Wise".[33] Wise also directed film noir, among them the Lawrence Tierney noir classic Born to Kill (1947), and Blood on the Moon (1948), a noir Western starring Robert Mitchum as a cowboy drifter that included memorable night sequences.[34]
Wise's last film for RKO, The Set-Up (1949), was a realistic, well researched boxing movie in which Wise exposed the sport's cruel and exploitative nature.[35] The film also included choreographed fight scenes and "set the bar" for other fight films.[36] The film earned the Critic's Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.[37] Wise's use and mention of time in this film would echo in later noir films such as Stanley Kubrick's The Killing(1956) and Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994).[38][39]
In the 1950s, Wise proved adept in several genres, including science fiction in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); melodrama in So Big (1953);[40] Western in Tribute to a Bad Man (1956), starring James Cagney;[41] fictionalized biography in the boardroom drama Executive Suite (1954); and the epic Helen of Troy (1955) based on Homer. Three Secrets (1950), a soap opera/family melodrama, gave Wise a chance to work with actress Patricia Neal "in a landmark performance about gender double standards".[42] Neal starred in two more Wise films: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Something for the Birds (1952). The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), a science fiction thriller that warned about the dangers of atomic warfare, included a realistic setting and an emphasis on the story instead of special effects.[43] The film received "overwhelmingly positive" reviews[44] and has become "one of the most enduring and influential science fiction films ever made, and among the first produced by a major studio."[45]
The biography of convicted killer Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958), featured Susan Hayward's Oscar winning performance as Graham and earned Wise his first nomination for Best Director.[46] The film became one of the top-grossing pictures of 1959 and was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay from another medium and Best (black and white) Cinematography.[47] In addition, Executive Suite earned Wise a Best Director nomination from the Motion Picture Academy, the Venice Film Festival, and the Director's Guild of America. The film was awarded Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominated it for Best Film.[48] Other Wise-directed films from the 1950s include Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), a portrait of boxer Rocky Graziano, starring Paul Newman;[49][50] Wise's first overt comedy, the problem film, Something for the Birds (1952);[51] the action comedy Destination Gobi (1953);[52] and The Desert Rats (1953), a more traditional war film.[53]
In the 1960s, Wise directed three films adapted from the Broadway stage: West Side Story (1961), Two for the Seesaw (1962) and The Sound of Music (1965).[54] In 1961, teamed with Jerome Robbins, Wise won the Academy Award for Best Director for West Side Story, which Wise also produced. Wise and Robbins were the first duo to share an Academy Award for directing.[55] Wise won a second Oscar, for Best Picture, as the film's producer,[56] West Side Story won ten out of its eleven Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (George Chakiris), Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno), Cinematography (color), Art/Set Decoration (color), Sound, Scoring of a Musical Picture, Editing, and Costume Design (color). It lost for Best Screenplay based on material from another medium to Judgement at Nuremberg (1961).[57] West Side Story was a box office hit, "a cinema masterpiece".[58]
Prior to directing The Sound of Music (1965), Wise directed the psychological horror film The Haunting (1963), starring Julie Harris, in an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's novel, The Haunting of Hill House.[59] Wise's big-budget adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's family-oriented musical The Sound of Music, with Julie Andrews as Maria and Christopher Plummer as Captain von Trapp, became one of film history's top grossing movies.[60] Wise won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for The Sound of Music in 1965.[61] Wise struggled to keep The Sound of Music from being an overly sweet, sentimental story by cutting lesser-known songs and adding new dialogue to improve transitions.[62] In addition to garnering Wise two Oscars, the film won three more for editing, sound and scoring of music for an adaptation.[63]
The Sound of Music was an interim film for Wise, produced to mollify the studio while he developed the difficult film The Sand Pebbles (1966), starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, and Candice Bergen.The Sand Pebbles, Wise's critically acclaimed film epic, was a parable of the Vietnam War, with an antiwar director and message.[64][65] McQueen received his only Oscar nomination for his performance in the film.[56] Set in the late 1920s in China, this was an early entry in a series of Vietnam war era films (Catch-22, M*A*S*H), which, though set in other periods of wartime, nevertheless sounded with its depictions ofgunboat diplomacy what would come to be recognized as timeless themes.[citation needed] Wise would later speak of The Sand Pebbles as the film he most wanted to direct,[citation needed] even though he had already explored such antiwar themes in earlier films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).[66] Excellent reviews for The Sand Pebbles marked Wise's last "creative peak" in his long career.[67] Star! (1968), with Julie Andrews in the lead as Gertrude Lawrence, failed at the box office,[68] although it was consistent with Wise's other successful films that portrayed a strong woman "whose life choices invite melodramatic relationships."[69] Andrews was cast against type, but Wise, as the film's director, took responsibility for the film's shortcomings.[69]
In the 1970s, Wise directed such films as The Andromeda Strain (1971), The Hindenburg (1975), the horror film Audrey Rose (1977) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), the first Star Trek feature film.[70] By this time, Wise's style included much use of split-diopter lenses to create a deep focus effect across the widescreen frame.[citation needed]
Wise's adaptation of Michael Crichton's science-fiction thriller, The Andromeda Strain (1971), an anti-biological warfare film, was a "modest critical hit."[71] His next film, Two People (1973), starring Peter Fonda andLindsay Wagner in another anti-Vietnam War film, got "poor reviews" and is "one of Wise's least-seen movies."[72] The Hindenburg (1975), which profiles the famous 1937 Hindenburg disaster that newsreel cameramen recorded live as the German dirigible burned, was panned by critics, but it won Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Effects.[73] Wise's Audrey Rose (1977), a reincarnation thriller, received mixed reviews and was "sometimes criticized for being an Exorcist (1973) knockoff."[74]
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), the first of the feature films based on the popular television series, was a difficult shoot for Wise. Popular film critic Leonard Maltin called it "Slow, talky, and derivative, somewhat redeemed by terrific special effects".[75]
In 1989, Wise directed Rooftops, his last theatrical feature film. The low-budget musical "opened and closed with no fanfare."[75] At age 86, Wise directed A Storm in Summer (2000) for Showtime (cable television). Starring Peter Falk, it was his only made-for-television movie, airing in 2001,[56] and won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Children's Special.[76]
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