Somebody Down Here Likes Him

As a boy growing up in Connorsville, Ind., Robert Wise said he would make regular trips to the three movie houses in town and sit transfixed in the dark “watching those silent yet eloquent shadows” on the screen.

“I never guessed I would have the power to influence others as those images influenced me,” Wise recalled. “Movies have been my life’s work, the only vocation I’ve ever known.”

Seventy-five years later, Wise stood center stage at a Beverly Hills hotel Thursday night, surrounded by friends and family members who came to honor this son of the heartland who with gentlemanly grace--and remarkably little fanfare for a director--became one of the most enduring filmmakers in Hollywood history.

The four-time Academy Award-winning director and producer of “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music” was there to be honored as the 26th recipient of the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award, the most prestigious award given outside the motion picture academy.

A director who defies being pigeon-holed, Wise has produced and directed critically and commercially successful films in all genres except animation. He sent chills down the spines of moviegoers with “The Haunting,” tackled the sensitive issue of capital punishment with “I Want to Live!” and entranced a generation with his landmark science-fiction tale “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (with its memorable alien dialogue “Klaatu barada nikto”).

Sprinkled throughout the Beverly Hilton Hotel ballroom Thursday night were many of those who had appeared in his films: Julie Andrews, Patricia Neal, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Peter Fonda, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, just to name a few.

Wise, who is 83, also took the opportunity to remember “some friends and co-workers who are no longer with us”: James Cagney, Robert Ryan, Clark Gable, Susan Hayward, Natalie Wood, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen.

“I don’t think any director was ever more fortunate in the great array of talent who shared the effort and enriched the work,” Wise said.

Yet for all the fanfare bestowed on Wise this night (the event will be telecast in the spring on NBC), many Americans may not recognize the name Robert Wise alongside more famous, contemporary directors as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone.

“He did his work at a time when the media were not talking about the directors as media stars, so that’s why he’s not a household name,” said Jean Firstenberg, the AFI’s director. “They know his movies, but they don’t know his name.”

Jack Valenti, who heads the Motion Picture Assn. of America, agreed that Wise may lack instant name identification with the public at large, but said that the industry itself has long known his talents.

“Maybe to some of the general public he’s not as well known as, say, Jack Ford or Steven Spielberg,” Valenti said, “but to the professionals in this business, Bob Wise is a name to be reckoned with.”

The evening’s program was filled with famous film clips and nostalgic anecdotes from those who worked with him. A younger generation of directors--James Cameron (“Titanic”), John Sayles (“Lone Star”) and Martha Coolidge (“Rambling Rose”)--also spoke, telling how watching the director’s films had inspired them in their youth.

Andrews, who hosted the program, recalled how Wise was determined from the outset to “keep the saccharine out” of their World War II-themed musical “The Sound of Music.”

The singer-actress told a humorous account of the difficulty she had filming the movie’s opening scene atop a mountain meadow in Salzburg, Austria.

As a jet-powered helicopter swooped in “crab-like” with a cameraman hanging out the open door, Andrews said, the wind from the blades “slammed me into the grass” over and over, making it nearly impossible for her to stand. Each time she got back on her feet, the actress recalled, she could hear Wise say, “Good, just one more time.”

Nimoy told how Wise was instrumental in getting him to appear in “Star Trek--The Motion Picture.” Wise had learned that Paramount Pictures might not use Nimoy as Spock in the film, the actor recalled, because of a dispute Nimoy was having with the studio. Nimoy said that Wise, “in his gentlemanly way,” made it known to the powers that be that “to make ‘Star Trek’ without Spock is not wise.”

Both Crenna and Bergen said they had great memories working with Wise on “The Sand Pebbles” back in 1966.

Crenna recalled arriving early on the set in Taipei with Richard Attenborough and how amazed they were at how the harbor had been transformed into Shanghai circa 1926, crammed with thousands of extras and sampans. High atop a scaffold shouting orders through a bullhorn was Wise. He was “quite literally directing a city,” said Crenna, who turned to Attenborough and remarked: “My God, I’m going to be in a movie directed by Robert Wise.”

Bergen said that when she did the movie she was 19, the island of Taiwan was called Formosa, the Communist Chinese were dropping leaflets on the island, Steve McQueen was staging his own one-man revolution on the set, and there at the center of it all “stood that pillar of stability--Robert Wise.”

For Charles Durning, who worked for the director in “The Hindenburg,” a vivid memory occurred as the crew was about to blow up the dirigible. Wise, he said, had given specific orders to the special-effects crew that they were to set off the explosions when he raised his arm in the air and then dropped it. Durning said that the assistant director hadn’t heard what the signal was.

“So, he’s asking Bob, ‘What is the signal?’ ” Durning said. Wise raised his arm to show the assistant and then quickly brought it down.

“There was this roar and this boom goes off,” Durning said, “and Bob whips off his hat, slams it into the ground and then stomps on it about two or three times and then sits there with his arms folded and watches this beautiful scene go up in smoke. Now, his secretary comes over and says to him, ‘Mr. Wise, would you like lunch?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I would.’ ‘What would you like to have?’ He said, ‘Arsenic. Arsenic on toast.’ ”

After listening to all the stories and watching clips of his famous films, Wise told the audience that after working so many years in film, he has learned that moviemaking is a collaborative process.

“I hope I made a small difference,” he said. “I hope I helped illuminate the difficult issues surrounding capital punishment in ‘I Want to Live!’ I hope I’ve helped illuminate the dark side of our overseas involvement in Vietnam in ‘The Sand Pebbles.’ I know I reached the hearts of millions with ‘West Side Story’ and ‘The Sound of Music’ and I’m very grateful.”

Then, thanking the AFI for his award, one shared by such movie greats as John Ford, Orson Welles, Frank Capra, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Fred Astaire, Wise said, “On behalf of that young man from Indiana, I’d like to say, ‘Klaatu barada nikto!’ ”