Legacy deserves better than a B

Director Don Siegel, known for such films as 1957’s “Baby Face Nelson” and the classic 1971 cop thriller “Dirty Harry,” was an exacting filmmaker, Clint Eastwood recalls, and that required actors always to be prepared.

“The thing I learned from him the most is ‘always trying for the shot,’ ” says Eastwood, who starred in five of Siegel’s films and counts him as one of the biggest influences in his own directing career. “Sometimes you get the feeling with some directors that they are not trying for it. Maybe after eight or 10 takes they will start kind of getting serious about it. Don was always serious about it from the beginning. The actors had to be on their toes. You had to be ready to go. But that was sort of the style then. Nowadays, people get much more wrapped up in details. I always took on the philosophy [as a director] that I was always trying for it.”

Eastwood will be discussing his collaboration and friendship with Siegel on Wednesday evening at “An Academy Salute to Don Siegel” at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theatre. Curtis Hanson, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director of “L.A. Confidential” and a friend of Siegel, will host.

Besides clips, the academy will screen a new print of one of Siegel’s most influential films, the terrifying sci-fi thriller “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

The evening will kick off a 2 1/2 -week retrospective of Siegel’s films presented by the UCLA Film and Television Archive at the James Bridges Theater.

Among the films featured are Siegel’s first box office hit, 1954’s hard-hitting “Riot in Cell Block 11”; “Baby Face Nelson,” starring a tough-nosed Mickey Rooney; the violent 1958 crime thriller, “The Lineup”; the uncompromising 1962 war film, “Hell Is for Heroes,” starring Steve McQueen in one of his strongest performances; the 1964 thriller “The Killers,” which was produced for TV but released theatrically after NBC deemed it too violent; and three of the films Eastwood made with Siegel -- 1979’s “Escape From Alcatraz” and 1971’s “Dirty Harry” and “The Beguiled.”

Siegel, who was born in 1912 and died in 1991, began his movie career at Warner Bros. in 1933 as an assistant at the stock film library. By the end of the decade, he had worked his way up to head of the montage department, where he created the indelible montages for such film as “The Roaring Twenties” and “Casablanca.”

It was Eastwood who chose “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” for the opening of the retrospective.

“I revisited it recently -- it was in the last five years or so -- and it is still one of the best movies he ever made,” says Eastwood. “It is very simple, because obviously they had very little money to get that production rolling, but Don could make a lot out of a little, and that’s where his expertise was. He was mostly doing B movies, but he worked very fast and efficient and had a concept and made it work.”

Eastwood didn’t know Siegel when he first began working with the director on 1968’s cop thriller “Coogan’s Bluff,” though he had seen a few of his pictures.

“As we got working, I looked at a lot of his stuff,” says Eastwood. “He was an interesting character, and we became fast friends. He was just very solid with what he wanted to do when he came in during that day. All of those guys were a little bit cantankerous. If things were going bad he would get upset sometimes, but basically he was an easy person to work for....”

Hanson, chairman of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, says it’s regrettable that most contemporary audiences aren’t familiar with Siegel. Though “Dirty Harry” and “Alcatraz” are always popping up on television, the majority of his films have disappeared from view.

“I think people who know movies know Don Siegel,” he says. “Unfortunately, the memories are so short today that unless you are talking about giants like Hitchcock, Hawks and Ford....”

Siegel, says Hanson, “was among the last significant directors to not only come up through the studio system but to labor under the studio system for most of his career until he teamed up with Clint. He was almost always under contract -- Warner Bros., Allied Artists and Universal.”

What makes his films so relevant, says Hanson, is that being a contract director, he made pictures that, for the most part, were assigned to him, and he lost far more battles than he won with the studio. “But even with that double whammy, he was able to create a body of work of real distinction and personality.

“You go back to look at those titles: ‘Body Snatchers,’ you add ‘Madigan,’ ‘Riot in Cell Block 11’ and ‘Hell Is for Heroes.’ Those are all B movies, so-called, and yet they are so distinguished by his craftsmanship, personality and most of all, point of view. What’s exciting about both the academy thing and the retrospective is it is a chance to certainly reevaluate or reintroduce, if you will, a director that most contemporary filmmakers can learn some very valuable lessons from -- myself included, by the way.”

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Don Siegel

Where: Samuel Goldwyn Theatre, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., and James Bridges Theater, UCLA

When: Wednesday through Aug. 7

Price: $5 to $7

Contact: (310) 206-FILM or www.cinema.ucla.edufor screenings at UCLA; (310) 247-3060 or www.oscars.orgfor academy event

Schedule

Wednesday: “An Academy Salute to Don Siegel,” 8 p.m. (Academy -- all other events at UCLA)

Friday: “Hitler Lives?” “Riot in Cell Block 11,” “Escape From Alcatraz,” 7:30 p.m.

Saturday: “Baby Face Nelson,” “The Big Steal,” 7:30 p.m.

July 27: “The Lineup,” “Dirty Harry,” 7:30 p.m.

July 31: “Star in the Night,” “Night Unto Night,” “Breaking Point,” 2 p.m.

Aug. 4: “The Killers,” “Hell Is for Heroes,” 7:30 p.m.

Aug. 6: “Madigan,” “Private Hell 36,” 7:30 p.m.

Aug. 7: “The Beguiled,” “Charley Varrick,” 7 p.m.