Russell Rouse | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1913-11-20)November 20, 1913 New York |
| Died | October 2, 1987(1987-10-02) (aged 73) Los Angeles |
| Occupation(s) | Screenwriter, director, producer |
| Years active | 1942–1969 |
| Spouse | Beverly Michaels |
Russell Rouse (November 20, 1913 – October 2, 1987) was an American screenwriter, director, and producer who is noted for the "offbeat creativity and originality"[1] of his screenplays and forfilm noir movies and television episodes produced in the 1950s.[2]
Rouse was the son of film pioneer Edwin Russell; his great uncle was the 1920s actorWilliam Russell. He was educated at UCLA.[2] His first employment in films was in the prop department atParamount Studios, where he began writing screenplays.[1] His play,Yokel Boy, was filmed in 1942 and became his first film writing credit.
Rouse has 18 credits as a screenwriter between 1942 and 1988.[citation needed] Starting withThe Town Went Wild (1944), Rouse co-wrote many stories and scripts withClarence Greene. The partners are noted for their work on a series of six film noirs, starting withD.O.A. (directed byRudolph Maté-1949).[3][4][5] With the second film in the series,The Well (1951), they also took on directing and producing: Rouse as director, and Greene as producer. This collaboration continued through the noir series (The Thief (1952),Wicked Woman (1953),New York Confidential (1955), andHouse of Numbers (1957)). In the late 1950s, Greene and Rouse formed Greene-Rouse Productions, which created the television seriesTightrope that ran for one season (1959–1960) as well as two films in the 1960s.
In addition to their noir work, Rouse and Greene produced two westerns:The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) andThunder in the Sun (1959). The 1959 filmPillow Talk was based on their story. Their careers drew to a close shortly after the unsuccessful filmThe Oscar (1966).[6]
Rouse and Greene were nominated for theAcademy Award for writingThe Well (1951). They received the Academy Award forPillow Talk (1959) (withMaurice Richlin andStanley Shapiro).D.O.A. has been preserved in theNational Film Registry. That film has been remade several times, and they were credited as writers on two of them: the Australian remakeColor Me Dead from 1969 and theD.O.A. remake of 1988.
In 1957, Rouse married actressBeverly Michaels.[2][7][8] Their sonChristopher Rouse (b. 1958) is a noted film editor.
Rouse continued to write until he suffered a stroke in 1981. He died on October 2, 1987, in Los Angeles, California.[9] He was cremated with his ashes scattered at sea.[10] After his death, his wife Beverly Michaels Rouse said: "He worked everything from film props to junior writer to the technical crew. He came up in a classic type way and understood everything you could possibly understand about making the film. He did it all."[11]
Richard (sic) Rouse wrote and directed several interesting noirs, such asThe Well, an insightful look at crowd violence and race relations;The Thief, a Cold War noir known primarily for its gimmick of having not one word of dialogue spoken throughout the entire film; andNew York Confidential, one of the better "confidential" movies inspired by Senator Estes Kefauver's public investigation of organized crime.Wicked Woman is Rouse's cheapest and seediest work, and although the dialogue keeps the script from being hackneyed, there is no one to like in the film.
Apart fromThe Well andD.O.A., not many of these films are actually very good, but Rouse's other filmNew York Confidential, a crime film without a heart that portrays its central characters as family and businessmen, is very well acted by Broderick Crawford, Anne Bancroft, and Richard Conte, and pre-datesThe Godfather by 17 years ...
As a movie,The Oscar was the worst publicity that Hollywood could have devised for itself. Panned by all the critics, it was a fiasco at the box office. "Obviously the community doesn't need enemies as long as it has itself," wrote Bosley Crowther ofThe New York Times.
