American film director (1916-1992). Birth name: Jack Arnold Waks. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he started his career as an actor on Broadway; he appeared in plays like "Juke Box Jenny", "Tillie the Toiler", "Tarnished Angel", "Blind Alibi", "Law of the Underworld", "China Passage", and "We're on the Jury". He also acted in a few films, mostly in very small roles; he was in "Margie", "There's One Born Every Minute", "The Mummy's Tomb", and "Pretty Dolly". After serving in the Army during World War II, he began directing short films, earning an Oscar nomination for "With these Hands" in 1950.
In 1953, Arnold began working in feature films, directing, for the most part, B-movies. But though B-movies didn't get much respect in Hollywood, Arnold was responsible for many of the best B-movies--and the best science fiction movies--in film history, including "It Came from Outer Space", "The Creature from the Black Lagoon", "This Island Earth", "Tarantula", "Revenge of the Creature", and "The Incredible Shrinking Man"--that last one could well be his masterwork; he took an idea that could have been merely exploitative, focused on special effects, and turned it into one of the most sensitive, intelligent, lyrical sci-fi films of the '50s, touching on themes like isolation, spirituality, and the nature of existence. Arnold also worked on a number of action movies and crime thrillers, as well as writing "The Monolith Monsters" and directing "High School Confidential" and "The Mouse that Roared".
In the 1960s, work in Hollywood began to dry up, so Arnold took a job with CBS, where he directed everything from "Gilligan's Island" to "The Brady Bunch". He saw a few film jobs, but more and more, he worked in television, directing shows like "Nanny and the Professor", "McCloud", "Ellery Queen", "Wonder Woman", "The Bionic Woman", "Holmes and Yo-Yo", "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries", "The Love Boat", "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", "The Fall Guy", and "Beauty and the Beast".
Arnold died in Woodland Hills, California of arteriosclerosis in 1992.
Research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) and the All Movie Guide (www.allmovie.com) |
