Get a closer look at some of Hollywood's perfect pairs.

Hollywood Power Couples

Get a closer look at some of Hollywood&#39;s perfect pairs.

"The Gentlemen" and "Slow Horses" return this fall, while the "Reacher" spin-off series "Neagley" makes its debut. See our guide of the biggest Fall TV and streaming releases.

2026 Fall TV and Streaming Watch Guide

&quot;The Gentlemen&quot; and &quot;Slow Horses&quot; return this fall, while the &quot;Reacher&quot; spin-off series &quot;Neagley&quot; makes its debut. See our guide of the biggest Fall TV and streaming releases.

Get a closer look at these actors from their many TV and streaming series roles.

Streaming Stars, Then and Now

The term "style over content" fits director Joseph H. Lewis like a glove. His ability to elevate basically mundane and mediocre low-budget material to sublime cinematic art has gained him a substantial cult following among movie buffs. The Bonnie & Clyde look-alike Gun Crazy (1950), shot in 30 days on a budget of $400,000, is often cited as his best film. This taut gangster flick about two gun-crazy sociopaths on a crime spree is impregnated with an electric atmosphere, zipping along at a breakneck pace. It has been likened to a "tone poem of camera movement" and described by Martin Scorsese as "unrelenting and involving". A master of expressive lighting, tight close-ups, tracking and crane shots and offbeat camera angles and perspectives, Lewis possessed an instinctive sense of visual style, which imbued even the most improbable of his B-grade westerns and crime melodramas. Significant peripheral detail was his stock-in-trade. He acquired these skills working as a camera assistant in the 1920's (his aptitude for the work may have been come from his optometrist father) and further honed them in the MGM editorial department in the early '30s. After that Lewis edited serials at Republic and served the remainder of his apprenticeship as second unit director. He was signed to a full directing contract by Universal in 1937.

During the next two decades, Lewis spent time at Columbia (1939-40, 1946-49), Universal again (1942), PRC (1944), MGM (1950, 1952-53) and United Artists (1957-58), reliably turning out a couple of pictures per year. While he helmed more than his fair share of horse operas, it was invariably his films noir which attracted the most attention. Pick of the bunch were two slick second features during his spell at Columbia, My Name Is Julia Ross (1945), about a diabolical murder plot involving Nina Foch in her first starring role; and So Dark the Night (1946), an offbeat psychological thriller with character actor Steven Geray well cast as a French detective who unwittingly investigates his own crimes. Another candidate for inclusion on any Lewis "best" list would have to be The Big Combo (1955), made for Allied Artists and boasting impressive camera work by John Alton. It marked the beginning of a new cycle of films in which violence became rather more accentuated (the film ran into censorship trouble for that reason) and where the villain (in this case, philosophizing racketeer Richard Conte) was rather more interesting and dynamic than the maniacally obsessive but dullish nominal hero (cop Cornel Wilde).

After suffering a heart attack in 1953, Lewis began to reduce his workload. His cinematic curtain call was the low-budget western Terror in a Texas Town (1958), characterized by deliberate and fluid camera movement and some neat touches, like the hero (Sterling Hayden) sporting a harpoon for the climactic final showdown. The idea of successfully uniting the townsfolk against the tyranny of arbitrary rule was also intended as a veiled attack on McCarthyism. With the credits shot through the spokes of a wagon wheel, "Terror" was a fitting finale to Lewis's career.

He spent a few more years directing episodic TV westerns (including several of the better episodes of The Rifleman (1958)) and finally retired in 1966. When not addressing aspiring directors on the lecture circuit, he spent his remaining decades in leisure pursuits, in particular sailing and deep-sea fishing aboard his much-loved 50-foot trawler "Buena Vista".

[regarding the string of &quot;B&quot; westerns he shot at the beginning of his
career] You didn&#39;t have actors; you had cowboys who owned a
horse.

[explaining how he got the nickname &quot;Wagon Wheel Joe&quot;] I carried a box
filled with different wagon wheels. Whenever I&#39;d come to a scene which
was just disgraceful in dialogue and all, I&#39;d place a wagon wheel in
one portion of the frame, and make an artistic shot out of it, so by
the time the scene was over you only saw the artistic value and
couldn&#39;t analyze what the scene was about.

[about his arrival in Hollywood] I had grand illusions of being an
actor. I sported a great big <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0579663/?ref_=nmqu_qu">Adolphe Menjou</a> mustache.

[on the difference between working at a bottom-of-the-barrel studio like PRC and a top-of-the-line studio like MGM] If you asked [MGM] for a little clothes closet, they&#39;d give you an eight-room house.

Quotes

Joseph H. Lewis

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