Samuel Fuller Biography

Samuel Fuller was a maverick filmmaker who wowed critics in the 1950s and ’60s with low-budget movies such as Pickup on South Street (1953), House of Bamboo (1955) and The Naked Kiss (1964). He started his career as a New York crime reporter when he was still a teenager. He then spent almost all of World War II as a combat infantryman, earning a Bronze Star and a Silver Star along the way. During and after the war, Fuller wrote pulp fiction and, by 1948, took to writing, producing and directing movies. He made a variety of B movies in the 1950s and ’60s, earning a reputation for stories or violence and corruption. He didn’t complete many movies during the 1970s, but had a comeback with The Big Red One (1980), a semi-autobiographical movie about his experiences in World War II. By that time, Fuller had achieved near-cult status, praised for his independence and cinematic instinct. His films include I Shot Jesse James (1949), Hell and High Water (1955), Merrill’s Marauders (1963) and White Dog (1982).