Budd Boetticher, July 29, 1916 - December 1, 2001
Oscar Boetticher Jr. was born on July 29, 1916 in Chicago, Illinois and was adopted by Oscar Boetticher, a hardware dealer. Boetticher was attended Culver Military Academy in Indiana before attending Ohio State University. In 1936, he went to Mexico to recover from a football injury and became enthralled with bullfighting. He apprenticed himself to Carlos Arruza in 1938 and learned enough to enter the ring. It was from this experience that led him to the type of movies he would later make.
He eventually wound up in Mexico, visiting a friend, who got him a job as a horse wrangler on the set of the 1939 film "Of Mice and Men." He was hired again in 1940 by the director of "Blood and Sand" as a technical advisor on bullfighting and moved up from studio messenger to assistant director. He directed a few Propaganda films about the Navy during World War II and served in the Marines from 1946 till 1947. Boetticher's first feature film was entitled "The Missing Juror," a thriller, and led to his first major work, "The Bullfighter and the Lady." It was released in 1951 and starred Robert Stack. It received an Oscar nomination for writing and was produced by John Wayne. It was also the first movie that he used the nickname Budd, which was given to him by Wayne.
Boetticher was the most productive in the '50's, when he released various westerns, action stories and war stories to film and television. He made five movies in 1953 alone, many with famous movie stars such as Rock Hudson, Roddy McDowell, Sidney Poitier and Anthony Quinn. Viewers critically acclaimed his movies, both at home and abroad