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 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".
His nickname was "Wagon Wheel Joe," a name he received early in his career when he was shooting B Westerns for Universal. He had a penchant for framing shots through the spokes of the nearest wagon wheel, to break up the visual monotony of a scene. Several of the editors at Universal complained to the studio brass that they had a hard time cutting Lewis films because "he keeps putting these damn wagon wheels in front of everything." Director Oliver Drake , a friend of Lewis and also his boss on those Westerns, jokingly referred to him as "Wagon Wheel Joe," and the name stuck.
Brother of Ben Lewis.
Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 661-666. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich s "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich , George Cukor , Allan Dwan , Howard Hawks , Alfred Hitchcock , Chuck Jones , Fritz Lang , Joseph H. Lewis , Sidney Lumet , Leo McCarey , Otto Preminger , Don Siegel , Josef von Sternberg , Frank Tashlin , Edgar G. Ulmer , Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
He and his wife, Buena, had a daughter named Candy.
