Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend. Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of 'W. Somerset Maugham' . He died on December 31, 1980, in Simi Valley, California, at the age of 93.
Final resting place: Assumption Catholic Cemetery, Simi Valley, California.
Lost his right eye and lead role on location for In Old Arizona when a jackrabbit leaped into the windshield of his car.
One of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Brother of actor George Walsh.
He often repeated Jack Pickford s wisecrack about him: "Your idea of light comedy is to burn down a whorehouse."
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.
Is portrayed by Kyle Chandler in And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself .
Was originally slated to direct Adventures of Don Juan , in 1945, however Errol Flynn had a falling-out with him.
D.W. Griffith had vowed to make a director of Walsh and sent him down to Mexico to make a documentary on the notorious Pancho Villa. Walsh rode with the revolutionary leader from Juarez to Mexico City, recording the journey on film. Walsh later confirmed a long-standing rumor--after a battle in which Villa took many federal soldiers prisoner, he made Walsh and his crew film the prisoners executions by firing squad. When Walsh got back to Hollywood, however, studio executives refused to allow the executions to be included in the documentary, as they were deemed too grisly for audiences to watch.
Was a pallbearer at Errol Flynn s funeral along with Mickey Rooney , Guinn Big Boy Williams , Jack Oakie , Mike Romanoff and Otto Reichow on October 19, 1959, at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn, Glendale, CA.
Directed one Oscar-nominated performance: Gloria Swanson in Sadie Thompson .
Walsh remade three of his own films: Carmen (1915/I) as The Loves of Carmen ; The Strawberry Blonde as One Sunday Afternoon ; and High Sierra as Colorado Territory .
Changed his name--at the suggestion of playwright friend Paul Armstrong --from Albert Edward Walsh to the more exotic Raoul Walsh.
Was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Signal Corps during World War I but never went to Europe. He managed war footage for bond drives and arranged to have Mary Pickford sell war bonds.
After playing bits in films Walsh drew the attention of director Christy Cabanne , who secured a series of bit parts in good pictures at Biograph with Blanche Sweet , Mary Pickford , Lionel Barrymore , Dorothy Gish and Lillian Gish , Cabanne then introduced Walsh to D.W. Griffith , who took him west and secured him some directing jobs.
Walsh was picked by Biograph to go to Mexico and meet Mexican bandit-turned-revolutionary Pancho Villa. Walsh returned to the U. S. with enough footage for a seven-reel feature written by and starring Walsh as Villa with Christy Cabanne directing.
Walsh disliked his first wife, actress Miriam Cooper , intensely and referred to her in his autobiography as the "mercenary witch." As both were Catholics, Cooper never remarried after their divorce. They had two adopted sons.
The family of Walshs mother, Elizabeth Brough, could trace her family back before the Revolutionary War. His father Thomas was an Irish revolutionary who had escaped from a Dublin jail. They were married in St. Patricks Cathedral. Thomas made a good living tailoring, designing and cutting mens clothes. The older Walsh designed the uniforms for Theodore Roosevelt s Rough Riders and made enough from the war to buy a mansion in the West Nineties near Riverside Drive, where he entertained such celebrities as Roosevelt, William F. Cody , Diamond Jim Brady, Enrico Caruso , Frederic Remington and Lillian Russell.
Jane Russell said in her biography that Walsh was blind towards the end of his life.
Wrote his autobiography - Each Man In His Time.
As a young man he was a sea going adventurer and a cowboy.
You can really double anybody. If the action is good enough, it can be a,monkey with top-hat and spats. .
