Raoul Walsh

Walsh was born in New York as Albert Edward Walsh to Elizabeth T. Bruff, the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants, and Thomas W. Walsh, an Englishman. Walsh was part of Omega Gamma Delta in high school, as was his younger brother. Growing up in New York, Walsh was also a friend of the Barrymore family. John Barrymore recalled spending time reading in the Walsh family library as a youth.

After Walsh's mother died, the youth left home when he was fifteen years old and traveled through Texas, Montana and Cuba, also working in Mexico as a cowboy. Later in life, Walsh lived in Palm Springs, California. He was buried at Assumption Cemetery Simi Valley, Ventura County, California.

After returning to New York, Walsh was educated at Seton Hall College. He began acting in 1909, first as a stage actor in New York City and later as a film actor. In 1913 he changed his name to Raoul Walsh. In 1914 he became an assistant to director D. W. Griffith and made his first full-length feature film as an actor, The Life of General Villa. It was shot on location in Mexico with Pancho Villa playing the lead. Ongoing battles were filmed in progress as well as battle recreations. Walsh played Villa as a younger man.

Walsh played John Wilkes Booth in Griffith's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915) and also served as an assistant director. His next performance was in the critically acclaimed Regeneration in 1915, the earliest feature gangster film. It was shot on location in Manhattan's Bowery district.

Walsh served during World War I as an officer in the United States Army. Years later he directed the fantasy film The Thief of Bagdad (1924), starring Douglas Fairbanks and Anna May Wong, and Laurence Stallings' What Price Glory? (1926), starring Victor McLaglen and Dolores del Río.

In Sadie Thompson (1928), starring Gloria Swanson as a prostitute seeking a new life in Samoa, Walsh starred as Swanson's boyfriend. It was his first acting role since 1915, and he also directed the film. He was next hired to direct and star in In Old Arizona, a film about O. Henry's character the Cisco Kid.

While on location for that film, Walsh was in a car crash when a jackrabbit jumped through the windshield as he was driving through the desert. He lost his right eye as a result and wore an eyepatch for the rest of his life. He gave up the role and never acted again. Warner Baxter won an Oscar for the role Walsh was originally slated to play.

In the early days of sound with Fox, Walsh directed the first widescreen spectacle, The Big Trail (1930), an epic wagon train western shot on location across the West. The movie starred John Wayne, then unknown, whom Walsh had discovered as a prop man named Marion Morrison. He was renamed after Revolutionary War general Mad Anthony Wayne; Walsh happened to be reading a book about him at the time. Walsh directed The Bowery (1933), featuring Wallace Beery, George Raft, Fay Wray and Pert Kelton. The energetic movie recounts the story of Steve Brodie (Raft), supposedly the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and live to brag about it.

An undistinguished period followed with Paramount Pictures from 1935 to 1939, but Walsh's career rose to new heights after he moved to Warner Brothers. He directed with The Roaring Twenties (1939), featuring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart; Dark Command (1940), with John Wayne and Roy Rogers (at Republic Pictures); They Drive By Night (1940), with George Raft, Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino and Bogart; High Sierra (1941), with Lupino and Bogart again; They Died with Their Boots On (1941), with Errol Flynn as Custer; The Strawberry Blonde (1941), with Cagney and Olivia de Havilland; Manpower (1941), with Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich and George Raft; and White Heat (1949), with Cagney. Walsh's contract at Warners expired in 1953.

He directed several films afterwards, including three with Clark Gable: The Tall Men (1955), The King and Four Queens (1956) and Band of Angels (1957). After helping create the story for None but the Brave (released in 1965) and directing A Distant Trumpet, Walsh retired in 1964. He died of a heart attack in 1980.