William A. Wellman

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William A. Wellman bigraphy, stories - Director, Actor

William A. Wellman : biography

29 February 1896 – 09 December 1975

William Augustus Wellman (February 29, 1896 – December 9, 1975) was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant, but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion. He also directed several well-regarded satirical comedies.

Wellman directed the 1927 film Wings, which became the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony. Variety Magazine, September 17, 2009. Retrieved: September 20, 2009.

World War I

In World War I Wellman enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps as an ambulance driver.Silke 1980, p. 57. While in Paris, Wellman joined the French Foreign Legion and was assigned on December 3, 1917 as a fighter pilot and the first American to join N.87 escadrille in the Lafayette Flying Corps (not the sub-unit Lafayette Escadrille as usually stated), angelfire.com. Retrieved: September 20, 2009. Lafayette Flying Corps Memorial Foundation, 2002. Retrieved: September 20, 2009. where he earned himself the nickname "Wild Bill" and received the Croix de Guerre with two palms.Curtiss, Thomas Quinn. International Herald Tribune (iht.com), February 9, 1994. Retrieved: December 5, 2007. N.87, les Chats Noir (Black Cat Group) was stationed at Lunéville in the Alsace-Lorraine sector and was equipped with Nieuport 17 and later Nieuport 24 "pursuit" aircraft. Wellman’s combat experience culminated in three recorded "kills", along with five probables, although he was ultimately shot down by German anti-aircraft fire on March 21, 1918. Wellman survived the crash but he walked with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life. (He used the limp to his advantage, often exaggerating it when he had to "meet a pretty girl.")

Maréchal des Logis (Sergeant) Wellman received a medical discharge from the Foreign Legion and returned to the United States a few weeks later. He spoke at War Savings Stamp rallies in his French uniform. In September 1918 his book about French flight school and his eventful four months at the front, (written by Wellman with the help of Eliot Harlow Robinson) was published. He joined the United States Army Air Service but too late to fly for America in the war. Stationed at Rockwell Field, San Diego, he taught combat tactics to new pilots.

Early life

Wellman’s father, Arthur Gouverneur Wellman, was a New England Brahmin of English-Welsh-Scottish and Irish descent. William was a great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Puritan Thomas Wellman who immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony about 1640.Wellman, Joshua Wyman Descendants of Thomas Wellman (1918) Arthur Holbrook Wellman, Boston pp. 69-72&441-442 William was a great-great-great grandson of Francis Lewis of New York, one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence. His much beloved mother was an Irish immigrant named Cecilia McCarthy.

Wellman was expelled from Newton High School in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts,FilmReference.com for dropping a stink bomb on the principal’s head. filmlinc.com. Retrieved: December 5, 2007. Ironically, his mother was a probation officer who was asked to address Congress on the subject of juvenile delinquency.Hopwood, Jon C. IMDB biography. Retrieved: July 19, 2008. Wellman worked as a salesman and then at a lumber yard, before ending up playing professional ice hockey, which is where he was first seen by Douglas Fairbanks, who suggested that with Wellman’s good looks he could become a film actor.

Film career

While in San Diego, Wellman would fly to Hollywood for the weekends in his Spad fighter, using Fairbanks’ polo field in Bel Air as a landing strip. Fairbanks was fascinated with the true-life adventures of "Wild Bill" and promised to recommend him for a job in the movie business; he was responsible for Wellman being cast in the juvenile lead of The Knickerbocker Buckaroo (1919). Wellman was hired for the role of a young officer in Evangeline (1919), but was fired for slapping the leading lady, the actress Miriam Cooper, who happened to be the wife of director Raoul Walsh.