Robert Wise

Robert Wise (born September 10, 1914) is an Academy Award winning film director. Born in Winchester, Indiana, Wise began his movie career at RKO as a sound and music editor, but he soon grew to being nominated for the Academy Award for Film Editing for Citizen Kane in 1941. He took his first directing job with the stylish horror film The Curse of the Cat People in 1944. In 1949 he directed the boxing movie The Set-Up, where his direction of the real-time setting got him noticed.

In the 1950s, Wise proved adept in several genres, from the science fiction of The Day the Earth Stood Still to the melodramatic So Big, to Susan Hayward's Oscar winner in I Want to Live!, for which he was nominated for Best Director.

In 1961, teamed with Jerome Robbins, he won the Oscar for West Side Story, and did it again in 1965 with The Sound of Music.

Wise is a past president of both the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6338 Hollywood Blvd.

Academy Awards and Nominations

• 1967 Won Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award
• 1967 Nominated Best Picture The Sand Pebbles
• 1966 Won Best Director The Sound of Music
• 1966 Won Best Picture The Sound of Music
• 1962 Won Best Director West Side Story with Jerome Robbins
• 1962 Won Best Picture West Side Story
• 1959 Nominated Best Director I Want to Live!
• 1942 Nominated Best Film Editing Citizen Kane