Raoul Walsh

With a film career spanning more than half a century, director Raoul Walsh was a highly prolific filmmaker capable of helming quality motion pictures in a wide array of genres that demonstrated a simple but straightforward style. Starting his career as an actor during the silent era - which he continued sporadically thereafter - Walsh struggled to find his footing as a director until helming "The Roaring Twenties" (1939) for Warner Bros., which commenced a fruitful 15-year career that saw his best work come to light. Walsh worked often with some of Hollywood's top talent - Errol Flynn, James Cagney, Virginia Mayo, Humphrey Bogart and Rita Hayworth - on films like "High Sierra" (1941), "Gentlemen Jim" (1942), "Objective, Burma!" (1945) and "Colorado Territory" (1949). He made the archetypal gangster film, "White Heat" (1949) with Cagney, which served as an influence on countless heist movies made years later. But Walsh's fertile period came to an end when his contract at Warner Bros. was up in 1953. He went on to direct notable films like "The Tall Men" (1955) and "Band of Angels" (1957), but nothing that matched his heyday of the previous decades. Despite the 1950s drop off, Walsh's long and productive career marked him for consideration among the best craftsman at work during Hollywood's golden era.