Budd Boetticher - Early Life

Early Life

Boetticher was raised in Evansville in southwest Indiana, born in Chicago, and was a star athlete at Ohio State University. After college he traveled to Mexico, where he learned the art of bullfighting. A chance encounter with Rouben Mamoulian landed him his first film job, as the technical advisor on Blood and Sand (1941).

Soon Boetticher began a career as a journeyman director of B movies on the backlot at Monogram, Columbia, and other small studios, making pictures he later disparaged. He got his first big break when he was asked to direct the film The Bullfighter and the Lady for John Wayne's production company, Batjac, based loosely on his own adventures studying to be a matador in Mexico. He was proud enough of the film that it was the first he signed as "Budd Boetticher," rather than his given name, and it earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Original Story. But the film was edited drastically without his consent, and his career again seemed on hold. (The film has since been restored by the UCLA Film Archive and the restored print is sometimes referred to by its working title, Torero.) Soon after, he signed a contract at Universal and directed a number of program pictures, including The Man from the Alamo, the 3-D western Wings of the Hawk and Red Ball Express, a WW2 drama noteworthy for its integrated cast (including Sidney Poitier). In 1955, he helmed another bullfighting drama, The Magnificent Matador at 20th Century-Fox, which began his frequent collaboration with cinematographer Lucien Ballard, followed by a trim film noir, The Killer Is Loose, for United Artists. He also directed the first three episodes of the TV series Maverick.