ARTISTS THE AUTEUR

Listen up, dogface: Samuel Fuller taught the movies how to talk about war like a real soldier. As an infantryman in the legendary “Fighting First” infantry division during World War II, Fuller fought from Africa to Sicily, landed in the third wave at Normandy, and moved with his division through Europe before helping to liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Falkenau. When he returned home after the war and launched his career as a screenwriter and director, Fuller was determined to depict and honor his fellow soldiers and their epochal experiences in battle. He did just that in a career that spanned more than 50 years, leaving a legacy of straight-shooting, honest films that remain remarkably fresh and influential.

Fuller was driving in Los Angeles on December 7, 1941, when he heard reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He went immediately to the draft office, and soon, at age 29, he was an infantryman in the U.S. Army. He’d already worked half a dozen different jobs on both coasts and in between. Born in New York City to Russian and Polish immigrants, he’d become the personal copyboy for legendary newspaper editor Arthur Brisbane and then perhaps the world’s youngest crime reporter, when at age 17 he began chasing ambulances for the notorious New York tabloid . He quickly learned the value of a dramatic story, a screaming headline, and a sense of the ridiculous. Writing brought him to Hollywood, where he began producing low-budget stories for Columbia