Peckinpah's great-grandfather, Rice Peckinpaugh, a merchant and farmer in Indiana, moved to Humboldt County, California, in the 1850s, working in the logging business, and changed the spelling of the family name to "Peckinpah". Peckinpah Meadow and Peckinpah Creek, where the family ran a lumber mill on a mountain in the High Sierra north of Coarsegold, California, have been officially named on U.S.
During this period, Peckinpah said that his life was changed by seeing Carlos Saura's La Caza (1966), which profoundly influenced his subsequent oeuvre. The film detailed a gang of veteran outlaws on the Texas/Mexico border in 1913 trying to survive within a rapidly approaching modern world.
David Samuel Peckinpah (; February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch (1969).
He was a cousin of former New York Yankees shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh. ==Life== David Samuel Peckinpah was born February 21, 1925, to David Edward and Fern Louise (née Church) Peckinpah in Fresno, California, where he attended both grammar school and high school.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Coarsegold and Bass Lake were still populated with descendants of the miners and ranchers of the 19th century.
During the 1930s and 1940s, Coarsegold and Bass Lake were still populated with descendants of the miners and ranchers of the 19th century.
At that time, it was a rural area undergoing extreme change, and this exposure is believed to have affected Peckinpah's Western films later in life. He played on the junior varsity football team while at Fresno High School, but frequent fighting and discipline problems caused his parents to enroll him in the San Rafael Military Academy for his senior year. In 1943, he joined the United States Marine Corps.
The screenplay was based on a novel about a platoon of German soldiers in 1943 on the verge of utter collapse on the Taman Peninsula on the Eastern Front.
While a student, he met and married his first wife, Marie Selland, in 1947.
During his senior year, he adapted and directed a one-hour version of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. After graduation in 1948, Peckinpah enrolled in graduate studies in drama at University of Southern California.
It became one of the most critically praised science fiction films of the 1950s.
At the time, he was working on the script for On the Rocks, a projected independent film to be shot in San Francisco. ==Television career== On the recommendation of Don Siegel, Peckinpah established himself during the late 1950s as a scriptwriter of western series of the era, selling scripts to Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Rifleman, Broken Arrow, Klondike, and Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre.
Reportedly, he was kicked off the set of The Liberace Show for not wearing a tie, and he refused to cue a car salesman during a live feed because of his attitude towards stagehands. In 1954, Peckinpah was hired as a dialogue coach for the film Riot in Cell Block 11.
He wrote one episode "The Town" (December 13, 1957) for the CBS series, Trackdown, starring Robert Culp as the Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman.
His writing led to directing, and he directed a 1958 episode of Broken Arrow (generally credited as his first official directing job) and several 1960 episodes of Klondike, (co-starring James Coburn, L.
Adams and Eve, starring Howard Duff and Ida Lupino. In 1958, Peckinpah wrote a script for Gunsmoke that was rejected due to content.
Peckinpah wrote and directed a pilot called Trouble at Tres Cruzes, which was aired in March 1959 before the actual series was made in 1960.
After divorcing Selland, the mother of his first four children, in 1960, he married Mexican actress Begoña Palacios in 1964.
His writing led to directing, and he directed a 1958 episode of Broken Arrow (generally credited as his first official directing job) and several 1960 episodes of Klondike, (co-starring James Coburn, L.
Peckinpah wrote and directed a pilot called Trouble at Tres Cruzes, which was aired in March 1959 before the actual series was made in 1960.
The script is about a cowardly town afraid to resist the clutches of an outlaw gang. Peckinpah wrote a screenplay from the novel The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones, a draft that evolved into the 1961 Marlon Brando film One-Eyed Jacks.
The Westerner, which has since achieved cult status, further established Peckinpah as a talent to be reckoned with. In 1962, Peckinpah directed two hour-long episodes for The Dick Powell Theater.
After divorcing Selland, the mother of his first four children, in 1960, he married Mexican actress Begoña Palacios in 1964.
Eventually directed by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen, the film went on to become a 1965 hit. ===Noon Wine=== Peckinpah caught a lucky break in 1966 when producer Daniel Melnick needed a writer and director to adapt Katherine Anne Porter's short novel Noon Wine for television.
Eventually directed by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen, the film went on to become a 1965 hit. ===Noon Wine=== Peckinpah caught a lucky break in 1966 when producer Daniel Melnick needed a writer and director to adapt Katherine Anne Porter's short novel Noon Wine for television.
In 1967, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts producers Kenneth Hyman and Phil Feldman were interested in having Peckinpah rewrite and direct an adventure film, The Diamond Story.
By the fall of 1967, Peckinpah was rewriting the screenplay into what became The Wild Bunch.
An episode of the series eventually served as the basis for Tom Gries' 1968 film Will Penny starring Charlton Heston.
The Wild Bunch is framed by two ferocious and infamous gunfights, beginning with a failed robbery of the railway company office and concluding with the outlaws battling the Mexican army in suicidal vengeance prompted by the brutal torture and murder of one of their members. Irreverent and unprecedented in its explicit detail, the 1969 film was an instant success.
Peckinpah received his only Academy Award nomination (for Best Original Screenplay) for this film. ===The Ballad of Cable Hogue=== Defying audience expectations, as he often did, Peckinpah immediately followed The Wild Bunch with the elegiac, funny and mostly non-violent 1970 Western The Ballad of Cable Hogue.
In May 1971, weeks after completing Straw Dogs, he returned to the United States to begin work on Junior Bonner.
Both Peckinpah and McQueen needed a hit, and they immediately began working on the film in February 1972.
While still filming The Getaway in El Paso, Texas, Peckinpah sneaked across the border into Juarez in April 1972 and married Joie Gould.
The film remains popular and was remade in 1994, starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. ==Later career== The year 1973 marked the beginning of the most difficult period of Peckinpah's life and career.
Peckinpah reportedly loved this sketch and enjoyed showing it to friends and family. Peckinpah's penchant for filming action scenes in slow motion was satirized by UK comedian Benny Hill, playing a milkman in a Western skit called "The Deputy" that first aired on his March 29, 1973 special.
In one scene, Hill's titular character shoots one of the villains (Bob Todd), who then proceeds to pirouette in extremely slow motion before collapsing. In the 1973 Sergio Leone/Tonino Valerii spaghetti Western My Name is Nobody, the characters Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda) and "Nobody" (Terence Hill) meet at a cemetery.
Today, the film is considered one of Peckinpah's weakest films, and an example of his decline as a major director. ===Cross of Iron=== Still renowned in 1975, Peckinpah was offered the opportunity to direct the eventual blockbusters King Kong (1976) and Superman (1978).
The film wrapped in September 1977, 11 days behind schedule and $5 million over budget.
Four of his films, Major Dundee (1965), The Wild Bunch (1969), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), were filmed entirely on location within Mexico, while The Getaway (1972) concludes with a couple escaping to freedom there. From 1979 until his death, Peckinpah lived at the Murray Hotel in Livingston, Montana.
But during the summer of 1981, his original mentor Don Siegel gave him a chance to return to filmmaking.
For the final time, Peckinpah found himself back in the directing business. ===The Osterman Weekend=== By 1982, Peckinpah's health was poor.
By the time shooting wrapped in January 1983 in Los Angeles, Peckinpah and the producers were hardly speaking.
David Samuel Peckinpah (; February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch (1969).
He died of [failure] at age 59 on December 28, 1984, in Inglewood, California.
In 1988, however, Peckinpah's director's cut was released on video and led to a reevaluation, with many critics hailing it as a mistreated classic and one of the era's best films.
In 1991, UCLA's film school organized a festival of great but forgotten American films, and included Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia in the program.
The film remains popular and was remade in 1994, starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. ==Later career== The year 1973 marked the beginning of the most difficult period of Peckinpah's life and career.
A rare film which had no home video release until 2014, Noon Wine is today considered one of Peckinpah's most intimate works, revealing his dramatic potential and artistic depth. ==International fame== ===The Wild Bunch=== The surprising success of Noon Wine laid the groundwork for one of the most explosive comebacks in film history.
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