John Sturges, Reel Man

I have to admit that I've never considered mid-century tough guy director John Sturges quite up there artistically with contemporaries such as Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann, let alone such brighter, Western-making luminaries as Ford, Hawks and Peckinpah.
But a reassesment is in order, I think, for the guy whose "Magnificent Seven" and "Great Escape" number among the most iconic and fondly referenced blockbusters of the early 1960s.
There are two ways you can reboot your own Sturges appreciation this weekend. First, head to the Egyptian Theatre for the American Cinematheque's mini-retropsective "The Magnificent John Sturges." A new 35mm print of "Magnificent," Sturges' restaging of Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" in an outlaw-plagued Mexican village, screens tonight. Saturday showcases Sturges' two very different takes, made a decade apart, on the Old West's most famous shootout, "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" and "Hour of the Gun." And on Sunday, perhaps Sturges' best film, the bizarre and brutal, desert-set treatise on postwar racism "Bad Day at Black Rock," will be shown with another complicated Western, "The Law and Jake Wade."
The other thing you can do is pick up a copy of film critic and scholar Glenn Lovell's terrific new Sturges biography, "Escape Artist." Lovell will be at the Egyptian signing books tonight and tomorrow, and I can't urge you enough to check out this interview-rich, aesthetically and culturally perceptive look at the fillmaker and his work.
A recent e-mail from Lovell points out a bit of Sturges' significance, both back in his heyday and this very week:

Though clearly ailing at the time, Ricardo Montalban, one of Hollywood's true class acts, consented to an interview, maybe his last, for "Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges" (UWP). Sturges cast him in "Mystery Street" (as a non-race-specific cop) and as a boxer in "Right Cross" who is romantically involved with Hollywood's Girl Next Door, June Allyson.
Speaking of life as an MGM contract player, Montalban told me, "I had something of a following in those days, but I was still playing Hispanic characters. The Sturges film ('Mystery Street') was a definite breakthrough for me. It was a well-written scenario that just told it like it was and made no apologies for my character having an accent. It was the first time that had happened for me, and, I think, one of the first times it had been done in a Hollywood movie."
About "Right Cross" he added: "We were dealing head-on with racial issues, and my self-hating (boxer) was controversial to a certain extent. But the movie was considered a step in the right direction."
Two of Sturges' leading actors gone in a single day this week -- the other was Patrick McGoohan, who starred in "Ice Station Zebra," Howard Hughes' favorite sick-room diversion.

With Lovell around, the Cinematheque's Sturges retrospective should be a film fan's delight.