Richard Fleischer

Richard Owen Fleischer (/ˈflaɪʃər/; December 8, 1916 – March 25, 2006) was an American film director. His career spanned more than four decades, beginning at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1940s, and lasting through the New Hollywood era, until the late 1980s. He was the son of animation pioneer Max Fleischer, and served as chairman of Fleischer Studios.

Fleischer began his career in B department of RKO Pictures, mainly directing noirs and crime dramas like The Narrow Margin (1952). Though he went on to direct films across many genres and styles, he is best known for his big-budget "tentpole" films and star vehicles, including: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), The Vikings (1958), Barabbas (1961), Fantastic Voyage (1966), Doctor Dolittle (1967), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), Soylent Green (1973), Mandingo (1975), and the Robert E. Howard sword-and-sorcery films Conan the Destroyer (1984) and Red Sonja (1985).

He is also known for his informal series of true crime films — The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), based on the Nesbit-Thaw scandal; Compulsion (1959), based on the Leopold and Loeb trial; The Boston Strangler (1968), based on the early 1960s serial killer; and 10 Rillington Place (1971), based on John Christie. Early in his career, he directed the Oscar-winning documentary Design for Death (1947).

Noted for his versatility, Fleischer was popular among producers and studios, earning a reputation as a reliable journeyman. Though he was not considered an auteur and was never a highly acclaimed artist in his lifetime, many of Fleischer's films proved very financially and critically successful, winning accolades and being some of the highest-grossing features of their release years.