How Don Siegel Gave Sam Peckinpah His First Break In Film
The director of The Wild Bunch owed a helluva lot to the man responsible for Madigan, Coogan's Bluff and Dirty Harry.
From The Pocket Essential Sam Peckinpah by Richard Luck (2000).
David Samuel Peckinpah is the only man in history to go from serving in the United States Marine Corps to working as a stagehand on The Liberace TV Hour. It was as a production assistant at KLAC-TV that ‘Bloody Sam’ discovered what he wanted to so with the rest of his life.
Peckinpah’s early television duties included sweeping stages, moving sets and helping actors rehearse their lines. The work wasn’t well paid but it let Sam see every aspect of the production process. After months of watching what researchers, producers and writers contributed to shows. Sam decided that he’d like to direct. He got his first gig in 1953, shooting a production of Tennessee Williams’ Portrait Of A Madonna which starred Sam’s then-wife Marie Selland. The end product was so stagy, Peckinpah received just one other directing assignment during his time with the station,
a considerably less ambitious 10-minute children’s TV show, Tom Tit Tot.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to As Luck Would Have It to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.