Phil Karlson

Phil Karlson was born on Jul 02, 1908 in USA. Phil Karlson's big-screen debut came with My Pal, the King directed by Kurt Neumann in 1932. Phil Karlson is known for The Scarface Mob directed by Phil Karlson, Robert Stack stars as Eliot Ness and Keenan Wynn as Joe Fuselli. Phil Karlson has got 1 awards and 2 nominations so far. The most recent award Phil Karlson achieved is Directors Guild of America, USA. The upcoming new movie Phil Karlson plays is Framed which will be released on Aug 01, 1975.

Phil Karlson entered the film industry while a law student at Loyola Marymount University in California. He got a job at Universal Pictures as a prop man, then worked pretty much any job they threw at him, from being an assistant director on several Bud Abbott and Lou Costello films to directing short subjects. He finally got a shot at features in 1944. Although he initially worked for low-budget studios like Monogram (where he shot several Bowery Boys and Charlie Chan entries) and Eagle-Lion, his films even then were marked by his penchant for short, tight scenes and sudden bursts of action. He made his mark in the 1950s with a series of tough, realistic, violent crime films noted for their gritty location shooting and Karlson's almost fanatic attention to detail. As good as those films were, though, Karlson was never able to capitalize on them and raise himself out of the B-picture mire, and he was stuck making things like Les blouses blanches (1961), Un direct au coeur (1962) and a pair of the repugnant Matt Helm films with Dean Martin, until he hit it big with Justice sauvage (1973), his biggest commercial success (and which, since he owned a large part of the picture, made him rich).