Robert Wise, Film Director, Dies at 91
The New York Times
Robert Wise, a conscientious craftsman in many movie genres who twice received Academy Awards as best director, died yesterday at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 91.      His death was confirmed by Lawrence Mirisch, a family friend.
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Correction Appended

Robert Wise, a conscientious craftsman in many movie genres who twice received Academy Awards as best director, died yesterday at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 91.

His death was confirmed by Lawrence Mirisch, a family friend.

Mr. Wise enjoyed a long career in which he became a notable editor of such films as Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane," then made a successful transition from making B-movies at RKO Studios during Hollywood's golden era of the 1940's to making important films in the 1950's, 60's and 70's.

His career soared with "West Side Story," the 1961 filming of the landmark Broadway musical, for which he shared an Oscar as best director with the choreographer Jerome Robbins. He received a second Academy Award as producer when the film was voted best picture. He gained his third and fourth Oscars with "The Sound of Music," the lavish 1965 adaptation of the musical stage hit, in which he was again cited as best director and as producer of the best film.

In all, "West Side Story" received 10 Oscars and "Sound of Music" won 5. Mr. Wise also was honored at the Academy Awards ceremony in 1966 with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement as a producer.

Other films by Mr. Wise that continue to enjoy enthusiastic support include "The Body Snatcher," a 1945 horror film with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi; "The Set-Up," a gritty 1949 study of second- rate boxers; and the 1951 science-fiction cult favorite "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Mr. Wise counted among his own favorites "The Haunting," a cult favorite from 1963 with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, and the 1958 drama about capital punishment, "I Want to Live!" Mr. Wise considered himself a director of content, not messages, and he was not afraid to experiment. In 1959 he filmed "Odds Against Tomorrow," an antiracist drama with Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan about a brutal bank robbery that he made without the customary fades (going to black) or dissolves (overlapping scenes) to denote the passage of time. Fades and dissolves, he remarked, tend to slow the tempo and break the mood.

Despite Mr. Wise's versatility, dedication and skill at drawing consistently superior performances from actors, reviewers tended to complain that he left no personal stamp on his films. Detractors dismissed him as a sentimental technician whose movies were increasingly slick, uninventive and occasionally foolish.

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