A Third Face My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking by Fuller, Samuel, Fuller, Christa Lang, Rudes, Jerome Henry [Applause Theatre & Cinema Books,2004]

by Samuel Fuller

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Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, History, Autobiography, Media Tie In

Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Samuel Michael Fuller was an American film director, screenwriter and novelist. Many of his films are remembered for their controversial topics and presentations.

Fuller's family moved from Worcester, Massachusetts to New York City after the death of his father. At the age of 12, he began working as a newspaper copyboy. He became a crime reporter at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. During the Depression years he traveled across the United States by hitchhiking and riding trains. By the time the U.S. entered WWII Fuller had writing credit for several screenplays and had published in the pulp fiction trade.

Samuel Fuller served as an infantryman in World War II with the famed U.S. Army 1st Infantry Division, 16th Infantry Regiment. He fought in North Africa, Sicily, France, and Germany and was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart and the Combat Infantryman's Badge (CIB). The movie The Big Red One (written and directed by Fuller) is considered to be a semi-autobiographical account of his war experience.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know, I loved this book, and remembered loving Fuller's lurid "Naked Kiss"... but after reading this book I went on a Fuller film binge, and... well, he made a lot of terrible movies, there is no getting around that. But what is amazing about him is that he always fought to make HIS movies, even giving up a successful hollywood career to do so. The guy is all integrity, and was always true to his pulpy genius, sticking to his "ballsy yarns".

But watch his 400 Guns and Anthony Mann's The Furies back to back -- both with Stanwyck in her old west dominatrix mode -- and see the difference between great filmmaking and Fuller's pulpiness.

Still, you have to admire the consistency of a guy who, when he died in his mid-80's, was working on a screenplay called "Girls in Prison."

[Nathan Rabin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not just a great book. It's a veritable how-to guide on how to be a great American

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my first memories of Sam Fuller was from an extra on the PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET DVD. In it, Sam commented on the idea of soldiers "giving their lives for their country." His comment that 

"They didn't give their lives for their country. They had their lives taken from them."

It was 2003. The Iraq War had commenced and everywhere you encountered the vacuous idiot patriotism that was somehow supposed to justify the whole God damned disaster. To hear something like this, outraged honesty against a hollow force of lies you had to live in every second for years, was a needed comfort for those who knew the whole enterprise was a lie and would only reveal unspeakable horrors as those years passed.

From that moment on, I was a Sam Fuller fan because he was a guy who knew what was going on.

Now, 17 years after I first discovered Sam Fuller, I finally had the privilege of reading the Man's autobiography, A Third Face.

Of course I'm kicking myself for not having read it earlier. The short answer is that the rage Sam displayed was borne of the kind of knowledge you only get from living a Life. I knew the broad strokes, the man started in newspapers, wandered into the movies, then found hinself fighting with 1ID ("The Big Red One") through World War II, and then a lucrative career directing pictures until the 1980s. For a while, that was enough.

Until the opportunity came to read the book. Sam took the time to write the kind of book that'll make you laugh, thrill the hell out of you, and in sone parts... you'll find out for yourself.

Every chapter is an adventure all by itself. The terse, direct style Sam brought to his movies and books, is shown here where every piece of his life was an epic from the days as a newsie to living out of the hellbox to earning a silver star on the beaches at Normandy to shooting in post-War Japan to being an elder statesman of the medium in a quasi exile in France in the 1980s and 90s.

There is not a wasted word- no doubt forged as a reporter in New York City- and the effect of just a ten ir so pages will cause the reader to sit down and reflect on the intensity of the moments Sam lived. And so much of it is just funny. 

The wartime every stories hold the ring of truth even though anyone who's ever been on duty knows there's always a bit of bullstuff involved, but Sam writes it so well you shouldn't care. They're raucous, grotesque, depraved, and horrifying. 

For film fans, his stories of the inspiration, the deals, and the creation of his films are both concise, and informative. He also deals with the "could have been" projects and the challenges involved in making these films. The thrills of making those early successes jump at you, and the later trangressions that marred his later works are well examined and if you're familiar with the films in question (THE BIG RED ONE and WHITE DOG), you'll walk away mad at the uncontrollable forces that prematurely ended Sam's career in American filmmaking. 

A Third Face is that living force of a man and a career that escapes from print and demands you seek the referenced films Sam writes so carefully about. The only problem you'll have is that some are easily available (THE BIG RED ONE) and some require a bit of searching (PARK ROW). Sam Fuller. Great soldier. Great writer. Great filmmaker. Great American.

Thirty.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great writer, filmmaker and raconteur who also fought Nazis. It was a different time.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a lot of biographies over the years, but this is absolutely one of the very best. The writer director of PICK UP ON SOUTH STREET, SHOCK CORRIDOR, THE NAKED KISS, THE BIG RED ONE, STEEL HELMET and WHITE DOG lead an action-packed life and there are no lulls in this rich, exciting and rewarding memoir.

In 2013, Fuller's daughter Samantha Fuller directed a number of Sam's friends, admirers and former co-stars reading sections of this memoir in the documentary A FULLER LIFE. Her mother and Fuller's wife, Christa Lang-Fuller, produced the documentary.

The cast of readers are: Jennifer Beals (reading "Crime Reporter"); Robert Carradine (reading "The Big Red One: Zab"); Joe Dante (reading "Sicily Black and Blue"); Bill Duke (reading "Freelance"); James Franco (reading "Copy Boy"); William Friedkin (reading "My Ballsy Yarns"); Mark Hamill (reading "The Big Red One: Griff"); Monte Hellman (reading "Vision of the Impossible"); Buck Henry (reading "The Pursuit of Happiness");Perry Lang (reading "The Big Red One: Kaiser"); Tim Roth (reading "D-Day - an Invitation to Hell"); James Toback (reading "Chaos & Bewilderment"); Constance Towers (reading "Grab 'Em. Slap 'Em. Shake 'Em up."); Kelly Ward (reading "The Big Red One: Johnson"); and Wim Wenders (reading "A River of Tears").

[Djll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sam Fuller is the node where Damon Runyon and John Huston -- or do I mean Jim Thompson and Roger Corman? -- meet. Full of two-fisted tales, this fast-reading book is memorable for the vivid picture of the heyday of "the newspaperman" and the matter-of-fact chronicle of campaign after nightmarish campaign of his Army unit through Europe in WW2, which encompassed the North African war, the invasion of Sicily and D-day, not to mention the Battle of the Bulge and subsequent liberation of the Falkenau death camp (which Fuller captured on film, not released until 1988, and then not by Fuller, but by Emil Weiss, who'd gotten Fuller's permission (Falkenau: Vision of The Impossible).

So it's almost anticlimactic when we arrive at the Hollywood years. Fuller, always alert to the pulpy turn of phrase and vividly colored mise-ens-scene, keeps things popping right along. He had his triumphs, and his failures (which probably outnumber the successes), but at bottom he seems an honest guy, full of maybe a little more than the normal level of ego and self-importance, but always trying to keep it real.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

There aren't enough words to fill a book to give any reader a full impression of someone's life, especially that of Samuel Fuller who has lived a life of many souls. From his youth of being a journalist and scouring the US for crime stories to fighting in the war and storming the beaches of Normandy to joining Hollywood's most illustrious circle as film director and finally turning to fatherhood at age sixty-two.

After five hundred pages, you felt like he had more to give, but old age is a motherfucker. In the end, Samuel Fuller breathed life and through it all he kept his humility, sense of humor, and integrity.

[Brian DiMattia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only learned about Fuller in the late 90s after seeing the IFC documentary "The Typewriter, The Rifle and the Movie Camera," but I was so amazed by what I saw that I had to know more. Fuller was a great director, but I didn't realize that he lived an incredible life.

*One of the youngest crime beat reporters in the history of New York.
*Rode the rails during the great depression writing stories of the hobos that moved from town to town.
*Became a screen writer and novelist.
*Fought through Sicily and France under General Mark Clark.
*Came home and returned to writing.
*Eventually started directing his own scripts.
*Became a major influence to French New Wave cinema and to several of the modern greats like Scorsese, Tarantino and Jarmusch.

For those who haven't yet seen his films, Fuller made action movies: Westerns, war films, pulp fiction and crime thrillers. But he made them with style and emotional force. His character were never the one dimensional ones that filled the gaps between major explosions that modern action movies feature (Michael Bay, I'm looking at you). Everything Fuller did had a reason and served his main goal...telling a good story.

And this book is filled with great stories! Fuller's World War II stories, many of which made it into his semi-autobiographical "The Big Red One" are among the best I've ever heard. His stories from the New York newspaper wars paint a thrilling time in a seedy old town. But best of all are his stories about all the movies he never got to make. Fuller had more stories to tell than he would ever get to, and I'd truly love to see some modern directors pick them up, instead of remaking TV shows and older films.

[Conrad Wesselhoeft · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Third Face" is one of the great crusty, caustic memoirs in the Hollywood canon.

Fuller was an old-school cigar smoker of pithy phrase, maverick inclination, and artistic courage. As a crime reporter in New York in the 20s, as a hobo in the 30s, as a GI in World War II, as a novelist, screenwriter and director of noir and war movies ("Pickup on South Street," "House of Bamboo," "The Big Red One"), Fuller was a force of nature, a feisty realist who knew how to tell a story. The photo on the back cover speaks volumes: raised pistol in one hand; a camera lens in the other. Yet he was, at core, a powerful pacifist. He was a survivor.

Fuller's style is profane, anecdotal, street wise and hugely engaging. His account of his "dogface" years as a G.I. in North Africa, Italy, France and Germany is one of the best descriptions of WWII Army life I've read.

Later, Hollywood studios offered him big money to make their blockbusters ("The Longest Day," "Patton"), but he turned them down so he could make little movies his own way. ("I make A movies on B budgets," he liked to say.)

Out of curiosity,I rented a couple of his movies. "Pickup on South Street," with Richard Widmark, just crackled. "Shock Corridor," with Peter Breck, was . . . dare I say . . . awful.

In later years, Fuller became mentor to many young directors: Jonathan Demme; Tim Robbins; Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese. It's clear from Scorsese's introduction that they idolized him.

As a writer, Sam Fuller teaches this lesson: Write fast; never give up; to hell with the naysayers. His final two or three paragraphs offers a capstone philosophy that all should embrace.

I loved this book. It saddened me to finish it.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn, what a great read. Fuller grabs you from the get-go and doesn't let up until the final page.

The book starts with descriptions of Fuller's impoverished but mostly happy childhood, then his early years as a newsboy who worked his way up to teenage cub reporter and, thanks to his mentor Gene Fowler, wound up hanging out in speakeasies with Ring Lardner and Damon Runyon.

Here's a passage that begins chapter 8, "Westward Ho": "What reporter didn't get a hard-on from New York, with all its round-the-clock action, fast-paced banter, whiskey-drinking philosophers, glittering talent, and daily Greek tragedies played out on an ever-shifting stage of street corners, glowing skyscrapers, all-night bars, cheap tenements, Broadway theaters, and sports arenas? Manhattan was manna from heaven for a wordsmith. Hell, I loved the place. But now I needed to find out about the rest of the country."

He did, and also met Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, John Ford, and briefly served as a mentor to Jim Morrison before moving on to befriending Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders and a score of other young filmmakers. At the end of the book Fuller describes meeting James Elroy and being quite taken with Elroy's description of him as a "crusty old cocksucker." What's not to love?

[Wilson Lanue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Fuller was a fascinating character and a talented storyteller. These are his memories, from working as a reporter to fighting Nazis and, finally, making movies as the original indie writer/director.

It's imperfect - a date misremembered here, a superlative that doesn't belong there - but this hardly detracts from its beauty. If you are interested in WWII combat, read this as a companion piece to Up Front and With the Old Breed - and for pete's sake watch the restored version of Fuller's Big Red One . If you're interested in the director's art, read this as the scrappy, mud-faced twin brother to Capra's Name Above the Title .

Or, if you just like to unwind with good stories, grab this and do exactly that.

[Glen Go · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why isn’t there a movie about Samuel Fuller? Any of his careers would have been enough for one life: journalist, novelist, screenwriter, WW II infantryman and film director. He also managed the feat of irking J. Edgar Hoover and the NAACP almost simultaneously. This look at the profane and blunt Fuller isn’t a how-to book, but more a motivational yarn about pursuing your dreams. The book, like Fuller’s films, is as subtle as a bust in the chops. His advice: “. . .persist with all your heart and energy in what you want to achieve. . . Believe me, you will prevail over all the naysayers and bastards who are telling you it can’t be done!”

[Tom Fuchs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Downright spectacular. Fuller writes his memoir with the same spare language and focus on telling a compelling yarn that make his movies feel so timeless and authentic. There's a truly Zeligesque amount of bumping shoulders with historical figures throughout this, the key difference being that Fuller always was proactively seeking out adventure and life experience throughout his career. It's a six hundred page book and I was profoundly sad that it had to end. Loved every minute of it. Harrowing, funny, touching and above all else truthful.

[Ken French · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best filmmaker memoirs ever. Fuller led a very interesting life and was a brilliant director.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enormously entertaining autobiography about one of the most action-filled 20th century American lives, written in the style of the author's pulp novels and hard-hitting screenplays. It's not high art, but it's brisk (even as it encompasses all of his 85 years), punchy, funny, and human. It's also his final creative act. He was nearly finished with the book when he died in 1997, and his wife and a close friend added the finishing touches. The man had an amazing life that would seem like a fabulist's exaggerations if most of it weren't so well documented. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1912, Fuller lost his father suddenly and unexpectedly when he was still a child. His mother moved him and his many siblings to New York City for its plethora of job opportunities to keep the family afloat. He was employed as a newsboy before and after school and worked his way up to crime reporter for a Manhattan newspaper while still a teenager, where his mentor was John Huston's mother. He was so successful as a reporter that he dropped out of high school and threw himself into the work full-time. After several years in that job, he got the urge to see the rest of the country and worked as a traveling freelance reporter in nearly every state, with long stretches in San Francisco, Chicago, and San Diego. He also begins writing and publishing pulp novels and working as a screenwriter in Hollywood in this period. After Pearl Harbor, he enlists in the army and is on the front lines of some of the most brutal battles in WWII in North Africa, Normandy on D-Day, occupied France and Belgium, and Germany. (My grandfather was a WWII veteran, but he hated to talk about the war, so I really appreciated Fuller's detailed descriptions of what it was like. Even though my grandfather was in the Philippines and not anywhere that Fuller was, I still felt like I got a closer understanding of some of what he went through on a daily basis.) After the war, Fuller begins directing his own screenplays, with a long stretch of great films in both the Hollywood system and independent productions. His career starts hitting some snags in the late '60s, but he still manages to make a handful of excellent (and a few not-so-excellent) movies either independently or in Europe in the '70s, '80s, and early '90s (he and his family live in Paris for 12 years before moving back to the States), and he begins yet another career as an actor, while also becoming a mentor to dozens of younger filmmakers. After an unsuccessful first marriage, Fuller's second marriage to German actress Christa Lang lasts, and he becomes a father late in life. He survives a stroke and writes this book. Most celebrity autobiographies are ego-stroking fluff, and Fuller has plenty of ego, but this book is a worthy companion to his fluff-free movies. I'm someone who's generally more interested in artists' bodies of work than in their biographical details (and you always learn more about their inner lives from the art), but Fuller's autobiography reads like A Samuel Fuller Story. If you read this and don't watch his movies, you're missing the most important piece of him, but it's a good read regardless, and a sad reminder that the 20th century is really over. I'm glad Fuller didn't live to see the 21st. The decline of newspapers and print journalism and the erosion of democracy and return of fascism would have broken his heart.

[Brandon Caplan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Third Face is a most unique autobiography, due to the many hats (and helmets!) that Sam Fuller wore throughout his storied life - newsboy, reporter, novelist, infantryman, screenwriter, and film director. It is a portrait not just of its author, but of much of the twentieth century. Fuller was an excellent writer, and it’s easy to hear Fuller’s distinctive voice (and to smell his ubiquitous cigar) as you live his life alongside him, from his first spoken word (he was a late bloomer!), almost to the very end. Whether you’re looking for insights into Hollywood (including friendships with everyone from John Ford to Quentin Tarantino), the newspaper industry in the 1920s, or a rifleman’s account of World War II (from Tunisia to Czechoslovakia), A Third Face will keep you engrossed from cover to cover.

[Kai Perrignon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of great stories, though a little too much plot description for most of his movies (I imagine this would play differently when they were less easy to find). Fuller writes punchy like his pictures, and he barrels through nearly 600 pages with a rapid pace, most chapters built around a film project; by the last 200 pages, most of these projects remain unfinished. Fuller had a Jess Franco like quality to always be making or trying to make movies, and he's basically a rocket until ill health forced him to sit down and write this book. I am jealous of every famous director who got to smoke cigars with him.

[Kelso Jacks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fuller had a very interesting life, and the early parts of the book fly by. He was a teenager working on newspapers in the days when the tabloids were down and dirty. He was a decorated soldier in WWII. And, of course, he was a movie director. Unfortunately, the latter part of the book becomes formulaic, as he chronologically tells the tales of each film he worked on -- often the stories feel a bit the same.

The good news is that Fuller writes in a really jazzy, quick manner that keeps things moving along, which is helpful since the book is 600+ pages.

[Hogfather · Rating 4 out of 5]

The greatest storytellers are the ones who can't be compared to anyone else. The startling humanism of Fuller's many great films tears him apart from the other great artists of his age and lands him in a world of his own making. His memoir never reaches the heights of his greatest works, especially as the romanticism of the early twentieth century fades into the frustration and conflict of its second half, but the breadth of his life and the strength of his storytelling nevertheless makes this an always interesting read.

[Sue Miers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this memoir and I am so glad he wrote it. Fuller is an amazingly compelling writer who had one of the most interesting lives I’ve ever read about at, least in the 20th century. From hawking newspapers in New York City in the 1930s, to the big red one, an incredibly intimate and real portrait of what it was like to be a dogface in World War II, to all the scripts, and books and movies his was a remarkable journey unlike other. I hate to have to put this one down.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like all good Fuller novels, the story of his life is gripping, intense, and a hell of a read. Does he embellish it? Hell yeah he does! Even taking that into account, the man lived several lives in the course of one, and his tales of working as a newspaperman in the 1930s and a soldier in WWII are worth the price of admission alone, to say nothing of his long career as an author and filmmaker.

I'll be hard pressed to find a more packed autobiography written in such a dynamic way.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just read half this book, but it’s a fantastic half. Sam Fuller had an amazing variety of experiences, starting from when he was just a kid, and he is a great story teller. (There are so many great stories that I wonder if he polished them up a bit.) About halfway through the book, he gets into his movie experiences, which were less interesting to me.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a fascinating and remarkable life, as well as an introduction to an interesting individual. Reads as though Fuller is having a conversation with you. I found some of his stories and reflections inspirational and touching.

[L Ron Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leave it to Samuel Fuller to write a memoir this exuberant. By turns a digestible history of early 20th century journalism, a personal recollection of World War II and a digestible survey of Fuller’s filmography, A THIRD FACE brims with the director’s artistic voracity and joie de vivre.

[Ian Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for any lover of cinema

[Ramon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Samuel Fuller et submergeix a la seva vida amb ràbia, força i una vitalitat que joder, et deixa fet pols i enamorat al mateix temps. Ell mateix ho diu en una paraula quan parla del cinema: Emoció.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

So inspiring, not only as a writer and someone in the film industry but as a human being living life with verve and principle. I loved getting to spend time with Sammy and listen to his yarns.

[Peter Nagels · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another brilliant and entertaining book by a maverick filmmaker.

[Stephen Gillespie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An utterly fascinating human being and such an entertaining writer. What a life, and what movies made along the way. Not always I man I agree with but a singular, humanist force and a vital artist.

[Dwain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sam Fuller was a writer, warrior, and an auteur, and arguably equally good at each.

He begins with the formative years, and moves through to later life with the sort of nostalgia that makes history personal. It’s the story of an impassioned individual, driven by an unbridled will to accomplish the American Dream (or whatever success story), and because we already know that he becomes a heralded film director, the fun about the story is in the “how.” You want to know what events lead him up to his ultimate destination, the place where he is enshrined in collective consciousness as an auteur and master of filmic pulp fiction.

His experiences as a crime reporter at the age of 17 are noteworthy and prodigious and it reads as would an old-school detective novel. He is a maverick and an iconoclast at the same time. It’s telling when he de-sensationalizes the idea of “police work,” implying that the traditionally held idea that equates gumshoe sleuthing and actual police procedure is a misconstrued one.

He recalls the tragedy of Jeanne Eagels, where he writes:

“One night in early fall 1929, I got a tip about a mysterious corpse at one of Manhattan’s most exclusive funeral parlors… the funeral parlor was partitioned into the “gold” and “red” rooms, both deathly quiet, swell places if you were a stiff. In the Gold room I saw a glorious coffin with six polished brass handles… I lifted the massive cover of the coffin. Inside was the most beautiful corpse I’d ever laid eyes on, and believe me, I’d seen plenty of them by then.”

Eagels was a pretty famous Broadway actress at the time and because of his efforts in breaking the story, the incident was front page; it gained him a measure of particular renown. A veritable Sam Spade, he recalls that “the tragedy of Jeanne Eagels would have a lifelong effect on [him]," coming off as would an old, salty, seasoned P.I, who when reflecting back on his many cases, always invariably remembers the one case (usually the first case) that most profoundly affected him.

It's like watching a film with director’s dvd commentary. The insight all his own. He exposes the intent and motivation, and reveals the inspiration, angst, and sometimey frustration related to his personal successes and failures.
Fuller is revelatory about his personal life, particular points in his development as a director, story teller and professional. No dilution because of third party interpretation... it’s a bonus for the reader who is just as interested in the analytical interpretation as he is the artist’s POV.

And as for the writing style, it’s in your face, concise, and direct; no word mincing. Considering also that he was writing while he suffered and was recovering from a stroke (that also left him near death and partly disabled), it gives me another perspective for admiration and appreciation for the effort.