The director of Invaders from Mars ''worked himself into an early grave'' according to his biographer
William Cameron Menzies is one of the unsung heroes of Golden Age Hollywood. Here's the inside scoop about just how hard he worked to gain that reputation.
Too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. While one apple a day can, in fact, keep the doctor away, 40 in a day might fatally poison you. That's because apple seeds contain cyanide. This is a fact that you can look up and verify before you come back to read the rest of this article.
Even our passions are something we need to be moderate with. Reading is a great habit, but if you spend all of your free time reading, you risk alienating those around you and missing out on some of life's great moments. So while it might seem like a great idea to get swept up in one's work, even the best jobs are at risk of running us ragged in potentially life-threatening ways.
Take, for instance, William Cameron Menzies, director of Invaders from Mars, among many other movies. In addition to his work as a director, Menzies is credited as the inventor of production design and remembered as a pioneer in Hollywood's Golden Age.
However, Menzies burned the candle at both ends and may have worked a little too hard, at least according to his biographer James Curtis in an interview with Ignite Films.
Curtis emphasises the scope of Menzies' work around Hollywood, stating the director "worked himself into an early grave." Not only was Menzies conceiving of whole movies to then direct, but he was also collaborating with other filmmakers as he wore other hats as producer, special effects artist, and art director.
"I think that what he did was so nerve-wracking in certain respects because he had to visualize an entire film from beginning to end before anything ever got in front of a camer and on top of that he was telling directors like Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock where the camera should go."
Described by Martin Scorsese as a “genius, [whose] influence was incalculable,” William Cameron Menzies died at just 60 years old in 1957.
