Ron Kovic
Ronald Lawrence Kovic is an American anti-war activist and former United States Marine Corps sergeant, wounded and paralyzed in the Vietnam War. He is best known as the author of his 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July, made into the Academy Award–winning 1989 film directed by Oliver Stone. Kovic received the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay on January 20, 1990, 22 years to the day that he was wounded in Vietnam, was nominated for an Academy Award in the same category, he is the uncle of internet personality Adam Kovic. Kovic was born in Ladysmith, the second eldest of the six children of Patricia Lamb and Eli Kovic, he was raised in New York, in a Roman Catholic household. His family was of Croatian descent and his father served honorably in the United States Navy during World War II, he met Lamb during the Second World War when she was serving in the United States Navy to which she enlisted not long after Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. She was of Irish ancestry, a housewife. After the war, Eli Kovic and his family moved to Levittown, New York, where he worked as a grocery clerk in an A&P food store.
In high school, Ron Kovic was a wrestler and pole vaulter, hoped to be a major league baseball player after graduation. His father Eli was born with the last name Kovacevic in Chisholm, Minnesota to a Croatian immigrant mother Anna Delivuk. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, he was sent to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, after twelve weeks of intensive recruit training, he was promoted to the rank of Private First Class and became the push-up champion of his battalion. Kovic was sent to the Infantry Training Regiment at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for advanced combat training, he returned home to Massapequa in December, just before Christmas. After several weeks' leave, Kovic was assigned to the Marine Corps Barracks at Norfolk, where he attended radio school and learned communication skills, including Morse code, he was assigned to the Second Field Artillery Battalion, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Kovic volunteered to serve in Vietnam, was posted to South Vietnam in December 1965 as a member of H&S Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division.
In June 1966, he was transferred to Bravo Company, Second Platoon, 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division where he participated in 22 Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols in enemy territory. After a 13-month tour of duty, he returned home on January 15, 1967, he was subsequently assigned to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at North Carolina. Several months he volunteered to return to Vietnam for a second tour of duty, he was assigned to H&S Company, 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion, 3rd Marine Division in South Vietnam. In October 1967, according to Kovic's own account, he shot and killed another Marine by accident during an NVA ambush near a village along the Cua Viet River. On January 20, 1968, while leading a reconnaissance force of battalion scouts from the 1st Amtrac Battalion just north of the Cua Viet River in the vicinity of the village of My Loc, in the Demilitarized Zone, Kovic's squad came into contact with the NVA 803rd Regiment and elements of a Viet Cong battalion, besieging the village.
Deserted by most of his unit, he was shot first in the right foot, which tore out the back of his heel again through the right shoulder, suffering a collapsed lung and a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down. The first Marine that tried to save him was shot through the heart and killed, before a second Marine carried Kovic to safety through heavy enemy fire. Kovic spent a week in an intensive care ward in Da Nang; as a result of his service and injuries in the conflict, Kovic was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat "V" for heroism in battle and the Purple Heart Medal. Before the end of the war in Vietnam was declared on April 30, 1975, Kovic became one of the best-known peace activists among the Vietnam veterans, was arrested 12 times for political protesting, he attended his first peace demonstration soon after the Kent State shootings in May 1970, gave his first speech against the war at Levittown Memorial High School in Levittown, Long Island, New York that same spring.
Kovic's speech that day was interrupted by a bomb threat and the auditorium was cleared. Undeterred, Kovic continued speaking to students from the school's football grandstands, his first arrest was during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration at an Orange County, California draft board in the spring of 1971 when he refused to leave the office of the draft board explaining to a representative that, by sending young men to Vietnam, they were inadvertently "condemning them to their death," or to be wounded and maimed like himself in a war that he had come to believe was, "immoral and made no sense." He was told that, if he did not leave the draft board he would be arrested. Kovic refused to leave, was taken away by police. In 1974, Kovic led a group of disabled Vietnam War veterans in wheelchairs on a 17-day hunger strike inside the Los Angeles office of Senator Alan Cranston; the veterans protested the "poor treatment in America's Veterans Hospitals" and demanded better treatment for returning veterans, a full investigation of all Veterans Administration facilities, a face-to-face meeting with head of
Hal Ashby
William Hal Ashby was an American film director and editor associated with the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. Before his career as a director Ashby edited films for Norman Jewison, notably The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, which earned Ashby an Oscar nomination for Best Editing, In the Heat of the Night, which earned him his only Oscar for the same category. Ashby received a third Oscar nomination, this time for Best Director for Coming Home. Other films directed by Ashby include The Landlord and Maude, The Last Detail, Bound for Glory and Being There. Born in Ogden, Ashby grew up in a Mormon household, the son of Eileen Ireta and James Thomas Ashby, a dairy owner, his tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, dropping out of high school. Ashby was married and divorced by the time he was 19; as Ashby was entering adult life, he moved from Utah to California, where he pursued a bohemian lifestyle and became an assistant film editor through a long apprenticeship.
His career gained momentum when he served as the editor of The Loved One, an adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel that involved such New Hollywood contemporaries as screenwriter Terry Southern and cinematographer Haskell Wexler. After being nominated for the Academy Award for Film Editing in 1967 for The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, his big break occurred in 1968 when he won the award for In the Heat of the Night. Ashby stated that the practice of editing provided him with the best filmmaking background outside of traditional university study and he carried the techniques learned as an editor with him when he began directing. At the urging of mentor Norman Jewison, Ashby directed his first film, The Landlord, an early rumination on the social dynamics of gentrification in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1970. While his birth date placed him within the Silent Generation, the filmmaker—who had been a habitual marijuana smoker since 1950—eagerly embraced the hippie lifestyle, adopting vegetarianism and growing his hair long before it became de rigueur.
Over the next 16 years, Ashby directed several acclaimed and popular films, many were about outsiders and adventurers traversing the pathways of life. They included the off-beat romance Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, the social satire Being There, with Peter Sellers, giving the star a well-received role after many felt he had lapsed into self-parody. Ashby's greatest commercial success was the Warren Beatty vehicle Shampoo, about a sex-obsessed hair dresser. Bound for Glory, a muted biography of Woody Guthrie starring David Carradine, was the first film to utilize the Steadicam. Aside from Shampoo, Ashby's most commercially successful film was the Vietnam War drama Coming Home. Starring Jane Fonda and Jon Voight, both in Academy Award-winning performances, it was for this film that Ashby earned his only Best Director nomination from the Academy for his work. Arriving in the post-Jaws and Star Wars era, Coming Home was one of the last films to encapsulate the modestly-budgeted realistic ethos of the New Hollywood era, earning nearly $15 million in returns and rentals on a $3 million budget.
Because of his critical success and dependable profitability, shortly after the success of Coming Home, Ashby was able to form a production company, under the auspices of Lorimar. After Being There, Ashby became more reclusive retreating to his home in Malibu Colony, a gated enclave in the city, it was rumored in a whisper campaign from Lorimar that Ashby had become dependent upon cocaine, a drug that he only used intermittently since the production of Bound for Glory. As a consequence of these rumors, he became unemployable. Eva Gardos, an editor who worked with Ashby during the period, has claimed that his drug intake was confined to marijuana and psilocybin. Following Being There, Ashby was provisionally set to reunite with Sellers and Terry Southern on Grossing Out, a black comedy inspired by the actor's chance meeting with an international arms dealer on an airplane. Although Southern was rejuvenated by the prospect of working with the duo and produced a script, said to be on par with his 1960s oeuvre, the project went into development hell after Sellers' sudden death from a heart attack in July 1980.
During this period, the productions of Second-Hand Hearts and Lookin' to Get Out —the latter a Las Vegas caper that reunited him with Voight and featured Voight's young daughter, Angelina Jolie—were plagued by the strained relationship between Ashby and Lorimar. Filmed in 1979, Second-Hand Hearts only received a poorly-reviewed limited release in 1981 before being pulled from circulation for nearly thirty years. Belatedly released in October 1982, Lookin' to Get Out earned a little under $1 million in returns and rentals on an estimated $17 million budget. During this period, Lorimar executives grew less tolerant of his perfectionist production and editing techniques. Set to he
Born on the Fourth of July (film)
Born on the Fourth of July is a 1989 American biographical war drama film based on the eponymous 1976 autobiography by Ron Kovic. Directed by Oliver Stone, written by Stone and Kovic, it stars Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley and Willem Dafoe; the film depicts the life of Kovic over a 20-year period, detailing his childhood, his military service and paralysis during the Vietnam War, his transition to anti-war activism. It is the second installment in Stone's trilogy of films about the Vietnam War, following Platoon and preceding Heaven & Earth. Producer Martin Bregman acquired the film rights to the book in 1976 and hired Stone a Vietnam veteran, to co-write the screenplay with Kovic; when Stone optioned the book in 1978, the film adaptation became mired in development hell, resulted in him and Kovic putting the film on hold. After the release of Platoon, the project was revived at Universal Pictures, with Stone attached to direct. Shot on locations in the Philippines and Inglewood, principal photography took place from October 1988 to December, lasting 65 days of filming.
The film went over its initial $14 million production budget, ended up costing $17.8 million after reshoots. Upon release, Born on the Fourth of July was praised by critics for its story, Cruise's performance and Stone's direction; the film was successful at the box office as it grossed over $161 million worldwide, becoming the tenth highest-grossing film of 1989. At the 62nd Academy Awards, it received eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor, won for Best Director and Best Film Editing; the film won four Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, Best Director and Best Screenplay. The film opens in 1956 Massapequa, New York, with a 10-year-old Ron Kovic playing with his friends in a forest. On his Fourth of July birthday, he attends an Independence Day parade with his family and best friend Donna. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy's televised inaugural address inspires a teenage Ron to join the United States Marine Corps. After attending an impassioned lecture by two Marine recruiters visiting his high school, he enlists.
His decision upsets his father, an Armed Forces veteran. Ron goes to his prom, dances with Donna before leaving for basic training. In October 1967, Ron is now a Marine sergeant on a reconnaissance mission in Vietnam, during his second tour of duty, he and his unit kill a number of Vietnamese villagers after mistaking them for enemy combatants. After encountering enemy fire, they abandon its sole survivor, a crying baby. During the retreat, Ron accidentally kills a young private in his platoon, he reports the action to his superior, who ignores the claim and advises him not to say anything else. In January 1968, Ron is rescued by a fellow Marine. Paralyzed from the mid-chest down, he spends several months in recovery at the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York; the hospital's conditions are poor. Against his doctors' requests, Ron tries to walk again with the use of braces and crutches, only to damage his legs and confine himself permanently to a wheelchair. In 1969, Ron returns home and turns to alcohol after feeling neglected and disillusioned.
During an Independence Day parade, Ron is asked to give a speech, but is unable to finish after he hears a crying baby in the crowd and has a flashback to Vietnam. Ron visits Donna in New York, where the two reminisce. While attending a vigil for the victims of the Kent State shootings, they are separated when Donna and other protestors are taken away by police for demonstrating against the Vietnam War. In Massapequa, a drunken Ron has a heated argument with his mother, his father decides to send him to Villa Duce, a Mexican haven for wounded Vietnam veterans, he has his first sexual encounter with a prostitute, whom he falls for until he sees her with another customer. Ron befriends Charlie, another paraplegic, the two decide to travel to another village after getting kicked out of a bar. After annoying their taxicab driver, they are stranded on the side of the road and argue with each other, they are picked up by a truck driver. Ron travels to Armstrong, where he discovers Wilson's tombstone.
He visits the fallen soldier's family in Georgia to confess his guilt. Wilson's widow Jamie expresses that she is unable to forgive Ron, while his parents are more sympathetic. In 1972, Ron joins the organization Vietnam Veterans Against the War, travels to the Republican National Convention in Miami, Florida; as Richard Nixon is giving an acceptance speech for his presidential nomination, Ron expresses to a news reporter his hatred for the war and the government for abandoning the American people. His comments enrage Nixon supporters, his interview is cut short when police attempt to remove and arrest him and other protestors. Ron and the veterans manage to break free from the officers and charge the hall again, though not successfully. In 1976, Ron delivers a public address at the Democratic National Convention in New York City, following the publication of his autobiography. Al Pacino expressed interest in portraying Ron Kovic after watching the Vietnam veteran's televised appearance at the 1976 Democratic National Convention and reading his autobigraphy.
He turned down starring roles in the Vietnam War-themed films Coming Home and Apocalypse Now, the former for which Kovic would act as a consultant. Kovic met with Pacino in New York, where they dis
Waldo Salt
Waldo Miller Salt was an American screenwriter, winner of Academy Awards for both Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home. Salt was born in Chicago, the son of Winifred and William Haslem Salt, an artist and business executive, he graduated from Stanford University in 1934. The first of the nineteen films he wrote or participated in writing, was released in 1937 with the title The Bride Wore Red. Salt's career in Hollywood was interrupted when he was blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951. Like many other blacklisted writers, while he was unable to work in Hollywood Salt wrote pseudonymously for the British television series The Adventures of Robin Hood. After the collapse of the blacklist, Salt won Academy Awards for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for his work on Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home, a nomination for Serpico. Salt is featured in the extras for the Criterion Collection's Midnight Cowboy blu-ray release in an interview audio interview with Michael Childers.
The documentary listed below, Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter's Journey, is featured on the disc. Salt was married three times, first to actress Mary Davenport with whom he had two children, actress/writer/producer Jennifer, Deborah. After his divorce from Davenport, he married Gladys Schwartz and playwright Eve Merriam, he remained married to Merriam until his death in Los Angeles, aged 72, on March 7, 1987. Waldo Salt was the subject of a 1990 documentary Waldo Salt: A Screenwriter's Journey, which featured interviews with Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford, Jon Voight, John Schlesinger and other collaborators and friends; the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, first presented in 1992, is awarded at the Sundance Film Festival annually. It is determined by the dramatic jury, recognizes outstanding screenwriting in a film screened at the festival that year. See List of Sundance Film Festival award winners for a list of winners. Waldo Salt on IMDb Waldo Salt from the American Masters website Waldo Salt Papers, an inventory of papers kept in the UCLA Library Works by Waldo Salt at Open Library
Haskell Wexler
Haskell Wexler, ASC was an American cinematographer, film producer and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild. Wexler was born to a Jewish family in Chicago in 1922, his parents were Simon and Lottie Wexler, whose children included Jerrold and Yale. He attended the progressive Francis Parker School. After a year of college at the University of California, Berkeley, he volunteered as a seaman in the Merchant Marine in 1941, as the U. S. was preparing to enter World War II. He became friends with fellow sailor Woody Guthrie, who gained fame as a folk singer. In the Merchant Marine Wexler was an advocate for the desegregation of seamen. In November 1942, his ship was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank off the coast of South Africa in shark-infested waters, he spent 10 days on a lifeboat before being rescued. After the war, Wexler was promoted to the rank of second officer.
He returned to Chicago after his discharge in 1946 and began working in the stockroom at his father's company, Allied Radio. He decided he wanted to become a filmmaker, although he had no experience, his father helped him set up a small studio in Des Plaines, Illinois, he began by shooting industrial films at Midwest factories. When his studio lost too much money, it was shut down, but the business served as an unofficial film school for Wexler, he took freelance jobs as a cameraman, joining the International Photographers Guild in 1947 He worked his way up to more technical positions after beginning as an assistant cameraman on various projects. He made a number of documentaries, including The Living City, nominated for an Academy Award. Wexler made industrial films in Chicago in 1947 became an assistant cameraman. Wexler worked on documentary shorts, he made ten documentary films with director Saul Landau, including Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang, which aired on PBS and won an Emmy Award and a George Polk Award.
Other notable documentaries shot and co-directed by Wexler included Brazil: A Report on Torture and The CIA Case Officer and The Sixth Sun: A Mayan Uprising in Chiapas. In 1963, Wexler served as the cinematographer on his first big-budget film, Elia Kazan's America America. Kazan was nominated for a Best Director Academy Award. Wexler worked in Hollywood thereafter. George Lucas 20, met Wexler who shared his hobby of auto racing. Wexler pulled a few strings to help Lucas get admitted to the USC Film School. Wexler would work with Lucas as a consultant for American Graffiti. Wexler was cinematographer of Mike Nichols' screen version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which he won the last Academy Award for Best Cinematography handed out. The following year had Wexler as the cinematographer for the Oscar-winning detective drama, In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier, his work was notable for being the first major film in Hollywood history to be shot in color with proper consideration for a person of African descent.
Wexler recognized that standard lighting tended to produce too much glare on that kind of dark complexion and rendered the features indistinct. Accordingly, Wexler toned it down to feature Poitier with better photographic results. Wexler was fired as cinematographer for Miloš Forman's 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and replaced by Bill Butler. Wexler believed his dismissal was due to his concurrent work on the documentary Underground, in which the left-wing urban guerrilla group The Weather Underground were being interviewed while hiding from the law. However, Forman said. Both Wexler and Butler received Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, though Wexler said there was "only about a minute or two minutes in that film I didn't shoot.”However, he won a second Oscar for Bound for Glory, a biography of Woody Guthrie, whom Wexler had met during his time in the Merchant Marine. Bound for Glory was the first feature film to make use of the newly invented Steadicam, in a famous sequence that incorporated a crane shot.
Wexler was credited as additional cinematographer on Days of Heaven, which won a Best Cinematography Oscar for Néstor Almendros. Wexler was featured on the soundtrack of the film Underground, recorded on Folkways Records in 1976, he worked on documentaries throughout his career. The documentary Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang earned an Emmy Award, his documentaries included. Wexler directed fictional movies. Medium Cool, a film written by Wexler and shot in a cinéma vérité style, is studied by film students all over the world for its breakthrough form, it influenced more than a generation of filmmakers. The making of Medium Cool was the subject of a BBC documentary, Look Out Haskell, It's Real: The Making of Medium Cool. Produced by Lucasfilm, Wexler's film Latino was chosen for the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, he bo
Jerome Hellman
Jerome Hellman is an American film producer. He is best known for being the 42nd recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture for Midnight Cowboy, his 1978 film Coming Home was nominated for the same award. Hellman was born to a Jewish family in New York City, he began his career as a talent agent starting with the Ashley/Steiner Agency and shortly set out on his own to form Jerome Hellman Associates which represented some of the outstanding directors and producers during the “golden age” of live television. Hellman had his first taste of producing when he took over the role of Executive Producer from his client and Producer, Worthington C. Miner in the final days of Unit Four Productions, a partnership of George Roy Hill, Franklin Shaffner and Fielder Cook, producing live one-hour dramas on NBC. After leaving NBC, Hill and Cook moved on to directing assignments at Playhouse 90, the first 90-minute TV drama series out of CBS's new studio on the West Coast. In 1959, Hellman turned to producing motion pictures exclusively.
He partnered with George Roy Hill and produced his first film The World of Henry Orient with George Roy Hill directing, starring Peter Sellers, Angela Lansbury and Tom Bosley. Over the next 25 years he produced six more feature films. A Fine Madness starring Sean Connery, Joanne Woodward, Jean Seberg, his collaboration with director John Schlesinger and screenwriter Waldo Salt in the production of Midnight Cowboy garnered seven Academy Award nominations and won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. This creative team would last through The Day of the Locust and the early production stages of Coming Home. Coming Home was directed by Hal Ashby and received eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, it won Academy Awards for Jane Fonda and Waldo Salt, Robert C. Jones and Nancy Dowd. Jerome Hellman's seven feature films won six. In 1995 he was a member of the jury at the 19th Moscow International Film Festival; the World of Henry Orient A Fine Madness Midnight Cowboy The Day of the Locust Coming Home Promises in the Dark director The Mosquito Coast Academy Award for Best Picture, Midnight Cowboy.
Academy Award nomination for Best Picture Coming Home. Jerome Hellman on IMDb Elizabeth Taylor presenting Jerome Hellman with the Best Picture Oscar for Midnight Cowboy at the 42nd Academy Awards, 1970 on YouTube
Jon Voight
Jonathan Vincent Voight is an American actor. He is the winner of one Academy Award, he has won four Golden Globe Awards and has so far been nominated for eleven. He is the father of actor James Haven. Voight came to prominence in the late 1960s with his Oscar-nominated performance as Joe Buck, a would-be gigolo in Midnight Cowboy. During the 1970s, he became a Hollywood star with his portrayals of a businessman mixed up with murder in Deliverance, his output became sparse during the 1980s and early 1990s, although he won the Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for his iconic performance as the ruthless bank robber Oscar "Manny" Manheim in Runaway Train. Voight made a comeback in Hollywood during the mid-1990s, starring in Michael Mann's crime epic Heat opposite Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, he portrayed Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible, a corrupt NSA agent in Enemy of the State, the unscrupulous attorney Leo F. Drummond in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor.
Voight gave critically acclaimed biographical performances during the 2000s, appearing as legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell in Ali for which his supporting performance was nominated for the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and a Critics Choice Award, as Nazi officer Jürgen Stroop in Uprising, as Franklin D. Roosevelt in Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor and as Pope John Paul II in the eponymous miniseries. Voight appears in Showtime's Ray Donovan TV series, now in its sixth season as Mickey Donovan, a role that brought him newfound critical and audience acclaim and his fourth Golden Globe win in 2014. Voight was born on December 29, 1938, in Yonkers, New York, the son of Barbara and Elmer Voight, a professional golfer, he has two brothers, Barry Voight, a former volcanologist at Pennsylvania State University, Wesley Voight, known as Chip Taylor, a singer-songwriter who wrote "Wild Thing" and "Angel of the Morning." Voight's paternal grandfather and his paternal grandmother's parents were Slovak immigrants, while his maternal grandfather and his maternal grandmother's parents were German immigrants.
Joseph P. Kamp was his great-uncle through his mother. Voight was raised as a Catholic and attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York, where he first took an interest in acting, playing the comedic role of Count Pepi Le Loup in the school's annual musical, The Song of Norway. Following his graduation in 1956, he enrolled at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D. C. where he majored in art and graduated with a B. A. in 1960. After graduation, Voight moved to New York City. In 1962, Voight married actress Lauri Peters, who he met when they both appeared in the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music, they divorced in 1967. He married actress Marcheline Bertrand in 1971, they separated in 1976, filed for divorce in 1978, divorced in 1980. Their children, James Haven and Angelina Jolie, would go on to enter the film business as actors and producers. Voight was estranged from his children for several years, but they reconciled in 2007 after Bertrand's death.
In the early 1960s, Voight found work in television, appearing in several episodes of Gunsmoke, between 1963 and 1968, as well as guest spots on Naked City, The Defenders, both in 1963, Twelve O'Clock High, in 1966. His theatre career took off in January 1965, playing Rodolfo in Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge in an Off-Broadway revival. Voight's film debut did not come until 1967, when he took a part in Phillip Kaufman's crimefighter spoof, Fearless Frank. Voight took a small role in 1967's western, Hour of the Gun, directed by veteran helmer John Sturges. In 1968 Voight took a role in director Paul Williams's Out of It. In 1969, Voight was cast in a film that would make his career. Voight played a naïve male hustler from Texas, adrift in New York City, he comes under the tutelage of Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo, a tubercular petty thief and con artist. The film explored late 1960s New York and the development of an unlikely, but poignant friendship between the two main characters. Directed by John Schlesinger and based on a novel by James Leo Herlihy, the film struck a chord with critics and audiences.
Because of its controversial themes, the film was released with an X rating and would make history by being the only X-rated feature to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Both Voight and co-star Hoffman were nominated for Best Actor, but lost out to John Wayne in True Grit. In 1970, Voight appeared in Mike Nichols' adaptation of Catch-22, re-teamed with director Paul Williams to star in The Revolutionary, as a left wing college student struggling with his conscience. Voight next starred in 1972's Deliverance. Directed by John Boorman, from a script that poet James Dickey had helped to adapt from his own novel of the same name, it tells the story of a canoe trip in a feral, backwoods America. Both the film and the performances of Voight and co-star Burt Reynolds received great critical acclaim, were popular with audiences. Voight appeared at the Studio Arena Theater, in Buffalo, New York in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire from 1973-74 as Stanley Kowalski. Voight played a directionless young boxer in 1973's The All American Boy appeared in th
