Jack Arnold: From Broadway to the Black Lagoon

Jack Arnold (Jack Arnold Waks, 1916-1992) is typically celebrated as a director of ’50s sci-fi and horror classics (’tis the season), though his accomplishments range across all genres, and began on the stage.

Born and raised in New Haven, Arnold was just a teenager when he danced in vaudeville, studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and began working on Broadway. Some of the more notable Broadway shows he appeared in included the original productions of George Abbott’s Three Men on a Horse (1937), Kaufman and Hart’sThe Fabulous Invalid (1938) and The American Way (1939), and The Swing Mikado (1939), which transferred to the New York World’s Fair. He was appearing in a touring production of My Sister Eileen when war came. He served during World War Two as a pilot, but also spent some time in the Signal Corps learning the craft of movie making under pioneer documentarian Robert Flaherty.

After the war, Arnold returned to Broadway, appearing in the original production of A Bell for Adano (1945) and a 1946 revival of The Front Page. He also self-produced several documentary films and this is what led him to become a Hollywood director. Girls in the Night (1953) a juvie noir picture, was his first for Universal.

Arnold’s stretch as a horror auteur came not long after. It included It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Revenge of the Creature (1955),This Island Earth (as an uncredited co-director, 1955), Tarantula (1955), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Space Children (1958), and Monster on the Campus (1958). Obviously, he was a problem solver; most of these movies had interesting special effects challenges, such as shooting under water, and making subjects appear larger or smaller than they really were. Though many tend to be lumped with B pictures, plenty of them were not that at all, and are characterized by expert storytelling. All the best sci-fi, horror and fantasy starts with a grounding in reality. Arnold’s documentary chops helped him to sell the most outrageous of premises, the existence of a previously unknown fish-man hybrid not least among them.

Though Arnold is not usually characterized as such, I would say that say that his next strongest strain of work was as a comedy director, which built naturally on his stage experience. His works in that vein include the Cold War classic The Mouse That Roared (1959) with Peter Sellers, the Bob Hope pictures Bachelor in Paradise (1961) and A Global Affair (1964), The Lively Set (1964, with Pamela Tiffin, whom we wrote about just yesterday), Hello Down There (1969), The Bunny Caper (1974) and tv movie Sex and the Married Woman (1977). I probably first saw his name in the credits of Sherwood Schwarzt sitcoms, both as a producer and a director on numerous episodes of Gilligan’s Island (after all, who knew better from lagoons?), The Brady Bunch, It’s About Time, and Dusty’s Trail. He also directed multiple episodes of Love American Style,The Love Boat, and many other comedy shows. (He was no relation to that other major sitcom producer-director Danny Arnold, btw, though one could be forgiven for mixing them up).

The tv bio-pic Marilyn: The Untold Story (1980) is one of the more notable pictures of his last years. Through the decades, Arnold also directed lots of westerns, noir, youth pictures, and thrillers for screens big and small. His most unexpected movies perhaps were in the blaxploitation genre. There were two of these with Fred Williamson in 1974: Black Eye and Boss N*gger. He is also known for the 1976 caper film The Swiss Conspiracy with David Janssen, John Ireland, John Saxon, Ray Milland, and Elke Sommer.

For more on vaudeville, where Jack Arnold got his start, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.