From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Robert Earl Wise September 10 1914 September 14 2005 was an American sound effects editor film editor film producer and director He won Academy Awards as Best Director for The Sound of Music 1965 and West Side Story 1961 as well as nominations as Best Film Editing for Citizen Kane 1941 and Best Picture for The Sand Pebbles 1966 Among his other films are Born to Kill Destination Gobi The Hindenburg Star Trek The Motion Picture The Day the Earth Stood Still Run Silent Run Deep The Andromeda Strain The SetUp The Haunting and The Body Snatcher Wises working period spanned the 1930s to the 1990s Often contrasted with contemporary auteur directors such as Stanley Kubrick who tended to bring a distinctive directorial look to a particular genre Wise is famously viewed to have allowed his sometimes studio assigned story to dictate style Later critics such as Martin Scorsese would go on to expand that characterization insisting that despite Wises notorious workaday concentration on stylistic perfection within the confines of genre and budget his choice of subject matter and approach still functioned to identify Wise as an artist and not merely an artisan Through whatever means Wises approach would bring him critical success as a director in many different traditional film genres from horror to noir to Western to war films to science fiction to musical and drama with many repeat hits within each genre Wises tendency towards professionalism led to a degree of preparedness which though nominally motivated by studio budget constraints nevertheless advanced the moviemaking art with many Academy Awardwinning films the result Robert Wise received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1998 Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Wise licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia