Recommendation: Famous Directors Who Wore Eyepatches, Why They Wore Them & Which Of Their Movies You Should Watch

There’s a surprisingly large number of them.

Apr 20, 2023

Nicholas Ray

Nicholas Ray - like people who wear sunglasses inside, 90s kids who didn’t tie up their shoelaces and 80s teens who thought fluro pink was a neutral colour - wore an eyepatch because it looked cool. According to his (at various points, estranged) daughter, Nicca Ray the story was that he had an embolism in one eye and had to wear an eyepatch as part of the treatment, he ended up liking the look so much it stuck (see also: people who still have mullets).

At various points Ray would wear the eyepatch on alternative eyes, Nicca even told stories of it being left in their home when he went out, indicating he didn’t need it.

The obvious recommendation of a movie to watch by Nicholas Ray is Rebel Without a Cause but everyone has either seen that or is going to see it anyway (and they should, it’s great). However, I’m going to recommend you watch Johnny Guitar. For three reasons in order of increasing importance:

I don’t normally like westerns and I like this movie,
It is as camp as gathering around a warm fire.
Joan Crawford.

Here’s a trailer:

Raoul Walsh

Raoul Walsh directed Gloria Swanson (Norma Desmond herself) in her first part in 15 years, 1931’s Sadie Thompson. This casting must have reinvigorated Walsh as he also cast himself in a key role, coming out of 15 years of acting retirement himself.

After the success of Sadie Thompson he decided to keep acting, casting himself in the lead role in his next film In Old Arizona. He was in a car crash wherein a jackrabbit jumped through the windshield of the desert traversing car. As a result he lost his eye. To add insult to injury the actor he cast as a replacement for himself, Warner Baxter, received an Academy Award for his work.

Of all the people on this list I’m least familiar with Raoul Walsh’s films, so I’ll recommend the best of the one’s I’ve seen. The original The Thief of Baghdad, starring Douglas Fairbanks (I also recommend the Powell and Pressberger version from the 40s).

Here’s the trailer (for the blu-ray release):

Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang went from always being photographed with a monocle over one eye to being photographed with a monocle over one eye with an eyepatch over the other in the late fifties. There’s no exciting story here, Lang was getting old at this point (not many directors working in 1919 were still making films in 1960) and his eyesight had deteriorated.

According to records he was legally blind in both eyes by the 1960s, the eyepatch must have been chosen to go over the worse eye of the two or as a style choice (i.e. Nicholas Ray). Interesting he still had several projects he was pursuing to direct until his death in 1975.

Fritz Lang made so many great movies, Metropolis is still staggering, M is so accessible for a modern audience but because I never see it mentioned anywhere I suggest you watch a later movie he made: Secret Beyond the Door.

Here’s a spooky scene from it:

Andre De Toth

Andre De Toth: A Life in Numbers:

34 films (as director)

19 children (including stepchildren)

7 wives (including Veronica Lake)

4 broken necks

And

1 eye.

It is unconfirmed but rumoured that De Toth lost his eye due to an aneurysm at an early age. The most interesting eye-related story for him though is that he was almost killed after the 1973 Yom Kippur War when his eyepatch had him briefly mistaken for Israeli military leader Moshe Dayan (pictured below).

Dayan - The First Family - Docs For Education

The story goes that he was taken by a group of young dissidents who interrogated and pistol-whipped him. They let him go after an examination of his genitalia revealed that he wasn’t even Jewish (it is unsure if this was at his prompting).

Anyway let’s all celebrate Andre de Toth’s life and work by watching his 50s hit in a way he could not. House of Wax was one of the most respected 3D movies to pioneer the technology. Unfortunately, the stereoscopic process doesn’t work for someone with only one eye.

Here’s the trailer:

John Ford

John Ford, king of the anti-socialist manliness with his buddy John Wayne, is sometimes referred to as the ‘best director of all time’ - people who say that are wrong but there’s no doubt that he left an impressive number of tough guys in the public consciousness. Himself included.

Ford, with Hemingway-esque hubris, decided after an eye surgery that the wussy doctors were wrong. “Real men don’t wait to heal!” he said whilst chugging a beer and putting his cigar out on a poor person. He removed the bandages before the prescribed time and permanently lost his vision.

I have to put in a plug for The Fabelmans here, I think it was made specifically to make me like John Ford more (spoilers).

As I mentioned in the Nicholas Ray section of this post, I’m not a fan of westerns. So even though most lists of this type would recommend The Searchers, I’m going to let you watch John Wayne as much as you like on your own. Instead I’m going to suggest The Grapes of Wrath.

Here's the trailer:

Bonus: Tex Avery

There’s no picture of Tex Avery with an eyepatch but he had to have worn one at some point. This story is too crazy to not tell here.

Veteran animator most known for Looney Tunes work, Avery is only rivalled by Chuck Jones as the number one director of Warner Bros shorts. So, in my opinion it is odd that no one seems to know the story about how he lost vision in one of his eyes.

Apparently in the Universal Animation Studio (where Avery worked at the time) there was something of a prank atmosphere, animators sitting in the back rows (like school children) would blow spitballs and fire all other manner of stationary at the ones in front. Charles Hastings happened to sit back and to the left of Avery and decided, on one day in 1933, to fire a paperclip at him with a rubber band. He called out to him before doing so and as Avery turned around… well, you can imagine.

For a full forensic account, see this excellent article on Cartoon Research.

Anyway, watch the entirety of Hollywood Steps Out because it’s wild:

If you enjoyed this please do one, some or all of the things below:

Ex/Rec/Acc

Discussion about this post