1912 Born August 12, in Worcesternote, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch and Rebecca Baum, Jewish immigrants. The family name had been changed to Fuller.
1923 Family moves to New York, at the death of Fuller’s father.
1924 Works as a copy boy at age twelve for the New York Evening Journal.
1928 Becomes a crime reporter for the New York Evening Graphic at age seventeen.
1931 Quits the Graphic and hitchhikes around the US, doing occasional freelance journalism.
1934 Gets a temporary job as a crime reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, then moves to editorial writing for the San Diego Sun.
1935 Returns to New York and publishes a pulp novel, Burn, Baby, Burn, about the execution of a pregnant woman.
1936 Publishes a second novel, Test Tube Baby, about a young man born through artificial insemination. Gets a screenwriting credit for Hats Off, a musical about rival press agents which veers far from his script.
1937 Moves to Los Angeles. Writes screenplay for It Happened in Hollywood, about a cowboy actor who doesn’t want to play a screen gangster and disappoint his child fans. Fuller: “My first real credit on a picture.”
1938 Screenplays for Gangs of New York and Adventure in Sahara. Publishes Make Up and Kiss, a fictional exposé of cosmetics companies.
1939 Screenplay for Federal Man-Hunt.
1940 Screenplay for Bowery Boy.
1941 Screenplay for Confirm and Deny. On December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor, Fuller enlists in the US Army.
1942 Assigned to the 26th Regiment, Third Battalion, Company K, known as the Big Red One. He is shipped to Algeria in November, where his battalion proceeds to fight the Germans across North Africa.
1943 In February, his battalion is routed by Rommel in the Kesserine Pass, Tunisia. The Big Red One fights back and, in May, helps take the city of Tunis and defeat the Nazis and Fascists in Africa. In July, the Big Red One lands in Sicily. After many battles, they are reassigned to Liverpool, for seven months of strategic drills. In Hollywood, Fuller’s pre-War screenplay is used for Power of the Press.
1944 Participates in the D-Day invasion on Omaha Beach, Normandy. Fuller: “Of the 183 men who’d landed with my company, about a hundred were dead, wounded, or missing in action.” He fights the retreating Germans across France and Belgium. Publication in the USA of his long-completed mystery novel, The Dark Page.
1945 Participates in the US Army action taking towns across Germany. At the liberation of the German concentration camp in Czechoslavakia at Falkenau, he shoots 16mm footage. In September, Fuller docks in Boston and, soon after, returns to Hollywood. Gangs of the Waterfront is produced, using a prewar Fuller script.
1946 Marries Martha Downes.
1949 I Shot Jesse James, his first credit as a director. Screenplay for Shockproof.
1950 Directs The Baron of Arizona.
1951 Directs his first acclaimed movie, The Steel Helmet, set in the Korean War. Also directs Fixed Bayonets. Screenplay for Tanks Are Coming.
1952 Directs Park Row, a semi-autobiographical salute to the newspaper business. Screenplay for Scandal Sheet, based on his novel, The Dark Page.
1953 Directs Pickup on South Street, which wins a Bronze Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Screenplay for The Command.
1954 Directs Hell and High Water, his first film shot in Cinemascope.
1955 Directs House of Bamboo, filmed on location in Japan.
1957 Directs Run of the Arrow, China Gate, and Forty Guns.
1959 Directs Verboten! and The Crimson Kimono. Divorces Martha Downes Fuller.
1961 Directs Underworld U.S.A.
1962 Directs Merrill’s Marauders.
1963 Directs Shock Corridor.
1964 Directs The Naked Kiss.
1965 Appears as himself in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou. He is honored with an evening at the Cinémathèque Française.
1967 Marries German actress, Christa Lang. Co-writes The Cape Town Affair, which is Pickup on South Street moved to South Africa.
1969 Directs Shark!, but, due to production compromises, wants his name taken off this picture.
1971 Appears in Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie.
1972 Directs in Germany Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street, starring his wife, Christa Lang.
1974 Co-writes The Klansmen.
1975 A daughter, Samantha, is born.
1977 Appears in Wim Wenders’s An American Friend.
1979 Appears in Steven Spielberg’s 1941.
1980 Directs The Big Red One, which was released in a cut-down version.
1982 Directs White Dog, which, because of controversy over its racial politics, is kept from release by Paramount Pictures. Angered, Fuller moves with his wife and daughter to Paris, France. He appears in Wim Wenders’s The State of Things.
1984 Directs in France Les Voleurs de la Nuit/Thieves After Dark, selected for the Berlin Film Festival. Appears in Steven Paul’s Slapstick (Of Another Kind). He publishes in Europe an adventure novel, La Grand Melee.
1987 Appears in Mika Kaurismaki’s Helsinki Napoli—All Night Long.
1988 Appears in Larry Cohen’s Salem’s Lot.
1989 Directs for a French production company Street of No Return, shot in Lisbon.
1990 Directs in France two television movies, Le Jour du châtiment/The Day of Reckoning and The Madonna and the Dragon.
1995 He, Christa, and Samatha return to the USA, and to The Shack, their ex-LA home. Felled by a stroke, he works on an autobiography.
1997 Appears in Wim Wenders’s The End of Violence, a final screen role. Fuller dies on October 30. In November, a Directors Guild memorial tribute.
2002 Posthumous publication of his autobiography, A Third Face, by Alfred A. Knopf. The book was finished by Christa Lang Fuller and Jerome Henry Rudes.
2004 A restored, full-length version of The Big Red One is shown at the Cannes Film Festival.