Robert Aldrich is a director you know without knowing it. His crafty intellect can be found in nearly thirty feature films, some, unsettling milestones like Kiss Me Deadly, The Killing of Sister George, and Ulzana's Raid; others, boisterous brews begging for reappraisal like The Last Sunset, Vera Cruz, and Twilight's Last Gleaming. Aldrich found a challenging refuge in genre, directing westerns, noirs, war dramas, shockers, and buddy films. But he always tampered with the conventions, overrunning our expectations with startling themes: Attack! finds corruption on the battlefields of World War II; The Last Sunset grapples with regressive desire in the Old West; and even . . . All the Marbles unfolds as a send-up of the feel-good film by emphasizing unanticipated ill will. A disciple of Abraham Polonsky, Aldrich also valued a kind of meaty performance and coaxed wonders from regulars Kirk Douglas, Jack Palance, Lee Marvin, and Burt Lancaster, though he gained the trust of grande dames Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, as well. Central to Aldrich's films is an abiding interest in the individual's struggle to uphold some shred of integrity in a world that rewards the cowardly and crooked. Jack Palance's aching portrayal of a failed actor in The Big Knife is key to this preoccupation: he “sold out his dreams but he can't forget them.” This same struggle marked Aldrich himself as a troublesome maverick in Hollywood who went so far as to found an independent studio. To paraphrase one of his own titles, forget Baby Jane, whatever happened to Robert Aldrich? Let's find out.