Happy birthday to Martin Ritt, the late, great versatile director from Hollywood’s second Golden Age. Ritt was an actor-turned-director with the Federal Theater Project and Group Theatre, becoming assistant to Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio. After a promising television directing career was cut short by the Second Red Scare, Ritt made his first film Edge of the City (1957). His 1958 film The Long, Hot Summer, based on the works of William Faulkner, was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the first of three times the director would be nominated for the honor.

His 1963 film Hud earned him his lone Academy Award nomination for Best Director, and his 1965 John le Carré adaptation The Spy Who Came in from the Cold won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. Two of his subsequent films, Sounder (1972) and Norma Rae (1979), were both nominated for Best Picture Oscars. Ritt directed many of the biggest stars of his time, including 13 of them to Academy Award wins or nominations – Paul Newman, Melvyn Douglas, Patricia Neal, Richard Burton, James Earl Jones, Jane Alexander, Paul Winfield, Cicely Tyson, Geraldine Page, Sally Field, Rip Torn, Alfre Woodard and James Garner.

Four of his films (Edge of the City, Hud, Sounder, Norma Rae) have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant. Producer Stanley Kauffmann as “one of the most underrated American directors, superbly competent and quietly imaginative.”

Point of fact: I know about him because Jonathan Demme gave him a posthumous shoutout in his 1991 Best Director speech. This is why we need award shows!

This article is part of a special year-long series of anecdotes, reflections and thoughts about the Academy Awards.