East of Sumatra

Oscar "Budd" Boetticher, Jr. was a film director during the classical period in Hollywood most famous for the series of low-budget Westerns he made in the late 1950s starring Randolph Scott. Known for their sparse style, dramatic rocky locations near Lone Pine, California, and recurring stories of... a lone man seeking vengeance amidst a brutal and abstract landscape, the films have, decades after their release, come to be known as some of the most important Westerns ever made, often compared to the works of existential writers or to narratives from the Old Testament. Boetticher was raised in Evansville in southwest Indiana, born in Chicago, and was a star athlete at Ohio State University. After college he traveled to Mexico, where he learned the art of bullfighting. A chance encounter with Rouben Mamoulian landed him his first film job, as the technical advisor on Blood and Sand . Soon Boetticher began a career as a journeyman director of B movies on the backlot at Monogram, Columbia, and other small studios, making pictures he later disparaged.
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