January 14, 1998
Francis Ford Coppola has been tapped to receive the D.W. Griffith Award by the Directors Guild of America, DGA President Jack Shea announced today. The Griffith Award, honoring distinguished career achievement in motion picture directing, is the Guild’s highest honor. Coppola will be officially presented with the award at the 50
th anniversary DGA Awards on March 7, 1998.
Coppola, who has directed over twenty feature films in his career, joins an illustrious list of Griffith Award winners including Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra, John Ford and Cecil B. De Mille.
[A complete list of winners follows this release.]
Coppola’s directing career has spanned more than three decades and includes films such as The Conversation, Rumble Fish, The Outsiders, The Cotton Club, Peggy Sue Got Married, Gardens of Stone, Tucker:The Man and His Dream, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Jack and most recently, John Grisham’s The Rainmaker. He is perhaps best known for helming The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, and received the DGA Award for Feature Film Directing for both The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II, an Academy Award for directing The Godfather, Part II and a Golden Globe for Apocalypse Now. Coppola was also an Academy Award nominee for The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The Godfather, Part III.
"Francis is truly one of the godfathers of modern cinema," DGA President Shea said. "He has directed several of the most esteemed films in motion picture history and presenting him with the D.W. Griffith Award was an opportunity we couldn't refuse."
The D.W. Griffith Award was first presented in 1953, and has been bestowed twenty-eight times. Awardees are selected by a panel composed of the current and all living past presidents of the DGA.
| 1953 Cecil B. De Mille |
1983 John Huston |
| 1954 John Ford |
1984 Orson Welles |
| 1956 Henry King |
1985 Billy Wilder |
| 1957 King Vidor |
1986 Joseph L. Mankiewicz |
| 1959 Frank Capra |
1987 Elia Kazan |
| 1960 George Stevens |
1988 Robert E. Wise |
| 1961 Frank Borzage |
1990 Ingmar Bergman |
| 1966 William Wyler |
1992 Akira Kurosawa |
| 1968 Alfred Hitchcock |
1993 Sidney Lumet |
| 1970 Fred Zinnemann |
1994 Robert Altman |
| 1973 David Lean |
1995 James Ivory |
| 1973 William A. Wellman |
1996 Woody Allen |
| 1981 George Cukor |
1997 Stanley Kubrick |
| 1982 Rouben Mamoulian |
1998 Francis Ford Coppola |