Budd Boetticher was born Oscar Boetticher Jr. in 1916 in Chicago. An avid boxer and football player, he went to Mexico in the 1930s to become a matador, which led to his being hired as a technical advisor on Rouben Mamoulian's 1941 bullfighting romance Blood and Sand. He fell in love with filmmaking and stayed in Hollywood, eventually working his way up to director. In 1956 he teamed up with actor Randolph Scott for the first time on the Western Seven Men From Now. They collaborated on six more films together, combining Boetticher's spare landscapes and moral ambiguity with Scott's visible stoicism and grace. Their seven films have since become classics of the genre, six of which are being shown in this series.