Ambush

Ambush (1950) was the last picture completed by Sam Wood, whose career stretched back to 1920. The Academy Award®-nominated director of Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), Kitty Foyle (1940), and Kings Row (1942) finished work on this picture in September 1949 and was starting pre-production on No Sad Songs for Me (1950), starring Margaret Sullavan, when he was suddenly stricken with a heart attack in the offices of the Motion Picture Alliance, an organization he founded in 1944 to ferret out communists and their sympathizers in the film industry. Although known as an even-tempered and open-minded man for most of his life, Wood in his later years became increasingly vehement and conservative in his political activity, which his daughter, K.T. Stevens, said helped contribute to his death at the age of 65 on September 22, 1949.