Arnold was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Russian immigrants.[3]: 53 As a child, he read a lot of science fiction, which laid the foundations for his genre films of the 1950s.
He hoped to become a professional actor and in his late teens he enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included Hume Cronyn, Betty Field and Garson Kanin. After graduating he worked as a vaudeville dancer and, in 1935, began getting roles in Broadway plays. He was acting in My Sister Eileen when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he immediately enlisted as a cadet for pilot training.[3]: 53
While Arnold intended to become a pilot, a shortage of planes meant he was temporarily placed in the U.S. ArmySignal Corps, where he took a crash course in cinematography. He then became a cameraman and learned the techniques of filmmaking by assisting Robert Flaherty on various military films.[4] After eight months with Flaherty, he became a pilot in the Air Corps.[3]: 53 While stationed at Truax Airfield at New Rochelle, New York, he met Betty, who would later become his wife.
Following the end of World War II and the end of Arnold's term of service, he formed a partnership with an air squadron buddy, Lee Goodman, to form a film production company. Their new company, called Promotional Films Company, made fundraising films for various non-profit organizations. He also continued acting on stage during this period, in plays including a revival of The Front Page, and played opposite Bela Lugosi and Elaine Stritch in Three Indelicate Ladies.[3]: 54
"Jack Arnold dominated the science fiction field during his brief career. No imprint lingers so indelibly on the face of modern fantasy film as that of this obscure yet brilliant artist. All his films, no matter how tawdry, were marked with a brilliant personal vision. He exists as an éminence grise on the horizon of fantasy film, inscrutable, mysterious, almost impossible both to analyse and to ignore."
By 1950, after his documentary films had received more exposure, he was commissioned to produce and direct With These Hands, a documentary about working conditions of the early 20th century. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[6]
Arnold directed a number of 1950s science fiction films. The best known of these, It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Tarantula (1955), and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) are noted for their atmospheric black-and-white cinematography and sophisticated scripts. The Incredible Shrinking Man is considered his "masterpiece," a fantasy film with few equals in intelligence and sophistication, notes author John Baxter. While all the films display a "sheer virtuosity of style and clarity of vision."[5]
Arnold also made some non-sci-fi films, mostly Westerns. His best Western is often considered to be No Name on the Bullet (1959), about a town frightened to hysteria by the arrival of a gunman who never reveals who he is after or why. The film was shot in color and CinemaScope and was later restored from the original negative for airing on the "Grit" digital broadcast channel.
Arnold died of arteriosclerosis in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California at the age of 75. Later that year, the UCLA Film Archive held a tribute "Jack Arnold: The Incredible Thinking Man" film festival which screened a number of his films. The Archive also produced and screened a bio-documentary about his life, The Incredible Thinking Man.[8][9]
Osteried, Peter: Die Filme von Jack Arnold. MPW, Hille 2012. ISBN978-3-942621-11-3(in German)
Reemes, Dana M.: Directed by Jack Arnold. McFarland & Company, Jefferson 1988. ISBN0-89950-331-4
Schnelle, Frank et alii (ed.): Hollywood Professional: Jack Arnold und seine Filme. Fischer-Wiedleroither, Stuttgart 1993. ISBN3-924098-05-0(in German)
