After starting his career as a writer for CBS radio, Rod Amateau worked his way up the 20th Century Fox ladder from junior writer to test director to second-unit director to dialogue director before finally making his feature directorial debut with "The Bushwackers" (1952), a Western of interest mostly for the sermonizing in his (and Tom Gries') script, which offered parallels to the political climate in America during the post-Civil War and post-World War II eras. Though he directed another film that year ("Monsoon"), he would not return to features for 17 years, carving out instead a