- Directed five different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Victor Buono, Bette Davis, Agnes Moorehead, Ian Bannen and John Cassavetes.
- Two of Aldrich's movies--Vera Cruz (1954) and Kiss Me Deadly (1955)--are considered to be among the most influential films of the 1950s.
- Portrayed by Alfred Molina in Feud (2017), which chronicles the making of the film What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).
- He was a left-wing Democrat who opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War.
- Three films Aldrich directed were chosen for inclusion in the 10 best list in 1955 compiled by François Truffaut for "Cahiers du Cinema" magazine: Apache (1954), The Big Knife (1955) and Vera Cruz (1954).
- Nephew of John D. Rockefeller Jr., grandson of Nelson Aldrich.
- From 1975-79 he was President of the Directors Guild of America (DGA).
- Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh." NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
- He has directed two films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).
- Father of director Adell Aldrich
- Father of William Aldrich.
- Head of jury at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1959
- Always an outspoken leftist in politics, he was very friendly with a great many victims of the blacklist and often claimed that he was able to avoid being blacklisted himself only by virtue of his age - by the time he came to prominence in Hollywood, the power of the House Un-American Activities Committee had greatly diminished and Senator McCarthy had been disgraced.
- Considered directing an adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula".
- Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 8-14. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.
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