A Third Face

Before he directed his first movie in 1949, Sam Fuller reported crime stories for the 1920s NYC tabloids, dropped out of high school, hitchhiked across the Depression-ravaged U.S., wrote three dime-store novels, scripted six films, fought with the WWII infantry in North Africa and Sicily, stormed the beach at Normandy, and helped liberate the Falkenau concentration camp (in that order, too). A Third Face (Knopf, $35), his posthumous ”Forrest Gump”-ian autobiography, is one of the very, very few Hollywood books in which the moviemaking parts might just be the least compelling — which is saying something, given that the movies in question include the warped pulp-activist classics ”Shock Corridor” and ”The Naked Kiss.” Fuller’s writing is tough, fast, rousing, and on point, befitting a ”director’s director” whose first word as a baby was ”Hammer!” whose favorite exclamation was apparently ”Bulls—!” and who wouldn’t yell ”Action!” when he could fire a pistol into the air instead.