CWC Classics: The Big Red One

Bobby Di Cicco began his acting career in Chicago’s vibrant theatre community in the early 1970s. His performance in the original play All I Want earned him a nomination for Best Performance in a Leading Role. He also became a proud member of the Actors’ Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Bobby’s first Hollywood production was Robert Zemeckis’s feature film debut I Wanna Hold Your Hand, executive produced by Steven Spielberg. From the mid-1970s through the 1990s, he appeared in more than 30 film and television productions while continuing to perform onstage in Los Angeles and Boston. Bobby’s proudest achievement as an actor was working with Samuel Fuller on The Big Red One. As a young actor, collaborating with Fuller and the iconic Oscar-winning actor Lee Marvin, both World War II veterans, was a profound, life-changing experience. Bobby now lives in South Carolina’s Lowcountry with Penny Diamond, the love of his life, and recently returned to the stage at a community theatre near home.

Samantha Fuller was born in Los Angeles on January 28th, 1975, the only child of filmmaker Samuel Fuller and writer-actress Christa Lang. The Fullers soon moved to Paris where Samantha received a French education and attended the Sorbonne, studying German philosophy and translation. When her father died in 1997, she returned to Los Angeles and started a family, as well as a successful artisanal glass business. In 2011, the year before her father’s centennial, she began exploring his historic office, an experience that inspired her to create A Fuller Life, a documentary based on his autobiography. She is now committed to maintaining the Samuel Fuller Archives while pursuing her own career in filmmaking.

Mark Hamill’s distinguished career spans film, television, theatre, and new media. He is internationally recognized for his portrayal of Luke Skywalker in George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy, a role that became a cultural touchstone. His additional credits include Corvette Summer, Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One, Slipstream, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Brigsby Bear, and the cult mockumentary Comic Book: The Movie, which he also directed. Recently, Hamill co-starred as Arthur Pym in Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher and appeared in two Stephen King adaptations: The Life of Chuck and The Long Walk. On stage, Hamill appeared on Broadway in The Elephant Man, Amadeus, Harrigan n’ Hart, The Nerd, Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks, and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Room Service.

As a celebrated voice actor, Hamill has performed in countless animated series, feature films, and video games. He first voiced the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series and later reprised the role in the Arkham Asylum games, earning a BAFTA Award. His work with Hayao Miyazaki includes roles in the English-language adaptations of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Boy and the Heron. He voiced Thorn in the highly acclaimed film The Wild Robot and The Flying Dutchman in The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.

Perry Lang is an accomplished writer, actor, and director whose work spans both feature films and high-end television. His feature directing credits include Little Vegas, Men of War, and An Interview with God. In television, he has directed more than one hundred hours of premium cable and network programming across a wide range of genres, earning a reputation for strong performances and visually grounded storytelling.

Before moving behind the camera, Lang built a notable career as an actor, with standout roles in The Big Red One (dir. Samuel Fuller), Eight Men Out (dir. John Sayles), and 1941 (dir. Steven Spielberg), experiences that continue to inform his directing work today. Most recently, Lang sold a spec script centered on the legendary 10th Mountain Division in World War II, and wrote the feature film DaVinci, a historical drama exploring Leonardo’s creation of The Last Supper, currently in post-production.

Kelly Ward is an accomplished writer, story editor, producer, and director whose career spans film, television, animation, and the stage. Over the course of his career, he has written, story-edited, and produced hundreds of television episodes and directed dialogue for dozens of animated series. Ward co-authored the animated feature films Once Upon a Forest and All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, and co-produced The Pebble and the Penguin. His work in children’s animation has earned him the prestigious Humanitas Prize for writing, as well as a Daytime Emmy Award for directing. In addition to his creative work, Ward has held senior executive positions in the entertainment industry, serving for four years as Vice President of Animation at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and for two years as Vice President of Creative Affairs at MCA/Universal Family Entertainment.

Ward began his career as an actor and is perhaps best known for his role as Putzie, one of the five T-Birds, in the 1978 film Grease. His other notable film credits include co-starring roles in Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One and Luis Valdez’s Zoot Suit. Ward continues to write for film and television and direct voice performances for animated productions. He also enjoyed a distinguished career in education, serving for 20 years as an adjunct professor at the USC School of Dramatic Arts, where he directed and choreographed stage productions ranging from Shakespeare to Sondheim.

Andréas-Benjamin Seyfert is Lecturer in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at UC Santa Barbara, with a research focus on Weimar cinema, German-Jewish exile, and early sound film. He is co-editor (with Jan-Christopher Horak) of Enchanted by Cinema: Wilhelm Thiele between Vienna, Berlin, and Hollywood (Berghahn, 2024), shortlisted for the 2025 Willy Haas Prize. His articles have appeared on Berkeley’s WeimarCinema.org, and in the Journal of Film Preservation and Filmblatt. His book chapters include contributions to Modernist Aesthetics in Transition: Visual Culture in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany (Bloomsbury, 2025), Die Musik macht den Ton: Zwischen Filmkomödie und Musical (edition text + kritik, 2025), Rethinking Jewishness in Weimar Cinema (Berghahn, 2020), and Goethe als Literatur-Figur (Wallstein, 2016). He has essays forthcoming in Peripheral Visions: Exile Cinema Across German Borders (Bloomsbury, exp. 2027) and Law, Politics and the Visual in Weimar Germany (Camden House, exp. 2027). A former Skirball Center and Leo Baeck Institute Fellow, he was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Lucerne’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies in Summer 2026.