Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 661-666. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.
Brother of Ben Lewis.
His nickname was "Wagon Wheel Joe," a name he received early in his career when he was shooting B Westerns for Universal. He had a penchant for framing shots through the spokes of the nearest wagon wheel, to break up the visual monotony of a scene. Several of the editors at Universal complained to the studio brass that they had a hard time cutting Lewis' films because "he keeps putting these damn wagon wheels in front of everything." Director Oliver Drake, a friend of Lewis' and also his boss on those Westerns, jokingly referred to him as "Wagon Wheel Joe," and the name stuck.
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.