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Edward L. Cahn was an American second-feature director of Polish ancestry. His brother Philip Cahn worked in the industry as editor. Edward worked in films from 1917 as a production assistant. He later joined his brother in the cutting room of Universal, eventually becoming one of the studio's top editors (he did the last-minute re-cuts of the prestigious war drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)). From 1931, Cahn assumed the director's chair, turning out cheap and cheerful crime melodramas and comedies. He became a mainstay of the MGM shorts department from 1935-49. Having gone pretty much unnoticed, his directing career began to pick up in the 1950s. Ever conscious of public demand, the imperturbable pipe-smoking Mr. Cahn turned his attention to trendy teenage rebellion films and schlock science-fiction (with a special penchant for zombies).
His films during this period range from the sublime to the absurd, from the inspired to the ridiculous. Some are bad enough to be (almost) enjoyable (particularly after a glass of wine or two). Point in case: Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), which somehow manages to combine mobsters, Nazis, zombies and atomic power, all in one package. Just as awful was The She-Creature (1956), featuring the lovely Marla English reverting into an extremely silly looking anthropomorphic sea monster (Cahn was able to re-use the same papier-mâché-and-plastic creation for the equally inept Voodoo Woman (1957)).
Rather more fun (though little more than a pastiche of The Mummy (1932)) was Curse of the Faceless Man (1958), in which a 2000-year-old calcified creature found near Pompeii returns to life to claim a lost love. Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) was unintentionally funny, but at least featured decent creature effects. Sadly, dialogue and script were corn straight off the cob. It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) was arguably the best of Cahn's offerings (it was said to be the inspiration for Alien (1979)). It was tautly directed and (as so often happens) only let down at the end by the monster being revealed as just another guy in an unshapely rubber suit. The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959) resumed Cahn's preoccupation with zombies and voodoo. At the center of the plot is an evil head-shrinking Swiss anthropologist (a suitably sinister performance by the brilliant Henry Daniell) who just happens to be a reincarnated Ecuadorian witch doctor. Unfortunately, though there is some visual style to the enterprise, the film as a whole can only be described as tame.
Cahn maintained an extremely prolific output through the early 1960s, working for AIP and United Artists on westerns and teen exploitation dramas right up until a year before his death at the age of 64.- Director
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Director Edwin L. Marin was born in Jersey City, NJ, in 1899. He traveled to Hollywood as a young man, and at age 20 got a job in the industry as an assistant cameraman. By 1932 he had crossed over to directing, first for low-budget studio Tiffany Pictures. However, he worked his way up the Hollywood food chain and was soon making films for major studios like Warner Brothers and MGM, where he was entrusted with that studio's prestigious A Christmas Carol (1938) with Reginald Owen, which turned out to be a critical and financial hit. He worked for most of the major studios at the time--United Artists, 20th Century-Fox and RKO--and seemed to find his niche making westerns, turning out several well-received ones with cowboy star Randolph Scott. He was married to actress Ann Morriss. He died in Los Angeles, CA, in 1951, at 52 years of age.- Director
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Rivaling Sam Newfield and William Beaudine as one of the American film industry's most prolific directors, Lew Landers began directing features in the mid-'30s under his real name of Louis Friedlander, but changed it to Lew Landers after several films. His first effort, The Raven (1935), with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, was probably his best. Landers worked for just about every studio in Hollywood during his long career, but spent a lot of time at RKO and Columbia turning out low-budget adventure epics, thrillers and westerns. In the 1950s he turned to series television, as many of his fellow B directors did, and alternated between that and features for the remainder of his career.- Director
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Edward Bernds was born in 1905 in Chicago, Illinois. While in his junior year in Lake View High School, he and several friends formed a small radio club and obtained amateur licenses. In the early '20s there was considerable prestige for an amateur operator (a "ham") to have commercial radio licenses, and Bernds was in a good position to get into broadcasting when he graduated in 1923, a year when radio stations began popping up all over Chicago. He found employment--at age 20--as chief operator at Chicago's WENR. When talking pictures burst onto the scene in the late '20s, Bernds and broadcast operators like him relocated to Hollywood to work as sound technicians in "the talkies". After a brief stint at United Artists, Bernds quit and went to work at Columbia, where he worked as sound man on many of Frank Capra's '30s classics. He later graduated to directing two-reel shorts and then features.- Director
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Former propman Howard Bretherton was one of the legion of unknown directors who made the films--mostly westerns--that generations of kids trudged to see at the Saturday afternoon matinées. Bretherton's long career as an action/western director began in the late 1920s and ended more than 25 years later. In between he ground out scores of cowboy flicks, action/adventure yarns, serials, and just about anything anyone would hire him for. He made films the way "B" picture producers wanted them made--fast, with a minimum of fuss and within budget. The fact that Bretherton was also an editor--a skill he passed on to his son, David Bretherton, who was an editor for more than 40 years--who could cut "in the camera" must have added to his desirability in the eyes of producers. Bretherton was one of the directors of the long-running "Hopalong Cassidy" series, and also spent a lot of time at Warner Bros. cranking out many of that studio's gritty little action pictures. Unlike many of his fellow "B" directors who turned to series television toward the end of their careers, Bretherton stayed mostly in features until his retirement in 1952, with only the occasional venture into episodic TV.- Director
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American director of 1940s and '50s second features, mainly westerns (often starring Charles Starrett) and crime and jungle dramas for Republic, Columbia and Pine-Thomas Productions. A graduate of Los Angeles Polytechnic High School, Berke worked his way up the ladder from office boy to assistant camera operator to cameraman and, finally, to director/producer. He spent his final years working in episodic television.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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William Beaudine, the director of nearly 350 known films (nearly one for every day of the year; some listings of his work put his output at 500 movies and hundreds of TV episodes) and scores of television episodes, enjoyed a directing career that stretched across seven decades from the 'Teens to the '70s (he also was a screenwriter, credited on 26 films and one TV series). His movies, ranging from full-length features to one- and two-reel shorts, included the notorious Mom and Dad (1945) of 1945--the Gone with the Wind (1939) of the hygiene/exploitation genre--for infamous producer Kroger Babb, one of the notorious "Forty Thieves" of the exploitation circuit. His final, as well as very likely best-known, films were the grind-house/drive-in horror classics Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966) (in 1966, when he made these two cheapies, he was the oldest active director in Hollywood, at 74). Beaudine was prolific not only because he mastered efficient filmmaking but also because he started in the early days of the film industry, when one- and two-reelers were ground out like sausages, and that's how he learned to make them. Although he was responsible for some prestigious pictures in the silent era--i.e., Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926)--after 1937 he worked primarily churning out programmers at Poverty Row studios. When producers needed an efficiently-made potboiler shot on a two-week (or less) schedule, William Beaudine was the go-to guy, and he remained so through the mid-'60s.
William Washington Beaudine was born January 15, 1892, in New York City, an advantageous location for a tyro filmmaker at the turn of the last century, because the original "Hollywood" of America was located in nearby Ft. Lee, NJ (Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the first motion picture production device and, more importantly, holder of several of its most important patents, was headquartered there. The patent monopoly he helped found did not want filmmakers operating too far away, as it wanted to oversee the industry to ensure it did not use pirated equipment that infringed its patents. California arose as a major production center in the 'Teens because it was far away from the prying eyes of the Edison trust, which was not averse to hiring thugs to wreck the equipment and beat up the employees of companies that defied it). Beaudine started in the industry as a $10-per-week prop boy, factotum and extra in 1909 with American Mutoscope and the Biograph Co., where he first worked with D.W. Griffith, the father of the American film. He began appearing as an actor in Mack Sennett's Biograph films in 1912 and continued to work behind the camera while appearing in front of it in 44 films through 1915. From 1911-14 he was an assistant director or second-unit director on 55 movies. He wed Marguerite Fleischer in October 1914 (they remained married until his death in 1970), the same year he moved to California. Although hired by the Kalem Co. as an actor, he got his first chance to direct while working on the studio's "Ham and Bud" comedy series in 1915. He directed at least five films in 1915, and served as an assistant to Griffith on his seminal masterpiece The Birth of a Nation (1915) and its follow-up, the aptly named Intolerance (1916). By 1916 Beaudine was making $100 per week as a director, and turned out as many as 150 short comedies before graduating to feature film assignments in 1922. Beaudine, like fellow director John Ford, was known for "editing in the camera", i.e., shooting only those scenes that are absolutely necessary, which saved time and raw stock. He did not shoot full coverage of scenes, with master shots and alternate takes (his contemporary William A. Wellman, another master of editing in the camera, did Beaudine--who was known as "One-Shot"--one better as "Two-Shot"--he would film two shots of a scene in case one was ruined in the developing lab), but no more than what he knew was necessary, and since he worked almost exclusively on low-budget "quickies" for the last 30 years of his career (he directed over half of the Bowery Boys films), producers valued him for his ability to make pictures quickly and economically, despite the gaffes (which likely would not be noticed by the audiences for these movies anyway). His attitude towards most of the films he was shooting at the time can be summed up by an incident in the 1940s, when he was informed that an East Side Kids quickie he was making for Monogram was falling behind schedule. His reply was, "You mean someone out there is actually waiting to see this . . . ?".
Beaudine churned out low-budget films by the gross, in a wide variety of genres. That's why it may be difficult for some to believe that, in the silent days, he was one of the more respected directors in the industry, and had established himself as a seasoned comedy director with a light but sure touch for such major studios as Goldwyn, Metro, First National and Warner Bros. He was renowned for his skill at working with children, which won him two assignments directing films for Mary Pickford at United Artists: Little Annie Rooney (1925) and the above-mentioned "Sparrows", a Gothic suspense thriller that is an ur-The Night of the Hunter (1955) (it reportedly influenced "Hunter" director Charles Laughton). Beaudine's finest silent film is generally considered to be The Canadian (1926), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham.
By the time talkies arrived, Beaudine was a top director in Hollywood, his salary increasing from $1,250 a week in 1925 to $2,000-$2,500 a week in 1926. For directing the "Izzy and Mike" (Jewish/Irish comedy) The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris (1928) in 1928, he earned $20,000 (approximately $215,000 in 2006 terms), which was not bad considering the speed at which he turned out his films. Even after the Great Depression hit in 1929, as late as 1931 Beaudine was commanding $2,000 a week. Unfortunately, like many other Americans, he was heavily leveraged in the stock market and was virtually wiped out by the Crash of '29. He moved to England in 1935 and directed more than a dozen films there before returning to the US. Once home, however, he discovered that during his absence Hollywood got along just fine without him, and he couldn't find a job for two years. When he was finally offered work it was near the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, at low-rent studios like Monogram or PRC. By 1940 his once flourishing career had declined to the point that, where he had once commanded $2500 a week, he was now lucky to get jobs paying $500 a picture, and was turning out bottom-of-the-double-bill films like Desperate Cargo (1941) and the The Ape Man (1943). The lowest point of his career is generally considered to be the aforementioned "Mom and Dad" for Kroger Babb (an independent producer who often released through Monogram, for whom Beaudine did much work). "Mom and Dad" was a "hygiene" picture, featuring footage of a live birth, that Babb "four-walled" in territories across the U.S. ("four-walling" was the practice of renting an entire theater outright, which meant that after the rental fee was paid, all money taken in went to the exhibitor). Babb was a master showman, and his practice of having screenings for males and females at separate times, and providing a "doctor" and two "nurses" (who were in reality actors) to give a hygiene lecture and sell sex hygiene books at inflated prices (the money being collected by the "nurses", who ostensibly were there lest anyone faint from such a frank divulging of "the facts of life") was a masterful touch, capitalizing on the extreme sexual repression of the era to titillate and make a barrel full of money while doing it. These tactics were also helpful in keeping local authorities at bay--after all, who could close down a theater that showed such an "educational" film?
Some cinema historians say that "Mom and Dad" may well have been, on a return-on-investment basis, the most profitable film in history, grossing as much as $100 million. Babb later recounted that each one of his investors got back $63,000 for each $1,000 invested in the film. In a pre-"Kinsey Report" world filled with ignorance and misinformation--deliberate and otherwise--about biology and sex, "Mom, and Dad" filled a void and turned a handsome profit while doing so (it was playing at drive-ins in the South and Midwest at least until 1977, long after the sexual revolution of the "Swinging Sixties", so potent was the "birth of a baby" come-on to the rural audiences for whom it was made). "Mom and Dad" was likely the top-grossing picture of 1947. The film was so heavily promoted that "Time" magazine commented that the ad campaign "left only the livestock unaware of the chance to learn the facts of life." Until the advent of The Blair Witch Project (1999), many film historians regarded "Mom and Dad" as the purest and most successful exploitation film in history.
By the end of the 1940s Beaudine had churned out 60 movies. Still, he was regarded highly enough as a man who could make a movie quickly and efficiently to command a salary of $3,000 per week for The Lawton Story (1949), an adaptation of a Passion Play staged in Lawton, OK (which was re-released in 1951 by Babb's Hallmark company). His paced slowed somewhat in the 1950s, when he made only 23 films, most of them for Allied Artists (formerly Monogram). A quarter-century after directing superstar Mary Pickford, Beaudine was reduced to piloting a washed-up, drug-addicted former Dracula and two Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis clones in the pathetic Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), with Lugosi, Duke Mitchell (the Martin clone) and Sammy Petrillo (the Lewis clone). In the "plot", Mitchell is turned into--what else?--a singing gorilla. Beaudine, who had worked with Lugosi in 1943's "The Ape Man" and the East Side Kids entry Ghosts on the Loose (1943) (most memorable for featuring a young Ava Gardner), wrapped the film in nine days on a budget of $50,000. In fact, during his preparation for playing Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994), the chronicle of another director of bad movies, Martin Landau watched "Brooklyn Gorilla" three times. Landau, who would earn an Oscar for his turn as Lugosi, said that it was so bad "it made the Ed Wood films look like 'Gone with the Wind'".
In 1947, two years after giving the world the landmark naughty picture "Mom and Dad", Beaudine was contracted by an evangelical Christian organization, the Protestant Film Commission, to make a religious-themed movie (beginning in the late 1940s, evangelist Billy Graham had done quite well in converting non-believers with movies made specifically for that purpose). It was successful and the PFC hired him on a regular basis to make more films. By 1955 Beaudine had directed ten of them for the Commission, all crafted to spread the word of God and convert non-believers to Christianity. Ironically, Beaudine himself reportedly was an atheist, who took the jobs solely for the money.
Beaudine's ability to overlook almost anything in order to get film into the can would prove a huge advantage in television. In the 1950s he moved into that medium, directing hundreds of episodes of popular series, including shows for Walt Disney. By the 1960s he was one of the principal directors on Lassie (1954), eventually passing the baton on to his son, William Beaudine Jr., upon his retirement from the show (proving the adage that the fruit really doesn't fall far from the tree). At the time of his retirement in 1967, William Beaudine was the oldest active director in Hollywood. He died in Canoga Park, CA, on March 18, 1970, with a record so prolific that it's unlikely to be ever matched again.
In 2005 the "labor of love" brought into the world by William Beaudine and Kroger Babb, two of Hollywood's most prolific sons, was honored by the Library of Congress' National Film Registry with the inclusion of "Mom and Dad" on the list of the nation's cinematic treasures.- Director
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Jean Yarbrough was born on 22 August 1900 in Marianna, Arkansas, USA. He was a director and producer, known for I'm the Law (1953), Freckles Comes Home (1942) and Inside Job (1946). He died on 2 August 1975 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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W. Lee Wilder was born on 22 August 1904 in Sucha, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Sucha Beskidzka, Malopolskie, Poland]. W. Lee was a director and producer, known for Once a Thief (1950), The Big Bluff (1955) and Killers from Space (1954). W. Lee died on 14 February 1982 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Production Manager
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Born in Detroit, Cambridge-educated Seymour Friedman entered films in 1937 as an assistant editor, eventually graduating to assistant director. After WW II service, he returned to the film industry as a director, mainly of routine, low-budget action films, many for Columbia Pictures, debuting with Trapped by Boston Blackie (1948). After his film career ended, Friedman, like many of his fellow B directors, went into the television industry. However, unlike them, it was as a production executive rather than as a director.- Producer
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Alfred Zeisler was born on 26 September 1897 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Fear (1946), Der Schuß im Tonfilmatelier (1930) and The Amazing Adventure (1936). He was married to Lien Deyers. He died on 1 March 1985 in Camano Island, Washington, USA.- Director
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Steve Sekely was born on 25 February 1899 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a director and writer, known for Boy, the Noszty (1938), Die große Sehnsucht (1930) and The Fabulous Suzanne (1946). He was married to Klára Makoldy and Irén Ágay. He died on 9 March 1979 in Palm Springs, California, USA.- Director
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Born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 8, 1896, director Eugene Forde began his industry career as a child actor on the legitimate stage. He left the business in the early 1920s, but in 1926 came back as a writer/director. He was one of the mainstays at the 20th Century-Fox "B" unit starting in 1932, and stayed at the studio until 1947. He was responsible for several of the studio's well-regarded "Charlie Chan" entries. His last film was The Invisible Wall (1947). He directed occasionally after that on television, most notably on I Led 3 Lives (1953).
He died in Port Hueneme, California, on February 27, 1986.- Director
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Lesley Selander's film career, which lasted more than 40 years, started in the early 1920s as a teenager when he got a job at a studio as a lab technician. He soon managed to work his way into the production end of the business and secured employment as a camera operator, then an assistant director, with several side trips as a director of two-reel shorts. He directed his first feature in 1936, a western--a genre in which he would not only excel but one where he would spend much of the rest of his career.
Although Selander couldn't be considered an "A"-list director, his films had a professionalism and a verve that many of those made by his fellow B directors lacked. His sense of pacing was such that his films could be counted on to move quickly and smoothly, and not just his westerns. He also made detective thrillers, action/adventure pictures and even a horror film or two. One standout that is seldom seen nowadays, however, is Return from the Sea (1954), a sentimental and lyrical story of a cynical, embittered merchant seaman and the equally disillusioned waitress he meets in a dingy diner in the waterfront section of town. It's a surprisingly sensitive work for a man who spent his career making tough, macho shoot-'em-ups, and even more of a surprise are the outstanding performances by an unlikely cast: tough-guy Neville Brand as the sailor, perennial gun moll Jan Sterling as the waitress, and a terrific job by veteran heavy John Doucette as a garrulous, happy-go-lucky cab driver determined to bring the two together. With this little jewel Selander proved he was capable of much more than cattle stampedes, Indian attacks and gangster shootouts, but unfortunately he never made another one like it.
As the market for B westerns died out, Selander--like so many of his fellow B directors--turned to television. The last few feature films he made, in the mid- and late 1960s, were a string of what's come to be known as "geezer westerns" churned out by producer A.C. Lyles, embarrassing efforts made on the cheap that were meant to give employment to aging cowboy stars; the less said about them, the better.
Lesley Selander retired from the business in 1968, and died in 1979.- Writer
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Actor, screenwriter and director Crane Wilbur was born Erwin Crane Wilbur on November 17, 1886, in Athens, NY. The nephew of the great stage actor Tyrone Power Sr., Wilbur first took to the boards as an actor, making his Broadway debut billed as Erwin Crane Wilbur on June 3, 1903, in a trilogy of William Butler Yeats plays, "A Pot of Broth" / "Kathleen ni Houlihan" / "The Land of Heart's Desire", put on by the Irish Literary Society at the Carnegie Lyceum.
He began appearing in films in 1910, but he made his name as a cinema actor as the male lead in The Perils of Pauline (1914), the enormously popular serial starring Pearl White. A star during the 1910s, Wilbur's career as a movie actor began petering out after he appeared as the eponymous hero of Breezy Jim (1919). As the Roaring Twenties made their debut, Wilbur went back to the stage. Between 1920-34 he had seven plays presented on Broadway: "The Ouija Board" (1920); "The Monster" (1922; revived 1933); "Easy Terms" (1925); "The Song Wtiter" (1928); "Border-Land" (1932); "Halfway to Hell" (1933); and "Are You Decent" (1934). He also staged "Halfway to Hell" and directed Donald Kirkley and Howard Burman's "Happily Ever After" in 1945. Crane also performed in "The Ouija Board", "Easy Terms" and nine other Broadway shows from 1927-32, including "A Farewell to Arms" (1930) and "Mourning Becomes Electra" (1932).
Wilbur had directed several silent pictures, but he made his sound debut as a director with the controversial The Unborn (1935), touted as "The Most Daring, Sensational Drama Ever Filmed!" The movie is an expose of the "science" of eugenics, tied to a story about the attempted forced sterilization of a married couple by the Welfare Bureau. "Tomorrow's Children" exposed the fact that many people were sterilized against their will and even without recourse to due process of law. The movie was banned in New York state on the grounds that it was "immoral", that it would "tend to corrupt morals" and that it was an incitement to crime. The ban was challenged but was upheld in the courts and on appeal as it was found to disseminate information about birth control, which was illegal at the time.
After this controversy Wilbur went on to a long and productive career, particularly in the mystery-thriller genre, as both a director and a screenwriter. He had a hand in the production of such genre classics as House of Wax (1953), The Bat (1959) (which he also directed) and Mysterious Island (1961).
Wilbur died on October 18, 1973, in Toluca Lake, CA, of complications following a stroke.- Director
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Paul Landres was born on 21 August 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. Paul was a director and editor, known for The Return of Dracula (1958), The Vampire (1957) and Navy Bound (1951). Paul was married to Jean Landres. Paul died on 26 December 2001 in Encino, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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Born in Oklahoma in 1915, Witney broke into the business in 1933, working at Mascot, the leading producer of low-budget serials. After Mascot and other small companies merged in 1935 to form Republic, Witney graduated to director (at 21, he was Hollywood's youngest). Witney teamed with director John English on many of the era's best serials, most of them highlighted by kinetic fight and chase scenes that helped change the face of action moviemaking. Witney also directed many features and much TV. Retired since the late 1970s, he has authored two books, "In a Door, Into a Fight, Out a Door, Into a Chase" (about his serial directing career) and "Trigger Remembered" (about Roy Rogers' famed movie horse).- Director
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Legendary "B" picture director Sam Newfield was born Samuel Neufeld in New York City. His brother was Sigmund Neufeld, later the head of PRC Pictures, where Sam made so many of his films (so many, in fact, that he had to use the pseudonyms "Peter Stewart" and "Sherman Scott" so audiences wouldn't notice that only one man directed so much of the studio's output). He entered the film business in 1919 and began his career as a director in 1926, shooting two-reel comedy shorts for virtually every production company in town, from fly-by-night independent producers to major studios like Universal Pictures. He made his first full-length feature in 1933, for independent "B"-picture production company Tower Pictures. He worked for many of the independent studios, making films for such prestigious-sounding but low-rent companies as Ambassador Pictures, Victory Pictures and Puritan Pictures. While much of his output seemed to be, shall we say, "rushed", he did in fact manage to turn out several interesting, compact and well-made little westerns with Tim McCoy for Victory and Puritan (two companies headed by another "B" picture icon, producer Sam Katzman).
In 1939 he went to work for PRC, where he would make his "name". Sam shot films in two styles: fast and faster. With rock-bottom budgets (at PRC, for instance, budgets were so low that he got paid only $500 a picture; he had to grind them out like sausages in order to make any kind of money), super-tight shooting schedules (often a week, sometimes less) and not necessarily the best talent in front of and behind the cameras, glitches were bound to happen. However, since Sam didn't believe in retakes (and couldn't afford them, anyway), whatever went wrong in the picture (crew members wandering into shots, actors flubbing lines, props malfunctioning, etc.) pretty much stayed in the picture. Sam made films in just about every conceivable genre (science-fiction, westerns, crime thrillers, horror, comedy), and while most were routine at best (and embarrassingly inept and/or incoherent at worst), there were a few bright spots among the dross: Lost Continent (1951), a sci-fi epic he made for low-budget specialist Lippert Pictures in 1951, showed more care than you normally found in a Newfield film, with a better cast and a more coherent script than he was usually given, and is now considered to be one of his best films, if not his best. He also turned out Western Pacific Agent (1950) for Lippert, a fast-paced, neat little crime thriller about railroad detectives investigating a string of murders.
Newfield is considered to be among the most prolific directors in the history of American films (not counting cartoon directors, whose product rarely ran longer than 8-10 minutes or so), with an output estimated at approximately 300 films--everything from one-reel black-and-white training films to full-length color features--over a 30-year-plus career. He spent the last few years of that career shooting films and TV series outside the US (he shot the Buster Crabbe action series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion (1955) in Morocco and the Lon Chaney Jr. western series Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957) in Canada) because of cheaper production costs.
Sam Newfield finally retired from the film industry in 1958 and died in Los Angeles in 1964.- Director
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Nick Grinde's career lasted from the late 1920s to the mid-'40s, but his heyday was the mid to late 1930s. Grinde was one of the journeyman directors (such as Lesley Selander, George Sherman, Lew Landers, etc.) who made the "B" pictures that everybody enjoyed at a Saturday matinée, but whose name no one would recognize. While none of Grinde's pictures were particularly memorable, they encompassed all genres, from horror to musicals to comedies and even a western or two, but he was especially adept at crime and action dramas--he turned out a number of tight, fast-moving little pictures of that type for Warner Bros.- Director
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Starting out as an extra in Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops series, D. Ross Lederman worked his way through the ranks of film production, and made his mark as a second-unit director. Becoming a feature director in the late 1920s, he specialized in action films and especially westerns, turning out a number of first-rate oaters with Tim McCoy at Columbia. By most accounts a somewhat brusque man with an aversion to retakes and prima donna behavior (he locked horns with McCoy on more than one occasion), Lederman's penchant for getting films done on time and under budget no doubt endeared him to producers and guaranteed him steady employment, but often made his films look somewhat rushed. In the 1950s Lederman, like many of his "B" picture colleagues, turned to series television and directed many episodes of Annie Oakley (1954), among others.- Writer
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New York-born Harry Essex planned on a writing career throughout his young life. Among his first jobs were stints on the New York newspapers "The Daily Mirror" and "The Brooklyn Eagle", short stories for "Collier's" and "The Saturday Evening Post" and even a Broadway play titled "Something for Nothing" (which Essex later called "a resounding failure"). Writing for the movies was uppermost in Essex's mind throughout the period (and he DID co-write the original story for Universal's Man Made Monster (1941)), but "the big break" never came, and World War II intervened. Five or six days after Essex's discharge, he ran into an old acquaintance whose new job was finding playwrights to turn into screenwriters for Columbia Pictures. Essex wrote or co-wrote dozens of movies and numerous TV shows during his lengthy Hollywood career.- Felix F. Feist was born on 15 July 1883. Felix F. died on 15 April 1936.
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A graduate of Boston College, Fred F. Sears got his show-business start in regional theater, where he was an actor, director and producer. He started "little theater" groups and was a drama instructor at Southwestern University when Columbia Pictures hired him as a dialogue director. He also worked in front of the cameras, mostly as a sidekick in the studio's low-budget westerns. He made the leap to director on the studio's "Durango Kid" series of westerns starring Charles Starrett. He spent his entire career at Columbia and was a favorite of quickie producer Sam Katzman because he knew how to bring in films on time and under budget. Those were two major considerations for a low-buck producer like Katzman, who released through Columbia, and for him Sears made juvenile-delinquent crime films, rock musicals, action thrillers and sci-fi "epics". His best film is generally considered to be the sci-fi classic Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), which--in addition to containing spectacular special effects by the legendary Ray Harryhausen--is a well-paced, tightly made effort without the chintzy, rushed look so common in much of Sears' output. It's somewhat ironic that a sci-fi picture is also considered to be Sears' worst--The Giant Claw (1957), a clunky mishmash with hilariously awful special effects (the "giant claw" turns out to be a spectacularly inept marionette that looks like a mutant turkey and sounds like a crow choking to death).
Fred Sears died of a heart attack on November 30, 1957, at the young age of 44. His last five films were released after his death.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
Philip Ford was born on 16 October 1900 in Portland, Maine, USA. He was a director and assistant director, known for Web of Danger (1947), Prisoners in Petticoats (1950) and Valley of the Zombies (1946). He was married to Jane Eliza Harrison, Viola Catherine Waller and Lucia Diprete. He died on 12 January 1976 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
A portly, somewhat grubby and bohemian-looking character star, Hugo Haas was one of the most celebrated Czech actors back in the 30s, a comic star who only grew in stature as he delved creatively into writing, directing and producing. The Nazi invasion forced him to leave his beloved country and come to the United States. Like a fish out of water, he had to start small. Beginning as an announcer on US broadcasts to the Eastern Europe underground, he also offered his talents as a narrator of propaganda films.
After the war, Haas revitalized his acting career with flashy, thick-accented support roles, often as a slick, seedy villain in lavish costumers. He enjoyed a certain amount of popularity and with the money he made, he began financing his own independent films in the 50s, taking total creative control with almost a Svengali-like obsession.
This time around, however, there was little of the adulation he had reaped so easily back in his homeland. With such lurid titles as Pickup (1951), Thy Neighbor's Wife (1953), and Bait (1954), these vehicles smacked hard of sensationalism and he and his films were generally dismissed. Many were badly acted and obviously cheap and cheesy in production values. A recurring "Blue Angel"-styled theme appeared in many of Hugo's starring vehicle whereas an older respectable man was seduced and ruined by the charms of a much younger hussy (blonde, busty bombshells such as Cleo Moore, Beverly Michaels, and (former "Miss Universe") Carol Morris.
Haas' reputation was so tainted by these so-called vanity projects that he was quickly dubbed the "foreign Ed Wood", which was unfair given his earlier reputation. Haas was planning to return to his native land in 1968 when the Russians seized control. Profoundly disheartened and depressed by the current state of affairs in his country, the homesick actor, who also suffered from an asthmatic condition, died shortly after of heart failure. He should be better remembered today than he is. He is solid proof that Hollywood has a way of sometimes robbing a person of his artistic creativity or integrity.- Director
- Art Director
- Writer
Austrian-born Nathan Juran was a professional architect before entering the film industry as an art director in 1937. He won an Academy Award for art direction on How Green Was My Valley (1941). World War II interrupted his film career, and he spent his war years with the OSS. Returning to Hollywood, he turned to directing films in the 1950s. He handled mostly low-budget westerns and sci-fi opuses, his most famous (or infamous) being Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) (which he filmed under the name "Nathan Hertz"). On the other hand, he was also responsible for the superb fantasy adventure The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). In the early 1960s, he journeyed to Europe, where he spent several years piloting adventure epics and spaghetti westerns.- Producer
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Getting his start in the movie business in Universal's contract and playdate department in New York City, Howard W. Koch moved on to 20th Century-Fox as a film librarian and then entered production as second assistant director on The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). After many films as assistant director, Koch joined forces with his professional benefactor Aubrey Schenck and Edwin F. Zabel to strike a three-picture production deal with United Artists that was to start with the western War Paint (1953). The success of these pictures opened up the deal for more UA films by Koch, Schenck and Zabel (Bel-Air Productions). With Schenck, Koch produced TV's Miami Undercover (1961) and also worked as a director on such series as Maverick (1957), Hawaiian Eye (1959), Cheyenne (1955) and The Untouchables (1959). From 1961 to 1964 Koch was vice-president in charge of production for Sinatra Enterprises; among his many executive-producer credits during this period was the chilling The Manchurian Candidate (1962). He became the production head at Paramount in 1964 and then shifted gears two years later to form his own production unit, which supplied major features to Paramount for years. By all accounts one of the best-loved men in Hollywood, Koch was a recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1990 Oscarcast.- Director
- Additional Crew
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
The oldest of three sons, Reginald LeBorg majored in political economy at the University of Austria and studied musical composition for a year at Arnold Schoenberg's Composition Seminar. His education completed, LeBorg entered his father's banking business and, acting as the senior LeBorg's representative, traveled to Prague, Hamburg and Paris to transact family business negotiations. During his two-year stay in Paris he studied at the Sorbonne. In the mid-'20s LeBorg traveled to New York to dispose of a collection of paintings on his father's behalf. Remaining in New York, he was employed by several banks and brokerage houses and at an advertising agency. The stock market crash of 1929 wiped out the LeBorg family fortune, and Reginald's interest in the financial world waned. He returned to Europe and his first love, the stage. He worked at the Max Reinhardt School in Vienna, and later devoted much of his time to directing operas and musical comedies for provincial houses throughout Central Europe. Arriving on the Hollywood scene in the early 1930s, LeBorg appeared as an extra in pictures at Paramount and Metro and later staged opera sequences in the Grace Moore hits One Night of Love (1934) and Love Me Forever (1935), as well as other films with operatic themes at Fox, Paramount and United Artists. After a number of second-unit assignments at MGM, Goldwyn and Selznick, LeBorg joined Universal, where he turned out band shorts. An 18-month hitch with the U.S. Army interrupted his Hollywood career, which resumed in 1943 with his return to Universal and his promotion to feature film director. He later worked in TV.- Director
- Editor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Herbert I. Leeds was a journeyman film editor before turning director in 1937. Many of his films were made for 20th Century-Fox, and his training as an editor was evident in the efficiency and tight pacing of his films. Although he started out making westerns, he soon turned to mysteries and adventures. His war film, Manila Calling (1942) was not the flag-waving, jingoistic propaganda piece typical of that era; while an action film, it eschewed phony heroics (until the last reel, anyway) in its story of a group of American soldiers and civilians trapped on Luzon by the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. He also directed two enjoyable entries in the underrated Lloyd Nolan "Michael Shayne" private detective series. Unlike many B directors, Leeds' final films kept up to the same quality as his early ones, and his next-to-last picture, Bunco Squad (1950) is, despite its potboiler title, a solid, well-crafted and well-acted little thriller.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Max Nosseck was born on 19 September 1902 in Nakel, East Prussia, Germany [now Naklo nad Notecia, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland]. He was a director and actor, known for The Brighton Strangler (1945), The Body Beautiful (1953) and Kill or Be Killed (1950). He was married to Ilse Steppat, Genevieve Haugan and Olly Gebauer. He died on 29 September 1972 in Bad Wiessee, Bavaria, Germany.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Arch Oboler was born on 7 December 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Five (1951), The Twonky (1953) and One Plus One (1961). He was married to Eleanor Helfand. He died on 19 March 1987 in Westlake Village, California, USA.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Born in Oklahoma City, Albert Rogell moved with his family to Spokane, WA, when he was a child. At 15 he got a job with the Washington Motion Picture Co. Having gotten a taste of the film business, he headed to Los Angeles after the company went bankrupt, and had a succession of jobs before joining up with director George Loane Tucker, with whom he learned the business from the ground up. After Tucker's death Rogell was hired by producer Sol Lesser to direct shorts. A feature director from 1923, his output was mainly "B" pictures, but he specialized in tight little action films and westerns, such as In Old Oklahoma (1943), and turned out the charming fantasy Heaven Only Knows (1947). He left film production in the 1950s and moved over to television.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Sidney Salkow was born on 16 June 1909 in New York City, New York, USA. Sidney was a director and writer, known for This Is Alice (1958), Raiders of the Seven Seas (1953) and The Lone Wolf Keeps a Date (1940). Sidney was married to Patricia Salkow and Katherine Ottesen. Sidney died on 18 October 2000 in Valley Village, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Lewis Seiler went to Hollywood in 1919 and worked as a gag man and assistant director before directing a number of two-reel comedies. He was closely associated with Tom Mix Westerns during the 1920s. He spent much of the 1930s at Warner Brothers, turning out some of that studio's grittier gangster pictures and "social drama" films--Crime School (1938), King of the Underworld (1939), Hell's Kitchen (1939), to name a few--and he was responsible for what is generally considered to be one of the finest war pictures to come out of Hollywood, Guadalcanal Diary (1943). Retiring from motion pictures in 1958, he turned to television where he kept busy up to the time of his death.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Maxwell Shane was born on 26 August 1905 in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Glass Wall (1953), Nightmare (1956) and Fear in the Night (1946). He died on 25 October 1983 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Producer
Director S. Sylvan Simon worked as a drama coach, radio executive and stage director before joining Warner Brothers in 1935. He then moved to MGM as director and assistant director in 1937. His sudden death at the age of 41 shocked all who knew him and he was mourned throughout the film industry.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Production Manager
R.G. Springsteen was born on 8 September 1904 in Tacoma, Washington, USA. He was a director and assistant director, known for Secret Venture (1955), Harbor of Missing Men (1950) and Heart of Virginia (1948). He was married to Alice Van Springsteen. He died on 9 December 1989.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
A juvenile actor, Bruce Humberstone started his career as a script clerk, later serving as assistant director for the likes of King Vidor, Edmund Goulding and Allan Dwan. One of the 28 founders of the Directors Guild of America, Humberstone worked in a number of capacities on several silent films. With no distinct directing style of his own, Humberstone was able to direct comedies, dramas, westerns, melodramas or thrillers without any problem. He's known for directing several Charlie Chan films at 20th Century-Fox and came up with the "technique" of keeping star Warner Oland drunk so that he could deliver his lines in a style that was appropriate to the Chan character. During the 1950s Humberstone worked mainly for television, and retired in 1962.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Tubby 5' 10 1/2" character actor Bruno VeSota had a remarkably long, varied and impressive career acting and directing in the mediums of stage, radio, movies and television. He was born Bruno William VeSota on March 25th, 1922 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the second of three sons born to Lithuanian immigrants Kasmir and Eleanora VeSota. Bruno first began acting in the 7th grade while attending the Catholic parochial school St. George's. He made his stage debut as the villain in the children's play "Christopher's Orphans." At age 19 VeSota went to the Hobart Theatre in Chicago where he learned the basics on acting, make-up and direction. He made his stage directorial debut with a production of "Richard III" and went on to direct everything from the classics to light comedies. After briefly working in Lithuanian radio in the 40s Vesota did a longer stint on English-language radio. He even provided the voice of Winston Churchill for a radio production. Moreover, Bruno joined the Actors Company of Chicago and continued to perform on stage. VeSota then worked in live television in Chicago in 1945. He directed over 2,000 live TV programs and acted in some 200 more. VeSota moved to Hollywood, California in 1952. Bruno began acting in films in 1953. He achieved his greatest cult feature popularity with his frequent and delightful appearances in a bunch of hugely enjoyable low-budget Roger Corman exploitation pictures. Bruno was especially excellent as Yvette Vickers' angry cuckolded husband in the Grade B monster classic "Attack of the Giant Leeches." Other notable movie roles include a disgusting slob junkyard owner who sells stolen automobile parts on the side in "The Choppers," a bartender in "The Haunted Palace," a hapless night watchman who becomes a victim of "The Wasp Woman," a snobby coffeehouse regular in the hilarious black comedy gem "A Bucket of Blood," a perverse oddball named Mr. Donald Duck from Duluth in "Single Room Unfurnished," a nervous innkeeper in "The Undead," a Russian spy in "War of the Satellites," a minister in "Hell's Angels on Wheels," a cultured gangster in "Daddy-O," and a brutish loan enforcer in "Carnival Rock." Bruno narrated the atrocious cheapie clunker "Curse of the Stoned Hand" for notorious schlockmeister Jerry Warren. He also worked on the make-up and has a bit part in Curtis Harrington's nicely spooky "Night Tide." VeSota does a cameo in Steven Spielberg's made-for-TV fright feature "Something Evil." Bruno directed three movies: the entertainingly lurid crime potboiler "The Female Jungle," the fun alien invasion entry "The Brain Eaters," and the silly spoof "Invasion of the Star Creatures." VeSota had a recurring role as a bartender in a handful of episodes of the hit Western TV show "Bonanza." Among the TV shows VeSota had guest spots on are "Kojak," "McMillan and Wife," "Hogan's Heroes," "Mission: Impossible," "It Takes A Thief," "Hondo," "Branded," "My Mother the Car," "The Wild, Wild West," "The Untouchables," and "Leave It to Beaver." VeSota had six children with his wife Genevieve. Bruno VeSota died of a heart attack at age 54 on September 24th, 1976.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Tim Whelan was born on 2 November 1893 in Cannelton, Indiana, USA. He was a director and writer, known for The Thief of Bagdad (1940), The Murder Man (1935) and Along Came Sally (1934). He was married to Miriam Seegar. He died on 11 August 1957 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Production Manager
- Producer
Born in England on Christmas Day, 1905, Lewis Allen first came on the show-biz scene when he was appointed executive in charge of West End and Broadway stage productions for famed impresario Gilbert Miller. Allen also co-directed some of the productions (including the celebrated "Victoria Regina" with Helen Hayes and Vincent Price) before he was lured to Hollywood by Paramount studio head Buddy G. DeSylva. The Uninvited (1944), based on Dorothy Macardle's best-selling novel, made for an auspicious directing debut; its success prompted an immediate follow-up, the suspense thriller The Unseen (1945) (with a script by Raymond Chandler). Otherwise, his filmography leans heavily toward "tough guy" movies of the Alan Ladd-George Raft-Edward G. Robinson school. Allen also directed much TV (Perry Mason (1957), The Big Valley (1965), Mission: Impossible (1966), Little House on the Prairie (1974), many more).- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Christy Cabanne was, along with Sam Newfield and William Beaudine, one of the most prolific directors in the history of American films.
Cabanne spent several years in the navy, leaving the service in 1908. He decided on a career in the theater, and became a director as well as an actor. Although acting was his primary profession, when he finally broke into the film business it was as a director. He joined the Fine Arts Co., then was employed as an assistant to D.W. Griffith. Being a published author, he found himself hired by Metro Pictures to write a serial. After that he formed his own production company, but shut it down a few years later and became a director for hire, mainly of low- to medium-budget films for such studios as FBO, Associated Exhibitors, Tiffany and Pathe. Although he worked in the rarefied atmosphere at MGM on a few occasions, he was usually to be found toiling away at the lower end of lower-level studios. In the 1930s his fortunes picked up a bit and he did quite a bit of work at Universal, but from there his career nosedived and he ended up cranking out cheap westerns, shoddy jungle pictures and limp horror films for the likes of Monogram, PRC and Screen Guild.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Producer
Russian-born Phil Rosen began his film career as a cameraman during the silent era, and worked his way into directing. Rosen was a highy regarded director in the silent era, as evidenced by the fact that when MGM fired Josef von Sternberg from Exquisite Sinner (1926)--for, among other things, his extravagance, slow shooting schedule and total disregard for the budget--the studio brought in Rosen to re-edit, re-shoot and generally tighten it up, and by most contemporary accounts he did a first-rate job. However, like all too many of his colleagues of the period, the success he enjoyed during the silent era didn't carry over into talking pictures, and Rosen spent most of the rest of his career churning out B-grade (and cheaper) fodder for outfits like Monogram, PRC, and the bottom-of-the-barrel states-rights market.- Director
- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
B. Reeves Eason ran a produce business before going into stock and vaudeville. He is known for using 42 cameras to film the spectacular chariot race in the Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman version of Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). (The chariot race was filmed at what is now the intersection of LaCienega and Venice Boulevards in Los Angeles.) This 1925 version was the most expensive silent film ever made, costing $3.9 million, and in 1921 the sum of $600,000 was paid for the rights to film the classic Lew Wallace novel (the highest price ever paid for rights during the silent era). Eason also directed the "burning of Atlanta" in the classic Gone with the Wind (1939).- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
Philip Ford was born on 16 October 1900 in Portland, Maine, USA. He was a director and assistant director, known for Web of Danger (1947), Prisoners in Petticoats (1950) and Valley of the Zombies (1946). He was married to Jane Eliza Harrison, Viola Catherine Waller and Lucia Diprete. He died on 12 January 1976 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.