Sam Katzman
Encyclopedia
Sam Katzman was an American
film producer
and director
. Born into a poor Jewish family, Katzman went to work as a stage laborer at the age of 13 in the fledgling East Coast
film industry. He would learn all aspects of filmmaking and become a highly successful Hollywood producer for more than forty years.
Katzman produced cost-effective productions that made money for the studios and the financial backers. He is noted for numerous Western films of the 1930s, his Bela Lugosi
and East Side Kids
features of the 1940s, the 15-chapter Superman
serial
of 1948, and a string of rock-'n'-roll musicals in the 1950s. At MGM Studios in the 1960s, Katzman produced several Elvis Presley
films and singer Roy Orbison's
only film, The Fastest Guitar Alive
.
to Abraham and Rebecca Katzman, Katzman entered the film industry shortly before World War I
, as an errand boy at the old Fox Film Corporation, which was then making low-budget short films at their studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey. As a mail carrier, prop boy, and laboratory messenger, carrying cans of exposed film back and forth to the lab, Katzman quickly learned all the angles of the low-budget film business, and gradually rose to the rank of assistant director.
Fox let Katzman go in a wave of cutbacks just before the company merged with 20th Century Pictures. He thus became an independent producer and created his first venture, a feature-length film, His Private Secretary
(1933), which he wrote himself. John Wayne
was featured in the picture, which Katzman made in six days at an overall cost of $13,000. From this modest beginning, Katzman never looked back.
Low-budget producers usually made outdoor westerns and action pictures, saving money on sets and using inexpensive actors. Katzman was no exception, and he filled his films with former silent-screen players who still had name value but commanded lower salaries. His companies of the late 1930s, Victory Pictures (1935–1939) and Puritan Pictures (1935–1938), relied on screen menace Bela Lugosi
, cowboy star Tim McCoy
, and Olympic athlete Herman Brix to draw the customers.
, a small but prolific independent studio, specialized in low-budget films for neighborhood theaters. Monogram manufactured much of its own product, but also released films made by independent producers. Sam Katzman sold Monogram on a juvenile delinquency
series, to cash in on the successful cycle of the Dead End Kids
and Little Tough Guys
melodramas. Katzman's series, The East Side Kids, caught on almost immediately, and before long many of the original Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys joined Katzman's series. The East Side Kids films gradually evolved from noisy melodramas to roughneck comedies. Leo Gorcey
, Huntz Hall
, Bobby Jordan
, Gabriel Dell
, Billy Benedict, and Ernie 'Sunshine' Sammy Morrison were mainstays of Katzman's East Side troupe.
Katzman branched out with companion series for Monogram. He partnered with Jack Dietz to produce Bela Lugosi
thrillers, and comedy features with Harry Langdon
, Billy Gilbert
, and Shemp Howard. When Leo Gorcey demanded double his weekly salary from Katzman in 1945, Katzman refused and pulled the plug on The East Side Kids. He then approached Monogram with an idea at the opposite extreme: the wholesome adventures of squeaky-clean high school kids. Monogram agreed, and Katzman launched the "Teen Agers" series, featuring singer Freddie Stewart and future "Superman" co-star Noel Neill
.
to produce adventure serials and, soon after, feature films. For two years he worked for both Monogram and Columbia, grinding out serials and low-budget features at a truly torrential pace. In 1947 he joined Columbia full-time, with a series of four Jean Porter musical comedies and another two Gloria Jean
vehicles. Columbia's arrangement with Katzman was straightforward: Katzman selected the properties, Columbia approved the scripts and financed the productions, Katzman made the films using studio personnel and resources, and Columbia gave Katzman 25% of the profits. The Katzman unit occupied the former Tiffany Pictures
studio, now Columbia property.
One of Katzman's specialties at Columbia was taking a major news story, popular trend or musical craze and making a film about it. He worked so quickly that the film would be in theaters while the topic was still hot, ensuring big profits. One of his first pictures of this type was 1948's I Surrender Dear, cashing in on the new disc-jockey phenomenon in broadcasting. He used elements from this picture as a blueprint for his rock-and-roll musical hits, Rock Around the Clock
(1956) and Don't Knock the Rock
(1957) that he remade in 1961 as Twist Around the Clock
and Don't Knock the Twist
. He also made films on two other musical crazes, Cha Cha Cha Boom! (with Perez Prado
) and Calypso Heat Wave. Katzman produced one of the first films about the Korean War
, A Yank in Korea with Lon McCallister
, that competed with Lippert
's The Steel Helmet
and Eagle-Lion's Korea Patrol.
Katzman revitalized the waning serial
market with his 1948 production Superman
, starring Kirk Alyn
as the Man of Steel and former "Teen Agers" actress Noel Neill
as Lois Lane. The 15-chapter cliffhanger was tremendously successful, spawning two more superhero serials, Batman and Robin
(1949) and Atom Man vs. Superman
(1950). Katzman continued to produce serials until 1956; his Blazing the Overland Trail
(a very-low-budget patchwork of old stock footage and new scenes, with the actors costumed to match three serial heroes of the 1940s!) rang down the curtain on the serial genre (Columbia would reissue Katzman's serials through 1966).
In 1949 Katzman hired Olympic hero and movie Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller
(who had been replaced by Lex Barker
in the RKO Tarzan
films) for a series of Jungle Jim
adventures, earning Katzman the nickname "Jungle Sam." By 1955 Columbia turned Jungle Jim into a television property, and when legalities prevented Columbia from making any more Jungle Jims for theaters, Katzman simply shrugged off the Jungle Jim character and had Weissmuller use his own name in three more features. The last one, Jungle Moon Men (Charles S. Gould, 1955), was yet another remake of Sir H. Rider Haggard’s classic novel She. (After Katzman stopped making the features, Weissmuller starred in 39 "Jungle Jim" TV episodes.)
On the set Katzman would use his collection of canes as a personal prop, banging them against the floor or the scenery when production fell behind schedule. The pace of Katzman’s film production from 1950-1959 is blistering, touching nearly all the generic bases in the process. Starting in 1950 with director William Berke’s Mark of the Gorilla, Katzman proved himself a master of all genres, with such films as Lew Landers
’ Tyrant of the Sea (1950), a rapidly paced swashbuckler; Spencer Gordon Bennet
’s Cody of the Pony Express
(1950), an elegiac western chapter-play; the near-documentary State Penitentiary (Lew Landers, 1950); the rousing action serial Pirates of the High Seas
(Spencer Gordon Bennet, 1950); Chain Gang (Lew Landers, 1950); a hard-boiled exposé of the prison system reminiscent of Mervyn LeRoy
’s 1932 classic I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
; A Yank in Korea (Lew Landers, 1951), covering the then-escalating conflict), Richard Quine
’s wartime drama Purple Heart Diary
(1951); Last Train from Bombay (Fred F. Sears
, 1952), an exotic thriller; Sears' The 49th Man
, an essay in Cold War atomic paranoia; two Arabian Nights films, Prisoners of the Casbah and The Saracen Blade (William Castle
, 1954), and Castle’s The Iron Glove (1954), which starred Robert Stack
in a Technicolor swashbuckler, done in typical Katzman fashion. In many respects Katzman’s films proved an apt training ground for young directors; if you could work for Katzman and make something worthwhile, you could work for the majors, with their relaxed schedules, without a problem.
Columbia sometimes used the Katzman unit as a threat. When Columbia president Harry Cohn
wanted to break an actor's contract, he gave the actor a Katzman script. Everyone knew Katzman as a "schlock
" producer, and Cohn knew full well that the actor would refuse the lowbrow script, giving Cohn cause to terminate the contract without penalty. This ploy backfired in 1951 when Cohn owed Lucille Ball
$85,000 and one feature film. He sent Ball the script of a formula Arabian Nights fantasy, The Magic Carpet, confident that Ball would decline. Ball recounted her next move in her memoir, Love, Lucy: "I had never feuded with a studio before and I wasn't about to earn the reputation of being difficult at this late date. I picked up the phone and called Harry Cohn. 'I've just read the Sam Katzman script,' I crooned into his ear. 'I think it's marvelous! I'd be delighted to do it.' 'You would? Mr. Cohn almost fell over backward and poor Sam Katzman just about had a coronary . . . My salary ate up half Katzman's budget." Undaunted, Katzman and Columbia house director Lew Landers made the film in color, using costumes and sets left over from other, more lavish productions.
and William Berke were good, workmanlike directors, and old hands at directing "B" comedies, musicals and mysteries. Serial specialist Spencer Gordon Bennet
, whose career went back to the silent-film days, speedily churned out action fare for Katzman. Richard Quine
, on the other hand, would go on to “A” features, most memorably with The Solid Gold Cadillac
(1956), which starred Judy Holliday
and Paul Douglas
, and established Quine’s career as a major Columbia director. Future horror director William Castle
was still developing his own style as a director, and Katzman allowed Castle to cut his directorial teeth on a series of low-budget films. Fred F. Sears
was a former actor in Columbia "B" pictures who assisted behind the scenes on Katzman's serials, and was promoted to full-fledged director.
Working for Katzman could be very tough indeed, however. On The Houston Story (1956) Castle was shooting on location in Texas in August 1955 when star Lee J. Cobb
was felled with a non-fatal heart attack after three days of shooting. Katzman insisted that production continue, so Castle, who resembled Cobb’s general physical build, took over Cobb’s role, performing much of the action in long shot with his back to the camera. This took another three days, and then the company returned to Hollywood. Castle hoped to finish up Cobb’s scenes after the actor recuperated, but Katzman instead cast Gene Barry
in Cobb’s role, shot a few more days of film and then released the production with Barry as the star. In the final film Cobb, Castle and Barry all played the leading role of “Frank Duncan” at various points; Katzman simply gave the material to his trusted editor, Edwin H. Bryant, and told him to patch it together.
New Orleans Uncensored (Castle, 1955) was a true-crime drama, exposing the seamy underside of the Big Easy; It Came from Beneath the Sea
(Robert Gordon, 1955) served primarily as a showcase for Ray Harryhausen
’s stop motion
special effects; while Fred F. Sears’ Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955) was a surprisingly stark nod to the country’s new awareness of the problem of juvenile delinquency. Rock Around the Clock
(Fred F. Sears, 1956) was one of the first rock-'n'-roll movies to be released by a major studio, based upon Katzman’s intuition that rock music would soon be a major force in American culture; and Miami Exposé (Fred F. Sears, 1956) starred Lee J. Cobb
in a neo-realist tale of big-city corruption, with spirited support from Alan Napier
and Edward Arnold
.
ed due to the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee
during the Cold War
Red Scare
era. Many producers followed this practice, but Katzman, with his insatiable need for screenplays, was more deeply involved in using "blacklisted" talent than most. Blacklisted scenarist Bernard Gordon
, for example, wrote Castle’s The Law vs. Billy The Kid (1954) as “John D. Williams,” as well as Earth vs. The Flying Saucers
(Fred F. Sears, 1956), Edward L. Cahn’s Zombies of Mora Tau
(1957), Leslie Kardos’ The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957) and Sears’ Escape from San Quentin (1957) as "Raymond T. Marcus", all of which were produced by Katzman. For Katzman the important thing was that a person worked reliably, efficiently and inexpensively; if a writer fit these criteria, Katzman was interested.
In all his films Katzman created a sealed, hermetic universe, within which his characters could operate with impunity. There were no rules to break, because Katzman had created the rules, and with them the concept of the genre "hot-wire" (in which several genres are combined to create a new twist on an existing format, such as the comedy/western, the horror/musical and the like). Using this concept to bring new life to existing--and often overused--genres, Katzman created a cinematic vision that was his and his alone.
, including Gene Nelson
’s Harum Scarum
(1965), with a budget of $2,400,000 and an 18-day schedule. Presley received $1,000,000, while the rest of the cast split a paltry $200,000; the rest of the budget went entirely to production costs. But the Elvis films did not reflect Katzman’s true approach to filmmaking. Whereas Columbia's Twist Around the Clock, made just three years earlier, had cost a mere $280,000, now Katzman was forced to deal with a budget that was nearly 10 times that amount. The fun, and the maverick vision that had brought Katzman to Hollywood, had vanished.
Katzman’s final films were marginal, and the assembly-line production system that had served him so well now seemed out of step with the times. For the first time, Katzman was unable to adapt to changing circumstances. Katzman died on August 4, 1973, in Hollywood.
He is interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
in Culver City, California
.
- February 1962
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
. Born into a poor Jewish family, Katzman went to work as a stage laborer at the age of 13 in the fledgling East Coast
East Coast of the United States
The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, refers to the easternmost coastal states in the United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada. The term includes the U.S...
film industry. He would learn all aspects of filmmaking and become a highly successful Hollywood producer for more than forty years.
Katzman produced cost-effective productions that made money for the studios and the financial backers. He is noted for numerous Western films of the 1930s, his Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
and East Side Kids
East Side Kids
The East Side Kids were characters in a series of films released by Monogram Pictures from 1940 through 1945. Many of them were originally part of The Dead End Kids and The Little Tough Guys, and several of them later became members of The Bowery Boys....
features of the 1940s, the 15-chapter Superman
Superman (serial)
Superman is a 15-part black-and-white Columbia film serial based on the comic book character Superman. It stars an uncredited Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill as Lois Lane. It is notable as the first live-action appearance of Superman on film and for the longevity of its distribution...
serial
Serial (film)
Serials, more specifically known as Movie serials, Film serials or Chapter plays, were short subjects originally shown in theaters in conjunction with a feature film. They were related to pulp magazine serialized fiction...
of 1948, and a string of rock-'n'-roll musicals in the 1950s. At MGM Studios in the 1960s, Katzman produced several Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
films and singer Roy Orbison's
Roy Orbison
Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer-songwriter, well known for his distinctive, powerful voice, complex compositions, and dark emotional ballads. Orbison grew up in Texas and began singing in a rockabilly/country & western band in high school until he was signed by Sun Records in Memphis...
only film, The Fastest Guitar Alive
The Fastest Guitar Alive
The Fastest Guitar Alive is the soundtrack title for the 33 record album from MGM Records released in June 1967.-Track listing:All songs written by Roy Orbison and Bill DeesSide one# "Whirlwind"# "Medicine Man, Medicine Man"# "River"...
.
Early life and career
Born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to Abraham and Rebecca Katzman, Katzman entered the film industry shortly before World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, as an errand boy at the old Fox Film Corporation, which was then making low-budget short films at their studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey. As a mail carrier, prop boy, and laboratory messenger, carrying cans of exposed film back and forth to the lab, Katzman quickly learned all the angles of the low-budget film business, and gradually rose to the rank of assistant director.
Fox let Katzman go in a wave of cutbacks just before the company merged with 20th Century Pictures. He thus became an independent producer and created his first venture, a feature-length film, His Private Secretary
His Private Secretary
His Private Secretary is a 1933 comedy film starring Evalyn Knapp and John Wayne.-Cast:* Evalyn Knapp - Marion Hall* John Wayne - Dick Wallace* Reginald Barlow - Mr. Wallace* Alec B. Francis - Rev. Hall* Arthur Hoyt - Little* Natalie Kingston - Polly...
(1933), which he wrote himself. John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
was featured in the picture, which Katzman made in six days at an overall cost of $13,000. From this modest beginning, Katzman never looked back.
Low-budget producers usually made outdoor westerns and action pictures, saving money on sets and using inexpensive actors. Katzman was no exception, and he filled his films with former silent-screen players who still had name value but commanded lower salaries. His companies of the late 1930s, Victory Pictures (1935–1939) and Puritan Pictures (1935–1938), relied on screen menace Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
, cowboy star Tim McCoy
Tim McCoy
Col. Tim McCoy was an American actor, military officer, and expert on American Indian life and customs.-Early years:...
, and Olympic athlete Herman Brix to draw the customers.
Monogram Pictures
Monogram PicturesMonogram Pictures
Monogram Pictures Corporation is a Hollywood studio that produced and released films, most on low budgets, between 1931 and 1953, when the firm completed a transition to the name Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. Monogram is considered a leader among the smaller studios sometimes referred to...
, a small but prolific independent studio, specialized in low-budget films for neighborhood theaters. Monogram manufactured much of its own product, but also released films made by independent producers. Sam Katzman sold Monogram on a juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency
Juvenile delinquency is participation in illegal behavior by minors who fall under a statutory age limit. Most legal systems prescribe specific procedures for dealing with juveniles, such as juvenile detention centers. There are a multitude of different theories on the causes of crime, most if not...
series, to cash in on the successful cycle of the Dead End Kids
Dead End Kids
The Dead End Kids were a group of young actors from New York who appeared in Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Dead End in 1935. In 1937 producer Samuel Goldwyn brought all of them to Hollywood and turned the play into a film...
and Little Tough Guys
Little Tough Guys
The Little Tough Guys were a group of actors who made a series of films and serials released by Universal Studios from 1938 through 1943...
melodramas. Katzman's series, The East Side Kids, caught on almost immediately, and before long many of the original Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys joined Katzman's series. The East Side Kids films gradually evolved from noisy melodramas to roughneck comedies. Leo Gorcey
Leo Gorcey
Leo Bernard Gorcey was an American stage and movie actor who became famous for portraying on film the leader of the group of young hooligans known variously as the Dead End Kids, The East Side Kids and The Bowery Boys. Always the most pugnacious member of the gangs he participated in, young Leo...
, Huntz Hall
Huntz Hall
Henry Richard "Huntz" Hall was an American radio, theatrical, and motion picture performer noted primarily for his roles in the "Dead End Kids" movies, such as Angels with Dirty Faces , which gave way to the "The Bowery Boys" movie franchise, a prolific and highly successful series of comedies in...
, Bobby Jordan
Bobby Jordan
Robert "Bobby" Jordan was an American actor, born in Harrison, New York, most notable for being a member of the Dead End Kids, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys.-Early life and career:...
, Gabriel Dell
Gabriel Dell
Gabriel Dell was an American actor and one of the members of what came to be known as the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/The Bowery Boys.-Early life:...
, Billy Benedict, and Ernie 'Sunshine' Sammy Morrison were mainstays of Katzman's East Side troupe.
Katzman branched out with companion series for Monogram. He partnered with Jack Dietz to produce Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...
thrillers, and comedy features with Harry Langdon
Harry Langdon
Harry Philmore Langdon was an American comedian who appeared in vaudeville, silent films , and talkies. He was briefly partnered with Oliver Hardy.-Life and career:...
, Billy Gilbert
Billy Gilbert
Billy Gilbert was an American comedian and actor known for his comic sneeze routines. He appeared in over 200 feature films, short subjects and television shows starting in 1929. He is not to be confused with silent film actor Billy Gilbert Billy Gilbert (September 12, 1894 – September 23,...
, and Shemp Howard. When Leo Gorcey demanded double his weekly salary from Katzman in 1945, Katzman refused and pulled the plug on The East Side Kids. He then approached Monogram with an idea at the opposite extreme: the wholesome adventures of squeaky-clean high school kids. Monogram agreed, and Katzman launched the "Teen Agers" series, featuring singer Freddie Stewart and future "Superman" co-star Noel Neill
Noel Neill
Noel Neill is an American actress in motion pictures and television. She is best known as her portrayal of Lois Lane in the film serials Superman and Atom Man vs...
.
Move to Columbia
In 1945 Katzman accepted a contract from Columbia PicturesColumbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
to produce adventure serials and, soon after, feature films. For two years he worked for both Monogram and Columbia, grinding out serials and low-budget features at a truly torrential pace. In 1947 he joined Columbia full-time, with a series of four Jean Porter musical comedies and another two Gloria Jean
Gloria Jean
Gloria Jean is an American singer and actress who starred or co-starred in 26 feature films between 1939 and 1959. She also made radio, television, stage, and nightclub appearances.-Career:...
vehicles. Columbia's arrangement with Katzman was straightforward: Katzman selected the properties, Columbia approved the scripts and financed the productions, Katzman made the films using studio personnel and resources, and Columbia gave Katzman 25% of the profits. The Katzman unit occupied the former Tiffany Pictures
Tiffany Pictures
Tiffany Pictures was a Hollywood motion picture studio in operation from 1921 until 1932.-History:...
studio, now Columbia property.
One of Katzman's specialties at Columbia was taking a major news story, popular trend or musical craze and making a film about it. He worked so quickly that the film would be in theaters while the topic was still hot, ensuring big profits. One of his first pictures of this type was 1948's I Surrender Dear, cashing in on the new disc-jockey phenomenon in broadcasting. He used elements from this picture as a blueprint for his rock-and-roll musical hits, Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock
"Rock Around the Clock" is a 12-bar-blues-based song written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets in 1954...
(1956) and Don't Knock the Rock
Don't Knock the Rock
Don't Knock the Rock is a 1957 rock and roll film starring Alan Dale as a rock star who returns to his hometown to rest up for the summer only to find that rock and roll has been banned there by disapproving adults...
(1957) that he remade in 1961 as Twist Around the Clock
Twist Around the Clock
Twist Around the Clock is an American musical film released in 1961. It was a remake of Sam Katzman and Robert E. Kent's Rock Around the Clock. Like Rock Around the Clock, which was followed by a sequel titled, Don't Knock the Rock, this film was followed by a sequel titled, Don't Knock the...
and Don't Knock the Twist
Don't Knock the Twist
Don't Knock the Twist is a 1962 film starring Lang Jeffries. It is the sequel to the 1961 film Twist Around the Clock-Plot summary:Many twist dancers' meet in preparation for the TV variety show called "The Twist." While the special is still in the production stages, jealousies lead to problems -...
. He also made films on two other musical crazes, Cha Cha Cha Boom! (with Perez Prado
Perez Prado
Dámaso Pérez Prado was a Cuban bandleader, musician , and composer. He is often referred to as the 'King of the Mambo'.His orchestra was the most popular in mambo...
) and Calypso Heat Wave. Katzman produced one of the first films about the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
, A Yank in Korea with Lon McCallister
Lon McCallister
Lon McCallister was an American actor.Born in Los Angeles, he began appearing in movies at the age of 13. The young actor had leads in a number of films; he usually played boyish young men from the country. Growing only to 5'6" he found it difficult to find roles as an adult. He appeared with...
, that competed with Lippert
Lippert
Lippert is a German surname, and may refer to:* Bill Lippert , American gay rights activist* Howard Vernon, born Mario Lippert , Swiss actor* Julius Lippert , Nazi activist, mayor of Berlin 1937–1940...
's The Steel Helmet
The Steel Helmet
The Steel Helmet is a war film directed by Samuel Fuller and produced by Lippert Studios during the Korean War. It was the first film about the war, and the first of several war films by producer-director-writer Fuller.-Plot:...
and Eagle-Lion's Korea Patrol.
Katzman revitalized the waning serial
Serial (film)
Serials, more specifically known as Movie serials, Film serials or Chapter plays, were short subjects originally shown in theaters in conjunction with a feature film. They were related to pulp magazine serialized fiction...
market with his 1948 production Superman
Superman (serial)
Superman is a 15-part black-and-white Columbia film serial based on the comic book character Superman. It stars an uncredited Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill as Lois Lane. It is notable as the first live-action appearance of Superman on film and for the longevity of its distribution...
, starring Kirk Alyn
Kirk Alyn
-External links:...
as the Man of Steel and former "Teen Agers" actress Noel Neill
Noel Neill
Noel Neill is an American actress in motion pictures and television. She is best known as her portrayal of Lois Lane in the film serials Superman and Atom Man vs...
as Lois Lane. The 15-chapter cliffhanger was tremendously successful, spawning two more superhero serials, Batman and Robin
Batman and Robin
Batman and Robin refers to the partnership between Batman and Robin, two superhero characters originally appearing in DC Comics.It is also the title of a number of fictional works starring the duo:...
(1949) and Atom Man vs. Superman
Atom Man vs. Superman
Atom Man vs. Superman , Columbia's 43rd serial, finds Lex Luthor , secretly the Atom Man, blackmailing the city of Metropolis by threatening to destroy the entire community...
(1950). Katzman continued to produce serials until 1956; his Blazing the Overland Trail
Blazing the Overland Trail
Blazing the Overland Trail is a Columbia film serial. It was the last serial produced by Columbia and the last serial ever produced by any major studio...
(a very-low-budget patchwork of old stock footage and new scenes, with the actors costumed to match three serial heroes of the 1940s!) rang down the curtain on the serial genre (Columbia would reissue Katzman's serials through 1966).
In 1949 Katzman hired Olympic hero and movie Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller was an Austro-Hungarian-born American swimmer and actor best known for playing Tarzan in movies. Weissmuller was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven...
(who had been replaced by Lex Barker
Lex Barker
Lex Barker was an American actor best known for playing Tarzan of the Apes and leading characters from Karl May's novels.-Early life:...
in the RKO Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
films) for a series of Jungle Jim
Jungle Jim
Jungle Jim is the fictional hero of a series of jungle adventures in various media. The series began in 1934 as an American newspaper comic strip chronicling the adventures of Asia-based hunter Jim Bradley, who was nicknamed Jungle Jim...
adventures, earning Katzman the nickname "Jungle Sam." By 1955 Columbia turned Jungle Jim into a television property, and when legalities prevented Columbia from making any more Jungle Jims for theaters, Katzman simply shrugged off the Jungle Jim character and had Weissmuller use his own name in three more features. The last one, Jungle Moon Men (Charles S. Gould, 1955), was yet another remake of Sir H. Rider Haggard’s classic novel She. (After Katzman stopped making the features, Weissmuller starred in 39 "Jungle Jim" TV episodes.)
On the set Katzman would use his collection of canes as a personal prop, banging them against the floor or the scenery when production fell behind schedule. The pace of Katzman’s film production from 1950-1959 is blistering, touching nearly all the generic bases in the process. Starting in 1950 with director William Berke’s Mark of the Gorilla, Katzman proved himself a master of all genres, with such films as Lew Landers
Lew Landers
Lew Landers was a prolific American film and television director.-Biography:Born Louis Friedlander in New York City, he began his movie career as an actor. In 1914 he appeared in two features, D. W. Griffith's The Escape and the comedy short Admission -- Two Pins, opposite Glen White, under his...
’ Tyrant of the Sea (1950), a rapidly paced swashbuckler; Spencer Gordon Bennet
Spencer Gordon Bennet
Spencer Gordon Bennet was an American film producer and director. Known as the "King of Serial Directors", he directed more film serials than any other director.-Biography:...
’s Cody of the Pony Express
Cody of the Pony Express
Cody of the Pony Express is the 42nd serial released by Columbia Pictures.-Plot:Widely known as Buffalo Bill, William Cody helped define the image of the Old West and became one of the best-known celebrities of the 19th and early 20th centuries. As a teenager, he herded cattle and rode vast...
(1950), an elegiac western chapter-play; the near-documentary State Penitentiary (Lew Landers, 1950); the rousing action serial Pirates of the High Seas
Pirates of the High Seas
Pirates of the High Seas is the 44th serial released by Columbia Pictures. It starred the heroic Buster Crabbe, along with Lois Hall and Tommy Farrell, under the direction of Spencer Gordon Bennet and Thomas Carr...
(Spencer Gordon Bennet, 1950); Chain Gang (Lew Landers, 1950); a hard-boiled exposé of the prison system reminiscent of Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, producer and sometime actor.-Early life:Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, California, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake...
’s 1932 classic I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a Pre-Code crime/drama film starring Paul Muni as a wrongfully convicted convict on a chain gang who escapes to Chicago. The film was written by Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes from Robert Elliott Burns's autobiography, I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain...
; A Yank in Korea (Lew Landers, 1951), covering the then-escalating conflict), Richard Quine
Richard Quine
Richard Quine was an American stage, film, and radio actor and film director.Quine was born in Detroit. He made his Broadway debut in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Very Warm for May in 1939 and appeared in My Sister Eileen the following year...
’s wartime drama Purple Heart Diary
Purple Heart Diary
Purple Heart Diary is a 1951 drama film directed by Richard Quine. It stars Frances Langford and Judd Holdren.-Cast:*Frances Langford as Herself*Judd Holdren as Lt. Mike McCormick*Ben Lessy as Himself*Tony Romano as Himself...
(1951); Last Train from Bombay (Fred F. Sears
Fred F. Sears
Frederick Francis Sears was an American film actor and director. Though a marginalized figure in 1950s cinema, he created 52 feature films in a number of genres for Columbia Pictures from 1949 to 1957, before his death at the age of 44....
, 1952), an exotic thriller; Sears' The 49th Man
The 49th Man
The 49th Man is a 1953 American thriller film released by Columbia Pictures, directed by Fred F. Sears and starring John Ireland, Richard Denning, Suzanne Dalbert, Peter Marshall, Robert Foulk and Mike Connors...
, an essay in Cold War atomic paranoia; two Arabian Nights films, Prisoners of the Casbah and The Saracen Blade (William Castle
William Castle
William Castle was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Castle was known for directing films with many gimmicks which were ambitiously promoted, despite being reasonably low budget B-movies....
, 1954), and Castle’s The Iron Glove (1954), which starred Robert Stack
Robert Stack
Robert Stack was an American actor. In addition to acting in more than 40 films, he was the star of the 1959-1963 ABC television series The Untouchables and later served as the host of Unsolved Mysteries.-Early life:...
in a Technicolor swashbuckler, done in typical Katzman fashion. In many respects Katzman’s films proved an apt training ground for young directors; if you could work for Katzman and make something worthwhile, you could work for the majors, with their relaxed schedules, without a problem.
Columbia sometimes used the Katzman unit as a threat. When Columbia president Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn was the American president and production director of Columbia Pictures.-Career:Cohn was born to a working-class German-Jewish family in New York City. In later years, he appears to have disparaged his heritage...
wanted to break an actor's contract, he gave the actor a Katzman script. Everyone knew Katzman as a "schlock
Schlock
Schlock is an English word of Yiddish origin meaning "something cheap, shoddy, or inferior "In the field of science, "schlock" refers to shoddy or unreliable results....
" producer, and Cohn knew full well that the actor would refuse the lowbrow script, giving Cohn cause to terminate the contract without penalty. This ploy backfired in 1951 when Cohn owed Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball
Lucille Désirée Ball was an American comedian, film, television, stage and radio actress, model, film and television executive, and star of the sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy and Life With Lucy...
$85,000 and one feature film. He sent Ball the script of a formula Arabian Nights fantasy, The Magic Carpet, confident that Ball would decline. Ball recounted her next move in her memoir, Love, Lucy: "I had never feuded with a studio before and I wasn't about to earn the reputation of being difficult at this late date. I picked up the phone and called Harry Cohn. 'I've just read the Sam Katzman script,' I crooned into his ear. 'I think it's marvelous! I'd be delighted to do it.' 'You would? Mr. Cohn almost fell over backward and poor Sam Katzman just about had a coronary . . . My salary ate up half Katzman's budget." Undaunted, Katzman and Columbia house director Lew Landers made the film in color, using costumes and sets left over from other, more lavish productions.
Katzman's directors
Katzman’s directors were either on their way up, or trailing off at the end of their careers. Veterans Arthur Dreifuss, Lew LandersLew Landers
Lew Landers was a prolific American film and television director.-Biography:Born Louis Friedlander in New York City, he began his movie career as an actor. In 1914 he appeared in two features, D. W. Griffith's The Escape and the comedy short Admission -- Two Pins, opposite Glen White, under his...
and William Berke were good, workmanlike directors, and old hands at directing "B" comedies, musicals and mysteries. Serial specialist Spencer Gordon Bennet
Spencer Gordon Bennet
Spencer Gordon Bennet was an American film producer and director. Known as the "King of Serial Directors", he directed more film serials than any other director.-Biography:...
, whose career went back to the silent-film days, speedily churned out action fare for Katzman. Richard Quine
Richard Quine
Richard Quine was an American stage, film, and radio actor and film director.Quine was born in Detroit. He made his Broadway debut in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Very Warm for May in 1939 and appeared in My Sister Eileen the following year...
, on the other hand, would go on to “A” features, most memorably with The Solid Gold Cadillac
The Solid Gold Cadillac
The Solid Gold Cadillac is a 1956 film directed by Richard Quine and written by Abe Burrows, Howard Teichmann and George S. Kaufman. It was adapted from the hit Broadway play of the same name by Teichmann and Kaufman, in which they pillory big business and corrupt businessmen...
(1956), which starred Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday was an American actress.Holliday began her career as part of a night-club act, before working in Broadway plays and musicals...
and Paul Douglas
Paul Douglas
Paul Howard Douglas was an liberal American politician and University of Chicago economist. A war hero, he was elected as a Democratic U.S. Senator from Illinois from in the 1948 landslide, serving until his defeat in 1966...
, and established Quine’s career as a major Columbia director. Future horror director William Castle
William Castle
William Castle was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. Castle was known for directing films with many gimmicks which were ambitiously promoted, despite being reasonably low budget B-movies....
was still developing his own style as a director, and Katzman allowed Castle to cut his directorial teeth on a series of low-budget films. Fred F. Sears
Fred F. Sears
Frederick Francis Sears was an American film actor and director. Though a marginalized figure in 1950s cinema, he created 52 feature films in a number of genres for Columbia Pictures from 1949 to 1957, before his death at the age of 44....
was a former actor in Columbia "B" pictures who assisted behind the scenes on Katzman's serials, and was promoted to full-fledged director.
Working for Katzman could be very tough indeed, however. On The Houston Story (1956) Castle was shooting on location in Texas in August 1955 when star Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...
was felled with a non-fatal heart attack after three days of shooting. Katzman insisted that production continue, so Castle, who resembled Cobb’s general physical build, took over Cobb’s role, performing much of the action in long shot with his back to the camera. This took another three days, and then the company returned to Hollywood. Castle hoped to finish up Cobb’s scenes after the actor recuperated, but Katzman instead cast Gene Barry
Gene Barry
Gene Barry was an American stage, screen, and television actor. Barry is best remembered for his leading roles in the films The Atomic City and The War of The Worlds and for his portrayal of the title character in the TV series Bat Masterson, among many roles.-Personal life:Barry was born...
in Cobb’s role, shot a few more days of film and then released the production with Barry as the star. In the final film Cobb, Castle and Barry all played the leading role of “Frank Duncan” at various points; Katzman simply gave the material to his trusted editor, Edwin H. Bryant, and told him to patch it together.
New Orleans Uncensored (Castle, 1955) was a true-crime drama, exposing the seamy underside of the Big Easy; It Came from Beneath the Sea
It Came from Beneath the Sea
It Came from Beneath the Sea is an American science fiction film produced by Sam Katzman and Charles Schneer for Columbia Pictures, from a script by George Worthing Yates designed to showcase the special model-animated effects of Ray Harryhausen. It was directed by Robert Gordon and stars Kenneth...
(Robert Gordon, 1955) served primarily as a showcase for Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen is an American film producer and special effects creator...
’s stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
special effects; while Fred F. Sears’ Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955) was a surprisingly stark nod to the country’s new awareness of the problem of juvenile delinquency. Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock (film)
Rock Around the Clock is the title of a 1956 Musical film that featured Bill Haley and His Comets along with Alan Freed, The Platters, Tony Martinez and His Band, and Freddie Bell and His Bellboys. It was produced by B-movie king Sam Katzman and directed by Fred F...
(Fred F. Sears, 1956) was one of the first rock-'n'-roll movies to be released by a major studio, based upon Katzman’s intuition that rock music would soon be a major force in American culture; and Miami Exposé (Fred F. Sears, 1956) starred Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb
Lee J. Cobb was an American actor. He is best known for his performance in 12 Angry Men his Academy Award-nominated performance in On the Waterfront and one of his last films, The Exorcist...
in a neo-realist tale of big-city corruption, with spirited support from Alan Napier
Alan Napier
Alan William Napier-Clavering was an English actor, best known for portraying Alfred Pennyworth in the 1960s live-action Batman television series.-Early life and career:...
and Edward Arnold
Edward Arnold (actor)
Edward Arnold was an American actor. He was born on the Lower East Side of New York City as Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider, the son of German immigrants Carl Schneider and Elizabeth Ohse.-Acting career:...
.
Hollywood blacklist
Katzman also made it a practice to employ screenwriters who had been blacklistBlacklist
A blacklist is a list or register of entities who, for one reason or another, are being denied a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. As a verb, to blacklist can mean to deny someone work in a particular field, or to ostracize a person from a certain social circle...
ed due to the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
during the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
Red Scare
Red Scare
Durrell Blackwell Durrell Blackwell The term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong Anti-Communism in the United States: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1920, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The First Red Scare was about worker revolution and...
era. Many producers followed this practice, but Katzman, with his insatiable need for screenplays, was more deeply involved in using "blacklisted" talent than most. Blacklisted scenarist Bernard Gordon
Bernard Gordon
Bernard Gordon was an American writer and producer. For much of his 27-year career, he toiled in obscurity, prevented from taking screen credit by the Hollywood Blacklist. Among his best-known works are screenplays for Flesh and Fury, Earth vs...
, for example, wrote Castle’s The Law vs. Billy The Kid (1954) as “John D. Williams,” as well as Earth vs. The Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is an American black and white science fiction film, directed by Fred F. Sears and released by Columbia Pictures. The film is also known as Invasion of the Flying Saucers. It was ostensibly suggested by the non-fiction work Flying Saucers from Outer Space by Donald...
(Fred F. Sears, 1956), Edward L. Cahn’s Zombies of Mora Tau
Zombies of Mora Tau
Zombies of Mora Tau is a 1957 horror film directed by Edward L. Cahn from a screenplay by George H. Plympton and Bernard Gordon. The film is also known by the title The Dead that Walk.- Plot :...
(1957), Leslie Kardos’ The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957) and Sears’ Escape from San Quentin (1957) as "Raymond T. Marcus", all of which were produced by Katzman. For Katzman the important thing was that a person worked reliably, efficiently and inexpensively; if a writer fit these criteria, Katzman was interested.
In all his films Katzman created a sealed, hermetic universe, within which his characters could operate with impunity. There were no rules to break, because Katzman had created the rules, and with them the concept of the genre "hot-wire" (in which several genres are combined to create a new twist on an existing format, such as the comedy/western, the horror/musical and the like). Using this concept to bring new life to existing--and often overused--genres, Katzman created a cinematic vision that was his and his alone.
Final years
As the 1960s continued, Katzman would make several films at MGM with Elvis PresleyElvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
, including Gene Nelson
Gene Nelson
Gene Nelson was an American dancer, actor, screenwriter, and director.-Biography:Born Leander Eugene Berg in Astoria, Oregon, he moved to Seattle when he was one year old. He was inspired to become a dancer by watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films when he was a child...
’s Harum Scarum
Harum Scarum
Harum Scarum is a 1965 musical comedy film starring Elvis Presley which was shot on the original Cecil B. DeMille set from the film The King of Kings. Some of the film was based on Rudolph Valentino's The Sheik released in 1921...
(1965), with a budget of $2,400,000 and an 18-day schedule. Presley received $1,000,000, while the rest of the cast split a paltry $200,000; the rest of the budget went entirely to production costs. But the Elvis films did not reflect Katzman’s true approach to filmmaking. Whereas Columbia's Twist Around the Clock, made just three years earlier, had cost a mere $280,000, now Katzman was forced to deal with a budget that was nearly 10 times that amount. The fun, and the maverick vision that had brought Katzman to Hollywood, had vanished.
Katzman’s final films were marginal, and the assembly-line production system that had served him so well now seemed out of step with the times. For the first time, Katzman was unable to adapt to changing circumstances. Katzman died on August 4, 1973, in Hollywood.
He is interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
The Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary is a Jewish cemetery located at 6001 West Centinela Avenue, in Culver City, California, USA. Many Jewish people from the entertainment industry are buried here.-Notable interments:*Irving Aaronson, composer...
in Culver City, California
Culver City, California
Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883, up from 38,816 at the 2000 census. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Culver...
.
Quotation
NMENME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
- February 1962
Further reading
- Dixon, Wheeler Winston. Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood. Southern Illinois University Press, 2005.
External links
- Meet Jungle Sam Life magazine http://books.google.com.au/books?id=IUIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA79&dq=sam+katzman+%2B+3-d#v=onepage&q=sam%20katzman%20%2B%203-d&f=false
- Jungle Sam in Time http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,817485-1,00.html