A stable base: Edgar G. Ulmer at PRC (Part 2)
As Edgar G. Ulmer settled in with steady work at Producers Releasing Corp. in 1943, the studio was purchased by railroad man Robert R. Young, who also owned the American version of Pathe Laboratories. Seemingly little changed at PRC with the switch in ownership, the third since the company's founding as it continued to fill the need of small-town and neighborhood theaters across the country.
But in doing so, PRC also looked to shake the reputation it had earned for issuing quickies devoid of any production niceties. Its product fit the bottom half of the double feature bill efficiently if not attractively, and ever attentive to the comments from exhibitors and theater owners, began to look at improvement by cutting back on the number of pictures in production and using the savings to offer audiences something better than what became expected from PRC. "With a heavy backlog of 80 pictures backed up in the exchanges, PRC would be able ... to concentrate on better quality products -- increased costs -- better stories and additional name value," historian Gene Fernett noted, paraphrasing studio President O. Henry Briggs' pronouncement at PRC's annual sales meeting in May 1942.*Soon afterward, executive producer duties were assumed by Leon Fromkess and the former Grand National Pictures lot, whose sound stages were rented by PRC, became the permanent base of the company's moviemaking efforts. Additionally, a corporate logo of PRC (in block letters) Pictures started prefacing its releases, replacing the small but distinctive formal name of the company that appeared above the title of the film. In the smaller print below accompanying the copyright date was seen "Pathe Industries," identifying the firm's new owner and solidifying Pathe's association with PRC, which stretched back to its beginnings as the lab that processed and printed its movies.
Only then, in 1939, the company wasn't known as PRC, but PDC -- Producers Distributing Corp. That was the name founder Ben Judell attached to his new enterprise. An independent distributor who had entered picture-making only recently with a few exploitation numbers marketed on the "states' rights" basis of regional showings, Judell saw an opportunity to fill a void created by the bankruptcy and eventual dissolution of Grand National. That company, which had only come into the business of making second features in 1936, soon stumbled due to an ill-fated and costly attempt at top-grade production.
Fellow B studios Republic and Monogram held their own with distributors of second features, but in those days of local theater programs changing their fare twice-to-three times a week, there was a need for more movies to support the A feature or a twin bill of B flicks as the situation demanded. For the ground floor, Judell brought in producer Sigmund Neufeld and his director brother Schmuel, who Americanized his professional monicker to Sam Newfield. Like Grand National, PDC would support, make and distribute the work of independent filmmakers like Neufeld, who along with his sibling made low-rent westerns their preferred form of filmic entertainment. But Neufeld/Newfield also branched out into mystery, horror and jungle adventure flicks during their time with the company, their names becoming almost synonymous with PRC until it, too, faded from the scene.
It was upon their shoulders the burden of the first PDC movie was placed. HITLER, BEAST OF BERLIN, began life modestly as a second feature, but the success of the first expressly anti-Hitler tract in Hollywood, Warner Bros.' CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (1939), convinced Judell to boost his project's budget, running time and status to benefit from audience interest in the subject. Released Oct. 29, 1939, nearly two months after Germany's invasion of Poland set off the Second World War, HITLER, BEAST OF BERLIN was as passionate an indictment of life under Nazi rule as HITLER'S MADMAN would represent in the coming years, so strong that censor boards in some eastern U.S. states where pro-Nazi Germans lived gave the film an unexpected notoriety by either banning its showing outright or demanding deletions of what were believed to be inflammatory scenes.**Good reviews helped the production, adapted from the story "Goose Step" by Shepherd Traube and directed by Newfield under the pseudonym of Sherman Scott, which he employed (along with another non-de-plume, Peter Stewart) for fear the Newfield name was appearing on too many of his quickly-shot endeavors. Roland Drew, Steffi Duna, Greta Grandstedt and a 26-year-old radio actor named Alan Ladd headlined the large cast; because of Ladd's stardom in Paramount's THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), HITLER, BEAST OF BERLIN was reissued by PRC as HELL'S DEVILS with Ladd taking prominence in the credits.
Judell held back the production for further work when he opted to boost it to 87 minutes in length rather than the standard one hour or more required for a B feature. This move actually made the first film to carry the PDC imprint hit theaters a week prior to HITLER, BEAST OF BERLIN's premiere. That was TORTURE SHIP, produced by Neufeld and directed by Victor Halperin, an unsettling piece about a well-intentioned if single-minded surgeon (Irving Pichel) using his passenger yacht as a floating laboratory to experiment on dangerous criminals in an effort to correct their behavior. Lyle Talbot co-starred in this moody work that set the tone for the PDC releases that followed. (Sadly, some DVD and streaming versions of TORTURE SHIP are apparently missing the first reel, causing the film to begin awkwardly in mid-action). Another Neufeld-Halperin collaboration, the prison drama BURIED ALIVE starring Robert Wilcox and Beverly Roberts, went into release in early November.
As 1940 progressed, PDC and Judell saw disaster looming as revenues from their releases failed to keep up with costs, including construction of an Arizona studio for its western series movies. With help from distributors and some new financing, the company reorganized as Sigmund Neufeld Productions, but by the end of the year when one of its early hits, the Bela Lugosi-starring, Jean Yarbrough-directed THE DEVIL BAT was gobbled up by local movie houses, it was known as Producers Releasing Corp.*** Judell was out, Neufeld and his brother were in, and other unit producers were brought on board under the guidance of production chief George R. Batcheller, who had led B studio Chesterfield Pictures until its closure in 1937.
Problem was, the new PRC kept cranking out inferior product that revealed on the screen every penny not spent on the picture. Exceptions to the rule are Newfield's (as Sherman Scott) MARKED MEN (1940, a.k.a. DESERT ESCAPE) with Warren Hull and Isabel Jewell, which seems to have made advantageous use of the Arizona locations that PDC had invested in, and PAPER BULLETS (1941), the initial production of the King Bros., otherwise known as Frank, Herman and Maurice Kozinsky. A crime drama written by Martin Mooney, who would become a major name at PRC, PAPER BULLETS featured in its supporting cast the same Alan Ladd who'd left a solid impression with his work in HITLER, BEAST OF BERLIN. Once Ladd became a marquee name, PAPER BULLETS, directed by veteran Phil Rosen, was re-released under a better-known title, GANGS INC. The film was the Kings' only effort for PRC; soon after its release, they set up shop at Monogram/Allied Artists for the better part of the '40s.
But too often, PRC's no-budget entries, more so today, are painful to watch with their all-too-apparent deficiencies, examples being Albert Kelley's DOUBLE CROSS (1941) starring Kane Richmond and Wynne Gibson, and TODAY I HANG (1942) in which Walter Woolf King and Mona Barrie were co-directed by its scenarist, Oliver Drake, and its producer, George M. Merrick. This was a result of promising too many pictures without enough money to carry through, with the results yielding dissatisfaction from audiences and exhibitors. Thus, PRC began looking at an upgrade that included welcoming new and different producers such as Seymour Nebenzal and his Atlantis Pictures Corp., with whom Edgar G. Ulmer, veteran of ethnically-themed movies of the late 1930s, became associated.
For Ulmer, the changes proved a pleasant change of pace. Not only did he enjoy a cordial relationship with Fromkess, who came to PRC after spending four years as treasurer at Monogram, but the working conditions were to his liking, even though the budgets were still restricted, along with nearly everything else as America entered the world war. "It was a nice family feeling," Ulmer later recalled about working at PRC, "not too much interference -- if there was interference, it was only that we had no money, that was all."@
PRC continued turning out dreck, but the emphasis on better quality films fell to a handful of people, and not surprisingly, the more ambitious projects began coming Ulmer's way. As he told Peter Bogdanovich near the end of his life, PRC presented Ulmer with the choice of turning out more commercially-tuned movies so he could get a crack at making something he really cared about. Fromkess and Martin Mooney, who became an associate producer and the production chief's "right hand man," as Ulmer called him, were agreeable with Ulmer's goals and talents, demonstrated with TOMORROW WE LIVE (1942), soon giving him the freedom to select his own pictures. First, though, Ulmer had to make those more popular kinds of movies that were PRC's bread and butter, and he did so without protest.
Ulmer signed his name as director and occasional script collaborator on four of the studio's 1943 releases, while also contributing to its entry in the "last stand"-type of war film explored by Paramount in WAKE ISLAND (1942) and in M-G-M's BATAAN (1943). CORREGIDOR, issued by PRC on March 29, was a depiction of the heroic defense of the U.S.-Philippine island fortress that fell to the Japanese in May 1942. Ulmer authored the screenplay for the film produced by onetime Grand National executive Edward Finney, directed by Monogram regular William Nigh, and headlined by Otto Kruger, Elissa Landi and Donald Woods.
Although dismissed in its day for slow pacing and low-budget roots, CORREGIDOR offers some reflective moments on the sacrifice and dedication of the overwhelmed defenders as well as a sense of foreboding for all involved because the outcome of the desperate battle was already known to audiences. Ulmer may have been channelling some of the similar sentiments that underlined the first Atlantis film in which he was involved, Arthur Ripley's PRISONER OF JAPAN (1942).
On April 5, a total change of pace for Ulmer hit screens with the release of MY SON, THE HERO, a breezy comedy with more than a few borrowings from Damon Runyon's "Madame La Gimp" that served as the basis for Frank Capra's LADY FOR A DAY (1933) and the same author's stage farce A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER that became a comic vehicle for Edward G. Robinson in 1938. In the original screenplay by Ulmer and Doris Malloy, with additional dialogue provided by none other than Sam Newfield, there are no Apple Annies, gamblers or bodies falling out of closets, but a simple laugh-getter about down-and-out promoter Big Time Morgan (Roscoe Karns) trying to put on the dog for his war correspondent son Michael (Joseph Allen Jr.) who flew with the Doolittle raid on Tokyo and is now in town selling war bonds.
To that end, Big Time enlists a motley crew of associates (Patsy Kelly, Maxie Rosenbloom and Luis Alberni) to hijack a mansion and servants to perpetuate his well-meaning deception. Complications naturally ensue, but all turns out well in the closing reel. An Atlantis production, MY SON, THE HERO benefits from a typically modest yet handsome design and spirited trouping by the veteran cast, particularly from the boisterous Kelly and Rosenbloom's trademark lumbering dope routine. Ulmer was afforded two cinematographers for this project in Robert Cline and Jack Greenhalgh, a move that actually improved the flick's visual appeal.
Although his works tended toward seriousness, Ulmer recognized the advantages of mirth and even his Universal horror classic of 1934, THE BLACK CAT, offers a few moments of comic relief amidst the portentous atmosphere provided by the bickering police officials played by Albert Conti and Henry Armetta. Found bereft of "any special mention" by Don Miller@@, MY SON, THE HERO is really worth another look by contemporary audiences.
Horrified by brutal conditions inflicted on the inmates -- including the death of one girl whose life-threatening injury is ignored by Marcus and the callous chief warder Mrs. Peters (Dorothy Burgess) -- Helen joins forces with a police detective, Frank Donovan (Roger Clark) out to collar Johnny and expose his dominance over the jail. Helen, meanwhile, gathers evidence and tries keeping in check the seething jailbirds led by Ruth (Barbara Pepper).
Despite the predictable ending placing Helen and her more benevolent policies in charge of the jail, GIRLS IN CHAINS flows nicely and paints a convincing portrait of despair and anger against the increasingly familiar and brooding Ulmer atmosphere of peril and sudden death. Utilizing longtime Poverty Row regular Ira H. Morgan as cinematographer, Ulmer bathes the interiors of GIRLS IN CHAINS with a harsh lighting scheme that distracts from the lack of other properties to illustrate the prisoners' misery. Performances are uniformly fine, especially from Burgess as the icy top guard, offering a fair jailhouse version of Judith Anderson's evil housekeeper from Alfred Hitchcock's REBECCA (1940). An expert at playing bad girls during the pre-Code period of 1930s Hollywood (notably in Barbara Stanwyck's LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT, 1933, at Warners), Burgess (1905-1961) made GIRLS IN CHAINS her next-to-last movie before retiring from the screen.
GIRLS IN CHAINS ultimately made some money for PRC and Atlantis, Ulmer told Bogdanovich, which no doubt helped with the production of the next Ulmer film, ISLE OF FORGOTTEN SINS (a.k.a. MONSOON) which PRC premiered on Aug. 15. Ulmer told Bogdanovich that he only made the film, a South Seas adventure with a crime background, in order to utilize the miniature palm trees remaining from Samuel Goldwyn's 1937 production of THE HURRICANE, directed by John Ford. This simple inspiration resulted in probably Ulmer's most earnest production that year, telling a robust (on PRC terms) tale of brawling, double-crossing deep sea divers embroiled in a hunt for sunken treasure and threatened by nature at its most furious.
Mike Clancy (John Carradine) and Jack Burke (Frank Fenton) have knocked around the South Pacific for years as pals and rivals for the hand of Marge Willison (Gale Sondergaard), proprietor of the Isle of Forgotten Sins, an island hot spot (whose other use as a brothel in Ulmer's original script was famously suppressed). There, they encounter planter Carruthers (Sidney Toler) and his associate Johnny Pacific (Rick Vallin). Mike, however, recognizes Carruthers as Krogan, captain of a ship that reportedly sank in a tropical storm bearing a $3 million gold shipment. Upon learning the location of the wreck and determining the gold is still aboard, our heroes plan a dive to recover the swag. But Krogan plots to steal it back from them as natives warn that a monsoon of historic proportions approaches.
Against this background Ulmer, who again authored the story (with Raymond L. Schrock handling the screenplay), paints perhaps his most unconventional film in setting and plot, but adds an air of suspense and imminent disaster to make the proceedings all the more interesting. Ira Morgan repeated as photographer on ISLE OF FORGOTTEN SINS but unlike the high contrast light that distinguished GIRLS IN CHAINS, ISLE OF FORGOTTEN SINS gets a darker, subtler look to enhance the jungle atmosphere of the islands in which the tale unfolds and the motivations of its characters.
Dismissed by historians like Don Miller as too ambitious and inept for its own good, ISLE OF FORGOTTEN SINS deserves credit for trying something different in its quest to improve PRC's image among distributors. True, it is defeated in part by poor special effects (especially of Mike, Marge and others clinging to debris during the height of the monsoon), but represents PRC's willingness to tackle an established adventure form. The film was also Ulmer's last for Atlantis Pictures.
Casting of Carradine and Fenton as the movie's heroes pointed to the diminishing number of available leading men due to the war effort, although both actors give it their all. Carradine, who was acting in all manner of films at the time to finance his cherished dream of a Shakespearian company, is at least novel in such a role as Mike, and it was too bad Fenton's career didn't advance much further. In Capra's IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), he's the guy with the mustache and straw hat at a street corner who's ditched by Violet Bick (Gloria Grahame) when she spies James Stewart's George Bailey striding down the main thoroughfare of Bedford Falls.
Sidney Toler is excellent as Krogan. His smiling cobra of a killer and thief was one of several interesting characterizations he offered between the end of the Charlie Chan series at Twentieth Century-Fox in 1942 and its resumption at Monogram two years later. Gale Sondergaard as Marge lends class, as she did in all of her '40s films, while Rick Vallin, the secondary romantic lead in CORREGIDOR who was fairly busy along Poverty Row in 1942-1943, is suitable as Krogan's cohort-in-crime.
"There was no reason for me to make a JIVE JUNCTION, except that the picture had to be made, and had to be done quickly, and we couldn't jeopardize a penny," Ulmer reflected somewhat dismissively@@@ of his next production, a PRC attempt at a M-G-M-ish "let's put on a show" musical released Dec. 16 for the holiday trade. Despite the jeers, JIVE JUNCTION incorporated comedy, music and wartime propaganda into a neat 62-minute package for intended audiences.
The musical portion of the film is possibly what attracted Ulmer to the project. A lover of classical themes, Ulmer placed the form in opposition to then-current boogie-woogie favored by teens and soldiers. He had given his preferred taste an unexpected display in ISLE OF FORGOTTEN SINS when Johnny Pacific offers a classical piece when he sits down at a piano, the composition offering a dissonance of its own with the rowdy atmosphere.
JIVE JUNCTION is another example of the studio's ambition not matched by the budget outlay, but benefits from the enthusiasm of its youthful cast and house composer Leo Erdody's stab at original songs. The busy screenplay by Malvin Wald, Walter Doniger and future bestselling novelist Irving Wallace touches fleetingly on patriotic sentiments, exemplified by Peter's grief over his father's death in combat causing him to form the canteen. The kids' harvesting of an orange crop in return for use of the barn, an attempt to convince youth not of draft age to work on farms as a contribution to the war effort, was another contemporary concern worked into the story.
In fact, JIVE JUNCTION's depiction of an entertainment center for troops came right between two splashier A features on the same topic: Frank Borzage's STAGE DOOR CANTEEN, issued by United Artists on June 24, 1943, and Warner Bros.' HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN, directed by Delmer Daves and released Dec. 15, 1944. JIVE JUNCTION lacks the somber touches of the Borzage film and is considerably less elaborate than HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN, but its heart was in the right place.
Down the cast list as the teacher and conductor who helps Peter and his crew of music-makers is Frederick Feher (1889-1950), who had been an actor and director in his native Germany two decades earlier. Among his German credits, as Friedrich Feher, was the role of Francis, the hero Robert Wiene's THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920), the first example of German cinematic expressionism that attracted Ulmer to filmmaking. He came to the U.S. in 1936 and by the time of JIVE JUNCTION, his last screen appearance, Feher had distinguished himself as a symphonic conductor.
Having gone the commercial route for the studio in hopes of "doing something really fine" -- to quote Gaston Morrell (John Carradine) in the director's upcoming BLUEBEARD (1944) -- Ulmer was now poised to do so, and as a result of his keeping faith with PRC, the company was ready to indulge Ulmer in the more creative years to follow.
(To be continued)
* Gene Fernett, POVERTY ROW, Satellite Beach, Fla.: Coral Reef Publications, 1973, p. 108.
** Michael H. Price and George E. Turner, FORGOTTEN HORRORS 2: BEYOND THE HORROR BAN, Baltimore, Md.: Midnight Marquee Press, 2001, pp. 97-99.
*** Fernett, p. 104.
@ Peter Bogdanovich, "Interviews: Edgar G. Ulmer," in Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn, KINGS OF THE Bs: WORKING WITHIN THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM, New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1975, p. 397.
@@ Don Miller, B MOVIES, New York: Ballantine Books, 1988, p. 287.
@@@ Bogdanovich, p. 400.
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