What do movies like THE SPARROW, a silent film starring Mary Pickford, THE OLD FASHIONED WAY with WC Fields, THE APE MAN with Bela Lugosi, SPOOK BUSTERS with The Bowery Boys and THE CHINESE RING with Roland Winters as Charlie Chan all have in common?
Well, they were all directed by William Beaudine, perhaps the most prolific Hollywood director of all time.
Beaudine, from NYC, made his directorial debut in 1915 with a short called ALMOST A KING. Prior to this he had been assistant director to DW Griffin on BIRTH OF A NATION and INTOLERANCE. He made his first full length feature around 1922 and when the era of sound started he'd already had a considerable amount of work under his belt. He found jobs at many of the major studios (Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros.). While shooting a Mack Sennett short he used the pseudonym William Crowley. One story says he did this because he was contractually bound to different studio. Another story says it was because he was "blacklisted" after a clash with a studio head at Columbia Pictures.
From 1934-1937 he was in England (along with Allan Dwan) making films. It's been said that when he returned to the US he had trouble getting back in with the major studios and so began his work on "Poverty Row" as the 1940's saw Beaudine work almost exclusively for Monogram and Producers Releasing Corp. (PRC) churning out things like the aforementioned THE APE MAN and VOODOO MAN (also with Geo. Zucco and John Carradine), PROFESSOR CREEPS with Mantan Moreland, The East Side Kids series (later reborn as The Bowery Boys), FACE OF MARBLE, LEAVE IT TO THE IRISH and BLACK MARKET BABIES.
In 1945 he directed the notorious "birth of a baby" film MOM AND DAD for Kroger Babb. The Internet Movie Database has this to say about MOM AND DAD in Beaudine's biography: "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."
Far more notorious for me would be a little project he made in 1952 called BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA where old Bela as a mad scientist must contend with Martin and Lewis impersonators Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo!
By the late '50's Television was in full swing and intruding in nearly every home in America.
Somehow William Beaudine managed to hop on the band wagon and direct TV programs as well, mostly for Walt Disney but he also did episodes of CIRCUS BOY (with future Monkee Mickey Dolenz), BROKEN ARROW, NAKED CITY and RIN TIN TIN. His last two features of course were the double bill of BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA and JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER.
Beaudine finally did retire in the late '60's and died at age 78 in 1970.
This is just more of an overview of Beaudine's career but it was the best I could come up with in a short time. So watch THE APE MAN tonight and raise a glass to William Beaudine!
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