The “ForgoTTen” Films oF richard gordon

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In this essay by Richard Gordon, he recalls the seven crime films he co-produced in the mid-1950s, before horror and science fiction moviemaking became his specialty.

I have often been asked how I was able to start a production company of my own (Producers Associ-ates Ltd.) in England in 1957 and make The Haunted Strangler (known in the U.K. as Grip of the Strangler) starring Boris Karloff as its first film. The answer is that my brother Alex and I had met Karloff shortly after our arrival from England when he was starring on the New York stage in J.B. Priestley’s The Linden Tree and, soon after, again when he returned to the stage in Edward Percy’s The Shop at Sly Corner. At that time, Alex and I interviewed him for several English fan magazines to which we were sending articles from the United States.

Boris and his wife Evie maintained a New York apartment because of his frequent trips to New York for stage and television work and we struck up a

friendship and met from time to time. He knew of my ambition to get into film production, and one day he handed me a story called Strangle Hold which had been written as a vehicle for him by an English writer, Jan Read. He suggested that I read it and, if I liked it and would be interested to try and set it up as a produc-tion in England, he would be willing to come over to London to star in it.

When he offered me Strangle Hold in 1957, I had already been involved for a year in setting up a series of British co-productions with several different inde-pendent production companies in order to learn the business more thoroughly. The mid-1950s was a busy period for film production in England after years of wartime restrictions which the government finally withdrew. In fact, the government became directly involved in the industry not only with financing but also with new legislation in favor of the production of domestic (British) films. In addition to a quota system requiring every cinema in England to show a certain

Young Richard Gordon (right) not only helped to arrange American financing and distribution for A Christmas Carol (1951), he also attended a Museum of Modern Art charity performance along with Basil Rathbone (left) and two British Embassy representatives.

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percentage of domestic product each year, it introduced a levy on box office receipts which was distributed to, and shared by, the makers of British films. This was known as the Eady Plan, so named after the minis-ter who devised it. The Eady Plan money constituted a particular boon to second features which generally played on the circuits in support of major Hollywood product. It resulted in many of the American studios transferring production of their second features to England in order to participate in the benefits and created a highly competitive market.

To take advantage of all this activity, I formed a New York company called Amalgamated Productions Inc. in partnership with Charles F. “Chuck” Vetter Jr. Chuck owned and operated a New York City studio called Motion Picture Stages at 3 East 57th Street, between Madison and Fifth; mainly it was commercials that were shot there. We had met when he negotiated the American distribution rights for a British film that I was representing, and we got on well together. We both agreed to travel back and forth between New York and

London as needed, and I was able to arrange a modest line of financing with Chemical Bank in New York, and also with Pathe Laboratories, to whom we guaran-teed the American lab work for the films we intended to produce.

Amalgamated produced seven feature films during a period of 12 months as co-productions with differ-ent British independent companies. My brother Alex, who had meanwhile established himself as a producer in Hollywood at American International Pictures, agreed to help us obtain the Hollywood actors that we wanted to bring to England to play leading roles, and sometimes he was also able to offer us properties that had been sub-mitted to AIP but were turned down by Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff, and which Alex thought might be suitable to be rewritten for production overseas.

Amalgamated’s first British co-production was with Butcher’s Film Distributors, an independent company that I was already representing in the U.S. Butcher’s had a releasing arrangement with the Rank Organisa-tion in the U.K. that guaranteed us good results there.

Gordon cooked up the idea to make Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952), which starred his friend Bela Lugosi and cross-dressing comic Arthur Lucan (right).

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We bought the film rights to the Lindsay Hardy novel Requiem for a Redhead, a crime story set against the back-ground of the Cold War, and in April 1956 we produced it under the title Assignment Redhead. With Alex’s help I had signed Richard Denning and Carole Mathews to come to England to play the leads. Denning had been a star at Paramount, where his films included Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942) with Dorothy Lamour. He played the leading role in three of Alex’s films, includ-ing Day the World Ended (1956) which Roger Corman directed. Carole Mathews had also made many films in Hollywood. We produced our feature as a British Quota film for under £15,000 plus the salaries and expenses of the American participants. I decided to call it Million Dollar Manhunt for its American release.

Our second picture was The Crooked Sky (1957), from an original screenplay on which Chuck Vetter collaborated. For this thriller about international smug-glers, we teamed with independent English producer Bill Luckwell. To play the hero, I signed up Wayne Morris in Hollywood, who had already made a film

in England [The Gelignite Gang, aka The Dynamiters, 1956] and enjoyed it. I had always liked him for his tough-guy roles at Warner Brothers, where he started with the boxing melodrama Kid Galahad (1937) with Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Rob-inson. He was very cooperative, his happy-go-lucky approach to his work making him a favorite with our production unit. For the feminine lead, Alex put me in touch with Karin Booth, who was doing well in Hollywood and liked the idea of a trip to England, which she regarded as a sort of holiday. Through Luck-well, we signed Anton Diffring to play the villain.

With two films in the can, I looked for a more ambi-tious project as our third production. George Minter of Renown Pictures was getting ready to do Kill Me Tomorrow (1957), a gangster story with a newspaper background, and Terence Fisher had agreed to direct it. The film needed a bigger American star, and Alex told me that he could persuade Pat O’Brien to come over to play the leading part. To me, this was exciting news: The newspaper reporter in Kill Me Tomorrow was just the

As a producer, Gordon’s first film was Assignment Redhead (1956), a collaboration with Butcher’s Film Distributors. In this shot, Butcher’s bosses Jack Phillips (left) and William G. Chalmers (right) flank Gordon and the movie’s stars Carole Mathews and Richard Denning.

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kind of character he had frequently played in Hollywood. His salary was going to be considerably higher than we had paid previously, so I compensated by hiring as the female lead a Canadian actress who was already living in London, Lois Maxwell; that saved us the expenses of round-trip airfare and so on. Lois later became famous as the James Bond series’ first Miss Moneypenny. George Coulouris, who was also living in England, accepted the role of the chief villain. George Minter arranged for a cameo appearance by a young English rock’n’roll singer who was beginning to make a name for himself in Lon-don’s coffee bars and nightclubs. His name was Tommy Steele. Not long after Kill Me Tomorrow he became an overnight sensation on the London stage and then was signed by a major studio in Hollywood. Pat O’Brien was happy to play the crime reporter hero and gave us no problems. I had been warned about his drinking but there was no sign of it during our production.

It was now time to arrange for American distribu-tion of our first three productions, and I made a deal

with Tudor Pictures, an independent distributor of long standing with good theater circuit connections. Meanwhile, Bill Luckwell proposed we do another film together, West of Suez (1957). The story revolved around an American explosives expert who is recruited by smugglers to assassinate an Arab leader during a visit to London. It was an ideal role for Keefe Brasselle, with whom I had become friends in New York. Keefe had grown up in Hollywood where he started in show business as a singer, drummer and comedian with a touring orchestra. During World War II he served in the Army Air Corps and directed several stage shows. He returned to Hollywood and played supporting roles until he was discovered by Ida Lupino; he then starred in many different films including The Eddie Cantor Story (1953) in which he played the title role. Keefe was now looking for a deal to star in a film and also direct. He gladly accepted my proposal to do West of Suez but unfortunately, when we arrived in London, the British trade union would not give him a

Gordon’s early crime flicks had a good bit of the history of Warner Brothers passing through their sets: Zachary Scott, Wayne Morris and, seen here, Pat O’Brien inking his contract for Kill Me Tomorrow. Left-right, Charles Vetter Jr., O’Brien, Gordon.

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permit to direct. I had to bring in an English standby director, Arthur Crabtree. Some time later, Keefe was able to get his permit and made a second film of his own choosing that he also directed, Death Over My Shoulder (1958).

In the opening sequence of West of Suez, Keefe’s character is seen fighting an out-of-control fire on a Middle Eastern oil field. There was no way that we could film such a stunt on our budget, so I made a deal with Paramount in Hollywood for stock footage from their Richard Arlen picture Wildcat (1942). When you see Keefe’s character fighting the fire in our film, it’s actually Richard Arlen. Or his double!

West of Suez, which I retitled The Fighting Wildcats, turned out so well that I wanted major distribution in America. Republic Pictures of Hollywood at that time maintained a London office to oversee its international activities; that office was managed by Gerald A. Fern-back, a seasoned film executive. I invited him to screen our finished film, and he liked it. He recommended it for his studio to distribute in the United States, and I closed the deal with Republic in Hollywood. Keefe Brasselle often referred to The Fighting Wildcats as one of his favorite experiences.

I next made a deal to do three pictures in partner-ship with Nat Cohen’s company Anglo Amalgamated Film Distributors, which was already making films in collaboration with AIP as well as producing its own more prestigious pictures. Our first joint venture was The Counterfeit Plan (1957), an exciting thriller by James Eastwood about a convict in a French prison who escapes to England and sets up a criminal operation. Intended for top-of-the-bill release, The Counterfeit Plan needed an important American star. I was intro-duced in Hollywood to Zachary Scott, who by then had left Warner Brothers after a long-term agree-ment that started with The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and included a co-starring role with Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce (1945). Scott’s wife Ruth Ford had also been a Warners actress and had stage experience. They liked the idea of coming to England where they hoped to co-star in a play on the London stage.

Nat Cohen was delighted to have Scott in The Counterfeit Plan. I also brought over Peggie Castle for the feminine lead. Anglo assembled a very strong British supporting cast including Mervyn Johns (one of the stars of the English classic horror film Dead of Night [1945]) and Lee Patterson. The production was based at Merton Park Studios, which was in a suburb of London, and Montgomery Tully was the director.

The film turned out so well that we decided to offer it to Warner Brothers for U.S. distribution. I ran it in New York for Ben Kalmenson, Warners’ sales manager, and they bought the rights. Anglo released it in the U.K. where it played as top feature on a major circuit, so it was very successful for us all.

We decided with Zachary Scott to do another pic-ture together and Anglo suggested a screenplay called Man in the Shadow that had been written for them by a woman named Maisie Sharman using the pseud-onym “Stratford Davis.” I brought Faith Domergue from Hollywood to co-star with Scott. She had been discovered by Howard Hughes who starred her in a big film called Vendetta (1950). Man in the Shadow (1957) was an unusual thriller that required some location shooting in Italy. In the U.S., its title was changed to Violent Stranger as Universal had just released a film called Man in the Shadow with Orson Welles.

Unfortunately, Man in the Shadow did not turn out as well as The Counterfeit Plan although it was also directed by Montgomery Tully. The original story was quite complex but something was lost in its transfer to the screen. It also went over budget. I could not get the kind of distribution it needed in America so eventually I sold it directly to television. Meanwhile, Scott and his wife Ruth did appear on the stage at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the William Faulkner play Requiem for a Nun.

Our third picture in partnership with Anglo was Escapement (1958), based on the Charles Eric Maine novel of the same name. It was a thriller with science fiction overtones, set entirely on the French Riviera. This time I brought over Rod Cameron and Mary Murphy, who had been Marlon Brando’s leading lady in The Wild One (1953). I would also have preferred an American director but it was too costly and Anglo wanted Montgomery Tully again. We had a good sup-porting cast including Meredith Edwards, Peter Illing and Carl Jaffe. There were major problems with the special effects. Also, Anglo did not want it to get an X Certificate in England, and I wanted more horror for the United States. The compromise was unsatisfactory and I could not afford any re-shooting in America.

Rod Cameron was a veteran of Hollywood action pictures including Westerns, serials and every kind of melodrama. In 1965, Alex starred him in two Technicolor Westerns that he produced, Requiem for a Gunfighter and The Bounty Killer, and a year later I was able to get him a leading role in a Western that Columbia made in Yugoslavia, Thunder at the Border.

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I retitled the film The Electronic Monster and Columbia agreed to release it provided I could supply a second feature for the double bill. I found a 1958 British horror film called Womaneater with George Coulouris and Vera Day that had not yet been sold in America and I was able to buy it for Columbia. The program did well enough when it played in theaters like those where AIP was releasing its double bills but it did not pay off until Columbia’s license expired and I was able to take back the two pictures for independent reissue and the sale of television rights.

While supervising our co-productions, Chuck and I also bought a number of independently made Brit-ish Quota second features which we re-licensed in the United States. At that time, there was still a shortage of feature films for the TV market as the major studios had not yet made their libraries available. We licensed one package of 13 British films to the actor Eddie Bracken, who had started a company called Bracken Productions, Inc., to produce TV series.

With seven pictures completed during 12 months, Chuck and I decided it was time to go on our own and

we formed Producers Associates in London to make The Haunted Strangler. This was followed by Fiend Without a Face (1958) starring Marshall Thompson and a second Karloff film, Corridors of Blood (made in 1958, released in 1962). We also made two more films with Marshall, The Secret Man (1958) and First Man Into Space (1959). At that point, Chuck and I went our separate ways; he subsequently produced two films for MGM in England, The Green Helmet (1961), a racing melodrama starring Bill Travers, and Battle Beneath the Earth (1967), a Technicolor science fiction thriller starring Kerwin Mathews.

I continued in production with films including Devil Doll (1964), Island of Terror, The Projected Man (both 1966), Tower of Evil (1972) and Horror Hospi-tal (1973). In 1977 I produced a new version of The Cat and the Canary and in 1980 I entered into a co-production deal with Shaw Brothers of Hong Kong to produce Inseminoid. These movies, and others, are extensively discussed in this volume.

Alex Gordon, his wife Ruth and Richard Gordon on the set of one of the Rod Cameron Westerns that Alex made at Paramount in 1965.