D. Ross Lederman

Biography

Starting out as an extra in Mack Sennett's Keystone Kops series, D. Ross Lederman worked his way through the ranks of film production, and made his mark as a second-unit director. Becoming a feature director in the late 1920s, he specialized in action films and especially westerns, turning out a number of first-rate oaters with Tim McCoy at Columbia. By most accounts a somewhat brusque man with an aversion to retakes and prima donna behavior (he locked horns with McCoy on more than one occasion), Lederman's penchant for getting films done on time and under budget no doubt endeared him to producers and guaranteed him steady employment, but often made his films look somewhat rushed. In the 1950s Lederman, like many of his "B" picture colleagues, turned to series television and directed many episodes of Annie Oakley (1954), among others.