Sigmund Neufeld

Biography

In February of 1940, after the financial implosion of Ben Judell's Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC)--which blew through more than a million dollars during its mere three months in existence--a consortium of creditors headed by Sigmund Neufeld and largely backed by PDC's main creditor, Pathe Labs, reorganized as Sigmund Neufeld Productions. The company quickly announced a realistic 15 B-picture program for the remainder of the 1940-41 season (the most famous--or infamous--of these being Jean Yarbrough's The Devil Bat (1940)). There were still hundreds of theaters not owned or signed to the major Hollywood studios that would take independent features, and Neufeld was determined to fill this niche. His aim was to concentrate on fast-paced action programmers utilizing largely unknowns or, whenever fortune smiled on him, famous actors involved in a scandal that imperiled their careers (such as the orgiastic Lionel Atwill and drug-addled Bela Lugosi) who could be hired cheap. As for directors, he looked for ones on the outs with Hollywood for various reasons (such as auteur Edgar G. Ulmer, who found himself virtually blackballed in the industry after he had an affair with the wife of an executive at Universal Pictures). In November 1940 Neufeld again reorganized the company as Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), with ex-Pathe head O. Henry Briggs as the new head of the company and ex-Chesterfield Pictures executive George R. Batcheller Jr. as the head of production. Largely backed by financing from Pathe, Neufeld's team ramped up 1941-42 production to 44 pictures (many of them directed by Sam Newfield, Neufeld's brother, who shot so many PRC pictures that he alternated using three different names so that it wouldn't appear that one director shot almost all of PRC's films). The vast majority of PRC's output is, justifiably, maligned today. The company ground out more shoddy, ultra-cheap, third-rate material in the 1940s than any other studio in "Gower Gulch." Even theater owners howled loudly about the inept production aspects (mainly poor sound and picture quality) of PRC's earliest releases. In all fairness, though, once the basic production problems were overcome there were some minor gems among the sludge: Corregidor (1943) (starring a young Otto Kruger and helmed by the prolific Lew Landers), The Enchanted Forest (1945) (shot in Cinecolor and about as close as PRC ever got to an A-picture, starring the delightful Harry Davenport and also directed by Landers), Detour (1945) (in which another troubled star, Tom Neal, drives director Ulmer's Lincoln due to budget constraints) and Bluebeard (1944) (starring John Carradine under Ulmer's direction) are cited as PRC's best works. Obviously these were notable exceptions; PRC contract star Buster Crabbe, who churned out dozens of westerns for the company, complained about PRC's emphasis on cheapness for the remainder of his life (he quit in disgust and was immediately replaced by a more compliant Lash La Rue). Directors would grouse that turning in a picture on time and under budget meant less of both on the next assignment. Neufeld and company continued to unleash B-features (and worse) through 1948, when British producer J. Arthur Rank swallowed up the company into his newly formed Eagle-Lion International.