Hildegarde Stadie

Biography

Despite her wholesome appearance, Hildegarde Stadie led a colorful, bizarre and unpredictable life. She was the niece of a patent-medicine peddler, and as a little girl she traveled with him all over the United States, selling their cure-all, Tiger Fat. Part of the presentation involved the preteen Hildegarde appearing fully nude with a python draped around her shoulders. Though she did not draw upon this particular anecdote, her experience with her uncle greatly influenced her script for Narcotic (1933). In 1920 she married Dwain Esper, who would later become a notorious exploitation film producer. When Dwain assumed ownership of a small studio facility in Los Angeles, California in 1930, they began producing films from scripts she wrote. The couple cranked out several low-budget pictures. Some of them, such as "Maniac" (1934) and "Marihuana" (1936) remain so bizarre and prurient that it is had to imagine a husband and wife with two children producing them. Besides making films for the exploitation market, Hildegarde and Dwain imported and reissued older films, such as Tom Browning's cult-classic "Freaks" (1932) and the Danish film "Man's Way With Women" (1934). Hildegarde usually managed relations with state censorship boards when their films came under criticism from the local morality squad, something she undoubtedly regarded as a necessary irritation. Suriving regional censorship documents are sometimes addressed to "Mr. Hildegarde Esper"!