Nat Levine

Biography

New York-born Nat Levine got his start in show business when he dropped out of high school to take a job as an accountant with the Loew's theater chain, and eventually worked his way up to become personal secretary to Marcus Loew. Levine soaked up as much knowledge about the film business as he possibly could, and in 1926 he and a few investors produced a serial called The Silent Flyer (1926), which they sold to Universal Pictures. Emboldened by the film's success, the next year Levine founded his own production company, Mascot Pictures, which specialized in serials. The coming of talking pictures didn't deter Mascot from its serial production, and in 1931 it produced The Phantom of the West (1930), the company's first all-talking picture. Although Mascot produced a few features, the vast majority of its output was serials, starring, among others, Tom Tyler, Harry Carey and John Wayne (for better or worse, Levine also was responsible for the birth of the "singing cowboy" by bringing Gene Autry to the screen). His most notable success was producing the Tom Mix serial The Miracle Rider (1935), which netted over $1 million (Levine dangled $10,000 a week to pull a cash-strapped Mix out of retirement and shot the chapters quickly). Mascot's western, action and sci-fi serials were immensely popular, and in a move to expand production, Levine signed a lease option on the old Mack Sennett Studios facility, envisioning consolidating several independent production companies as a movie studio version of General Motors. In 1935 Levine and Herbert J. Yates, the wealthy president of Consolidated Film Labs, arranged to merge Mascot with Monogram Pictures, Victory Pictures and a few other independents to form Republic Pictures. On paper the deal probably looked good, but in reality Levine signed a deal with the devil--in the form of Mr. Yates, an autocratic, hard-nosed businessman who retained control of the studio despite it ostensibly having a separate production chief, Levine, who was put in charge of producing Republic's westerns and serials. While running Mascot Levine had perfected the technique of using separate units for shooting his serials--one unit shooting all the exposition and dialogue scenes and the second simultaneously doing all the interior and exterior action scenes (brawls, gun battles, chases, etc.)--and he brought that technique with him to Republic. Yates, however, proved to be a difficult man to work with (producers Trem Carr and W. Ray Johnston of Monogram left Republic within a year because they fought constantly with Yates, and they re-formed Monogram). By late 1938 Yates wanted Levine gone; the two men eventually agreed to a buyout (which reportedly netted Levine more than $1 million). The money was not as much of a blessing as it would seem, however. Levine, who had been an inveterate gambler all his life, now found himself with two things he seldom had before: plenty of money and plenty time on his hands, and unfortunately he spent most of both at the racetrack. Before long all the money he had made on the buyout had been blown on the ponies, and he found himself not only unemployed but divorced and broke. However, he had become friendly with MGM chief Louis B. Mayer--they both shared a keen interest in horses, Mayer in breeding them and Levine in betting on them--and Mayer gave him a job at the studio in the "B" unit. Levine, who had always run his own operation, couldn't adjust to being a "hired gun", however, and before long he and MGM parted ways. He took a job managing a movie theater in Redondo Beach, California. It apparently suited him, as he spent the next 20 years there. By the late 1960s, though, his health started to deteriorate, and he was admitted to the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California. While there he granted a handful of interviews but remained cautious of anyone using him to meet other more notable residents. He died at the facility in 1989.