Spotlight
This year we are honoring three filmmaking son’s of the Mid West, K Gordon Murray, William Girdler and Kroger Babb and their pioneering B Movie efforts.
K. Gordon Murray
He was known as the “King of the Kiddie Matinee.” He brought many films from Mexico, dubbed them into English and presented them to the delight of children everywhere. In fact, one could say that kids of the late 1950s and 60s knew his name right alongside of that other purveyor of family entertainment. But in addition to being a presenter, he was also a producer and a story writer and even scored one of his films. This man who wore many hats was K. Gordon Murray and it’s his spirit we salute at this year’s B-Movie Celebration.
Murray was born in Bloomington, Illinois in 1922. Bloomington was a town in which many circus performers spent their winters in the off season and the young K.Gordon was fascinated by them. He would spend his boyhood hanging out with circus people during their off-time. The son of a funeral director, Murray, as a teenager, set up a com game on one of his father’s cemetery tents. He would later take this game on the road as part of West’s World Wander Carnival, to which he would rise to the position of manager.
He also set up a series of quasi-legal slot machines in Bloomington, to which his skills at smoothing over the authorities came in handy. In the late 1930s, he used his circus connections to help a casting director who was looking for little people to play Munchkins in the 1939 MGM film “The Wizard of Oz.” He settled in Hollywood in 1949 where Cecil B. DeMille hired him to help promote his 1952 circus epic “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Eventually, Murray moved to Miami where he formed K.Gordon Murray Productions and began buying up childrens’ fantasy films from foreign countries, notably Mexico, dubbing them into English, sometimes retitling them with more colorful, more emotional monikers and shipping them into theatres with massive marketing campaigns.
One of Murray’s biggest successes is the 1959 epic Santa Claus, which proved so popular that Murray simply re-released the film every few years in theatres and made spectacular profits, becoming the only film other than Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” to do so. Murray’s name became associated with many other “Santa Claus” films with titles such as “Santa’s Fantasy Fair” and “Santa’s Magic Kingdom.” In addition, Murray dubbed other childrens’ films with titles such as “Rumplestilskin” (1955) and “Little Red Riding Hood” (1961).
But Murray dabbled in other genres as well. In 1967, he produced and wrote the story for the 1967 sleaze B-classic “Shanty Tramp.” In 1972 for one of his last films, he executive produced the action film “The Daredevil.” Murray also dubbed for American consumption such Mexican horror films as “The Robot Vs. The Aztec Mummy” (1957) and “The Brainiac” (1961), as well as introduce the Mexican wrestler Santo (redubbed Samson by Murray) to American audiences.
Toward the end of his life, Murray ran afoul of the Internal Revenue Service who seized all his films and took them out of circulation. But before he could take on the IRS and reclaim his films, Murray died of a heart attack on December 30, 1979. He was 57 years old, which in a morbid coincidence was the same age that his father had passed away.
For the full story of K. Gordon Murray, be sure to check out the new feature documentary “The Wonder World of K. Gordon Murray,” which will be screened at the Celebration this weekend. Also, step back in time with us as we celebrate the man who was a true showman, Mr. K. Gordon Murray.
William Girdler
When one thinks of regional filmmakers, the name of William Girdler stands high indeed. Based out of Louisville, Kentucky for most of his career, Girdler made nine films between the years 1972 and 1978, in a variety of genres from horror to political thrillers to blaxploitation. While some say his film work was less than stellar, it was nevertheless highly profitable and it got him enough notice to work with many major names like Christopher George, Lynda Day Georges, Richard Jaeckel, Leslie Nielsen, Tony Curtis and Susan Strassberg.
Girdler was born in Jefferson County, Kentucky on October 22, 1947. Born into a prominent Louisville family, he had a passion for the camera at an early age. After serving in the Air Force, Girdler formed Studio One with his best friend and brother-in-law J. Patrick Kelly. Focusing on TV commercials at first, the company soon switched over to cinematic pursuits, changing its name to Mid America Pictures when Girdler’s films began showing commercial profits.
In the course of his career, Girdler directed nine features, wrote six screenplays (including three which he directed himself) and several music scores. He made his first five features in his hometown of Louisville, but always retained his Kentucky contacts when the opportunities arose to make his films elsewhere. Some of his friends have said his penchant to make films fast and cheap stemmed from a premonition that he would die by the age of 30. That premonition would eerily come true in January of 1978 when Girdler was killed in a helicopter crash while in the Philippines scouting locations for his next film.
Girdler’s first two films were essays in the horror genre. “Asylum of Satan” (1972) and “Three on a Meathook” (1973) were both mildly profitable, but they brought him to the attention of American International Pictures executive David Shelton, who would be a key collaborator in future Girdler productions. For AIP, Girdler directed three blaxploitation pictures, “The Zebra Killer”, “Abby” (1974) and “Sheba Baby” (1975), starring Pam Grier. “Abby,” in particular, earned $9 million in its release, but was pulled after two weeks in theatres due to a lawsuit from Warner Brothers, who felt the film’s plot too closely resembled their hit film “The Exorcist.”
After leaving AIP, Girdler next directed a political thriller “Project: Kill (1976) starring Leslie Nielsen, with Girdler himself expressed his being the proudest of all his films. Soonafter, he returned to horror with two of his most promiment films, the “Jaws” take-off “Grizzly” (1976), his most profitable film grossing $39 million in its release, and its follow-up “Day of the Animals” (1977), which dealt with an environmental catastrophe that caused animals of a forest to go beserk and attack various hikers.
For his final feature, Girdler bought the rights to Graham Masterson’s 1976 novel “The Manitou.” He got Tony Curtis and Susan Strassberg to star in this tale of a long-dead Indian medicine man who is resurrected from the dead via a fetus on the back of Strassberg’s neck. The film was picked up for release by Avco Embassy Pictures and would also proved to be a hit. Unfortunately, Girdler would not live to see the fruits of his labors, due to his death.
William Girdler today remains best-known and loved for his go-for-broke style of filmmaking and his films are still cherished by B-movie fans everywhere. It is in this spirit that the B-Movie Celebration takes great pleasure in honoring the man and his cinematic legacy which continues to be an inspiration to genre aficionados everywhere. We gratefully present the works of one of Kentucky’s finest, William Girdler.
Kroger Babb
He called himself “America’s Fearless Young Showman” and operated by a motto, “You gotta tell ‘em to sell ‘em.” He put this to the test on over 100 films, including several he produced himself. His films ran the gamut from sex education dramas to “documentaries” about foreign cultures designed to titillate, rather than educate the audience. But he’s best remembered for the often outlandish ways he promoted his films to the utmost degree. His associates knew him as Kroger Babb.
He was born Howard W. Babb in Lee’s Creek, Ohio on December 30, 1906. He received the name “Kroger” either from a childhood job at the same named grocer or for his father’s preference for “B.H. Kroger” coffee. In his youth, he held a number of jobs, even getting a mention in “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not” for refereeing a massive number of sports games. He started out as a sportswriter and reporter for a local newspaper. From there, he moved into working for the Chalkeres-Warners movie theatre chain and created various stunts to get people into theatres, such as giving two bags of groceries to ticket holders.
In the early 40s, he joined Cox and Underwood, a firm which took unmarketable films and spiced them up with medical reels, marketing them to audiences. Babb went on the road with a production called “Dust To Dust,” a film that featured a childbirth spliced in. The profits from this venture enabled Cox and Underwood to retire, leaving Babb to start his own company, Hygenic Productions.
Babb is best known for marketing exploitation films, reaching his biggest success with a 1945 film called “Mom and Dad.” Directed in six days by William Beaudine, this film detailed a young girl’s decision to have a baby. Babb went on an enormous publicity campaign. He would write letters to churches and newspapers denouncing the film before it hit the town it was about to play and fabricated letters from mayors about young women “encouraged” by it.
But he didn’t start there. He arranged for showings to be “Adults Only,” segregating them between men and women. He would have intermissions be headed by discussions led by “Fearless Hygene Commentator Elliot Forbes,” never telling anyone that “Elliot Forbes” was actually hundreds of people plaing the part giving the lectures in various other towns where the films played. He also sold sex education pamphlets actually written by his wife, which Babb claimed were made for 8 cents apiece and sold for $1.00.
The result of all this hype was that “Mom and Dad” was the third highest grossing film of its decade. The Los Angeles Times estimated that it made between $40 million and $100 million. The film has also been selected to be part of the National Film Registry. It also ran into trouble with censors, but Babb always stressed the “educational” value of the film.
Babb, then, turned his attention to Jesus Christ. He took a film called “The Lawton Story” and re-named it “The Prince of Peace” (1948). This film was the result of Babb filming the Wichita Mountain Program in Lawton, Oklahoma. The result was of poor quality with the cast speaking in heavy Midwestern accents (“Which one o’ y’all is gonna be the one who’s gonna betray me?”) and visible power lines in scenes where Jesus is marched up to cavalry (leaving the worried producer to fear “when people see that, they’ll think that they’re going to electrocute him.”). Despite these drawbacks, Babb pressed forward with an ad campaign proclaiming that viewers would “find God right in there!” He also sold Bibles and “inspirational” pamphlets to audience members at screenings. His aggressive promotional techniques once again assured the success of the film.
Babb would later take on an anti-marijuana film “She Shoulda Said No” which came out about the time of Robert Mitchum’s and Lila Leeds’ arrest for marijuana possession, posting a picture of Leeds and emphasizing the nudity. He even got ahold of an early Ingmar Bergman film, “Summer with Monika,” cutting out a third of the film, emphasizing a skinny-dipping scene and retitling it “Monika, The Story of a Bad Girl.”
Babb sometimes ran afoul of the law, one notable example being a 1951 arrest for drunk driving. This, during a promotion for an anti-alcoholic film “One Too Many.” He was never convicted. Babb would continue his ways up through 1977 when he retired due to failing health. He died of a heart attack on January 28, 1980.
Kroger Babb’s career harks back to the time of sideshow peddlers and carnival barkers. His is a story of maverick showmanship and it is in that spirit that the B-Movie Celebration salutes him this weekend.