Edward Small
Edward Small was an American film producer from the late 1920s through 1970, who was enormously prolific over a 50-year career. He is best known for the movies The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Corsican Brothers, Brewster's Millions, Raw Deal, Black Magic , Witness for the Prosecution and Solomon and Sheba.
Early life and career
Small was born on February 1, 1891, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, the son of Rose and Philip Schmalheiser. His mother was born in Prussia and his father was born in Austria; he had three sisters and two brothers. He began his career as a talent agent in New York City. In 1917, he moved his agency to Los Angeles where his acting clients included a young Hedda Hopper. His first production appears to have been the wartime propaganda film, Who's Your Neighbor?.In the 1920s the Edward Small Company produced stage sketches. He helped William Goetz begin his career in the industry by recommending him for a job at Corinne Griffith.
Asher Small Rogers
Small began producing films in the 1920s, when it became his full-time occupation. He formed the firm Asher, Small and Rogers, as a partner with Charles Rogers and E. M Asher. The partnerships early films were all based on plays: The Sporting Lover, The Cohens and Kellys , The Gorilla, McFadden's Flats, and Ladies' Night in a Turkish Bath.Of these Cohens and Kellys was particularly popular, leading to a number of sequels starting with The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris. Small also produced My Man with Fanny Brice, and Companionate Marriage.
Except for The Gorilla all these early films were comedies. In 1926 Small said, "Making a comedy requires far more care than is necessary for any other form of screen production because audiences are more exacting than in any other form of entertainment."
"Picture making is a youngster's game", he added the same year. "When a man gets older he doesn't want to take a chance to try something new. And this business moves so fast that if you don't change your methods with every picture you're out of luck. In a few years I won't have a thing to do with the creative. Afraid, I'll hire young men with plenty of nerve to handle that for me."
In early 1928, the original Asher Small Rogers partnership dissolved. However they then re-teamed and started producing films; towards the end of the year they invested in a studio complex in Sherman Oaks.
Small then worked for a time at Columbia Pictures, making Song of Love with Belle Baker. For his own company he made Clancy in Wall Street starring Cohens and Kellys star Charles Murray.
Small sent an expedition to the Arctic and they made the documentary Igloo.
Reliance Pictures and United Artists
In 1932, Small formed Reliance Pictures together with partner Harry M. Goetz. The new company was to be made with finance from Art Cinema, a subsidiary company of United Artists, in a deal brokered by Joseph Schenck. On the basis of this verbal commitment, Small and Goetz started pre production on three films. However, when Schenck presented the deal to Art Cinema's board, it was turned down. An embarrassed Schenck decided personally put up half the cost of the three films, with the other half met by Small and Goetz.The films were I Cover the Waterfront, a crime drama based on a book with Claudette Colbert; Palooka, a comedy based on the comic Joe Palooka with Jimmy Durante; and The Count of Monte Cristo, a swashbuckler based on the Dumas novel starring Robert Donat and the first screen credit for Philip Dunne. Of the three Monte Cristo was an especially big hit and Small would go on to produce a number of swashbucklers.
William Phipps then stepped in to provide financing in Schenck's place and Reliance made five more movies for United Artists over two years: Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round, a musical comedy; Let 'Em Have It ; a gangster movie; Red Salute, a screwball comedy with an anti-Communist slant starring Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Young; The Melody Lingers On, a melodrama; and Last of the Mohicans, based on the classic novel, starring Randolph Scott and co-written by Dunne. The latter was a big hit.
In 1935, Small announced plans to make a series of 4,000-foot films based on short stories and novelettes as an alternative to the double bill but this did not seem to come to fruition.
RKO
After making The Last of the Mohicans, Small left United Artists and established himself as an associate producer at RKO in January 1936; the studio bought out Reliance.Small said he was motivated to do this move in order to make larger budgeted movies, including Robber Barons, Son of Monte Cristo, Gunga Din and a series of Jack Oakie comedies. Small:
I intend to produce a different type of historical productions. There will be less of the awesomeness and less of the blind respect that has often marked the modern's approach to a historical character. Diamond Jim and The Story of Louis Pasteur are only the beginning. Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, and Mary of Scotland, contemplated, will be great steps in the direction of honesty. We have on our schedules the filming of the stories of Beau Brummell and Jim Fisk and we are contemplating a minimum of punch-pulling. Newsreels are telling the truth about people, showing them as they are. Feature pictures are going to do the same thing; they will make men and women out of celebrities.
Small's time at RKO resulted in six pictures: The Bride Walks Out, a romantic comedy with Stanwyck and Young from Red Channels; We Who Are About to Die, based on a true story about a man unjustly sent to prison; Sea Devils, a military drama with Victor McLaglen; New Faces of 1937, a musical revue designed to introduce new talent such as Milton Berle; Super-Sleuth with Jack Oakie; and The Toast of New York, a biopic of James Fisk starring Edward Arnold, Cary Grant and Frances Farmer.
Some of these performed well, notably The Bride Walks Out but others were less successful, particularly New Faces of 1937 and the expensive The Toast of New York, which was RKO's biggest money losing picture of 1937.
However Small did sell the studio his rights to Gunga Din which he had purchased from the Rudyard Kipling estate in 1936 and became a big hit later on. Small departed from RKO in 1938.
Edward Small Productions
In January 1938, Small returned to United Artists with his own unit, Edward Small Productions, under a three-year deal to make six films a year. At that time Small lived in Palm Springs, California,The following year he announced plans to make seven films worth $5 million over the next 12 months. Plans for some of these were delayed due to the war in Europe but he made most of them, starting with The Duke of West Point, which starred Louis Hayward who Small put under a long-term contract.
This was followed by King of the Turf, a horse racing film with Adolphe Menjou. Small returned to swashbucklers with another adaptation of a Dumas novel, The Man in the Iron Mask, starring Hayward; this was one of Small's most popular films.
Small bought the Howard Spring novel My Son, My Son! to turn into a film with Hayward. He also put Heyward into another swashbuckler, The Son of Monte Cristo, a sequel to his 1934 hit, co-starring Joan Bennett.
Small borrowed Jon Hall to star in two films: South of Pago Pago, a South Sea island movie, with Victor McLaglen and Frances Farmer, and Kit Carson, a Western.
In 1940, Small stopped making movies for six months as he renegotiated his deal with United Artists. He spoke out against rising costs and the impact of the double bill on filmmakers.
He recommenced production in early 1941 with another popular swashbuckler, an adaptation of The Corsican Brothers, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He made five more movies for United Artists – International Lady, a war time spy movie with George Brent; A Gentleman After Dark, a crime drama with Brian Donlevy; Twin Beds, a comedy based on an often-filmed stage play with Brent and Bennett; Friendly Enemies, a wartime drama; and Miss Annie Rooney, a film notable for featuring the first screen kiss of Shirley Temple but a big flop.
In March 1942 Small threatened to strike again due to unhappiness with his deal.
Allan Dwan Farces
Small and United Artists managed to come to terms and he produced a fresh series, including a series of farces directed by Allan Dwan and starring Dennis O'Keefe: Up in Mabel's Room, based on a stage farce; Abroad with Two Yanks, a wartime story set in Australia with William Bendix; Brewster's Millions, based on the often-filmed novel; and Getting Gertie's Garter, based on the stage play.In June 1945, he announced a plan to make ten films worth $10 million but he could not come to terms with United Artists and ended up leaving the studio that year.
In 1942, Small invested in the play Sweet Charity. In 1944, Binnie Barnes sued Edward Small Productions claiming they had breached a promise to build her up into a star.
Columbia and Eagle-Lion
Edward Small made his next film for Universal-International, Temptation, starring Merle Oberon and George Brent.He also produced The Return of Monte Cristo for Columbia, with Hayward; then in mid-1946 signed another deal with United Artists. For them he made Black Magic, a film with Orson Welles which was shot in Rome.
In the late 1940s, Small moved over to Eagle-Lion where he made the popular film noirs T-Men, and Raw Deal, both starring Dennis O'Keefe and directed by Anthony Mann.
For a time there was talk Small would take over Eagle Lion. However Small fell out with the studio over billing on T Men and withdrew from his planned participation in the film Twelve Against the Underworld. He later argued that the company could not guarantee funding for a three-year schedule.
In 1948, Small said he had personally made $2 million in profit from ten films over the past 18 months. He was making 16 films worth $8.5 million. However, he was not optimistic about the future of independent film production, saying that filmmakers needed to look internationally.
He made a series of films for Columbia: The Black Arrow, a swashbuckler based on a classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel with Hayward; The Fuller Brush Man, a comedy with Red Skelton who Small borrowed from MGM; Walk a Crooked Mile, a crime noir with O'Keefe and Hayward.