William Beaudine

William Washington Beaudine was an American film director. He was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors, turning out a remarkable 179 feature-length films in a wide variety of genres.
He is best known today for his silent films Little Annie Rooney and Sparrows, both with Mary Pickford; the W. C. Fields comedy The Old Fashioned Way; several Bela Lugosi and Charlie Chan thrillers; Mom and Dad, a sex-education exploitation film; and the popular Bowery Boys comedies.

Early life

Born in New York City, Beaudine began his career as an actor in 1909, aged 17, with American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. He married Marguerite Fleischer in 1914 and they stayed married until his death. Her sister was the mother of actor Bobby Anderson. Beaudine's brother Harold Beaudine was a director of short, action-filled comedies.
In 1915, William Beaudine was hired as an actor and director by the Kalem Company. He was an assistant to director D.W. Griffith on The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. By the time he was 23 Beaudine had directed his first picture, a short called Almost a King. He would continue to direct shorts exclusively until 1922, working with Bobby Vernon at the Al Christie studio and Snub Pollard at the Hal Roach studio.

Career

Early career as prestige director

The 1959 book, Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury, remarks on "what a really fine director William Beaudine was in the silent era, long before he became the principal director of the Bowery Boys 'B' comedies".
Beaudine was very much in demand during the 1920s. He began making feature-length films for then-struggling Warner Bros., demonstrating his clever ways of making films look more expensive than their budgets. This efficiency became a hallmark of Beaudine's style. He directed silent films for Goldwyn Pictures, Metro Pictures, First National Pictures, and Sol Lesser's Principal Pictures. In 1926 he made Sparrows, the story of orphans imprisoned in a swamp farm starring Mary Pickford, and The Canadian, based upon a W. Somerset Maugham play and shot on location in Alberta with Thomas Meighan as the lead. Beaudine had at least 30 pictures to his credit before the sound era began. Among his first sound films were short Mack Sennett comedies; he made at least one film for Sennett while contractually bound elsewhere, resulting in his adopting the pseudonym "William Crowley." He would occasionally use the pseudonym in later years, usually as "William X. Crowley."
He ground out several movies annually for Fox Films, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal Pictures. His most famous credits of the early 1930s are The Mad Parade, starring Evelyn Brent in the only World War I battlefield drama with an all-female cast ; Three Wise Girls, Jean Harlow's first starring film; and The Old Fashioned Way, a comedy about old-time show folks starring W. C. Fields.

Career in Britain and return to America

Beaudine was one of a number of experienced directors who were brought to England from Hollywood in the 1930s to work on what were in all other respects very British productions. Beaudine directed 11 features there from 1935 through 1937, including Boys Will Be Boys and Where There's a Will starring Will Hay, and the George Formby comedy Feather Your Nest.
Beaudine returned to America in 1937 and had trouble re-establishing himself at the major studios. Once widely known as an A-list director of important productions, Beaudine had commanded a premium salary in the late 1920s that Hollywood producers of the late 1930s didn't want to match. He worked briefly at Warner Bros., with whom he had been associated in Britain, and then waited for offers on his terms. They never came. Beaudine had lost much of his personal fortune through no fault of his own.

Prolific B movie career

In 1940 publicist-turned-producer Jed Buell approached Beaudine to direct an all-black-cast feature for Buell's Dixie National Pictures. The salary was a flat $500 for one week's work. Beaudine knew that if he accepted this job, he would henceforth be associated with low-budget films and would never command his old salary again, but with his finances at a low ebb Beaudine accepted the assignment, under his "William X. Crowley" alias.
Buell was pleased with Beaudine's professionalism and inventive ways to extend a shoestring budget. He hired Beaudine to direct Misbehaving Husbands, noteworthy at the time as the comeback feature of silent-screen clown Harry Langdon. It was a humble comeback for both Langdon and Beaudine, since it was released by the tiny Producers Releasing Corporation, whose budgets seldom ventured beyond five figures. Langdon and Beaudine received critical raves for their work: "Preview house rewarded them with practically solid laughter" ; "Easily best performance in years". The film's success within its own market reestablished both Langdon and Beaudine, albeit in B pictures.
William Beaudine became a low-budget specialist, forsaking his artistic ambitions in favor of strictly commercial film fare, and recouping his financial losses through sheer volume of work. He made dozens of comedies, thrillers and melodramas with such popular personalities as Bela Lugosi, Ralph Byrd, Edmund Lowe, Jean Parker, and The East Side Kids. He became a fixture at the ambitious Monogram Pictures and directed fully half of the 48 comedy features starring The Bowery Boys. By this time Beaudine had a reputation for being a resourceful, no-nonsense director who could make feature films in a matter of days, sometimes as few as five. He occasionally directed special-interest productions, like the 1945 crusade-for-sex-education feature Mom and Dad, produced by Kroger Babb, and the 1950 religious drama Again Pioneers, produced by the Protestant Film Commission. Beaudine reflected on his B movie career, saying that "hese films are going to be made regardless of who directs them. There's a market for them and the studios are going to continue to make them. I've been doing this long enough, I think I can make them as good or better than anyone else."
Beaudine was often entrusted with series films, including the Torchy Blane, The East Side Kids, Jiggs and Maggie, The Shadow, Charlie Chan, and The Bowery Boys series. His efficiency was so well known that Walt Disney hired him to direct some of his television projects of the 1950s and had him direct a feature western, Ten Who Dared. Beaudine became even busier in TV, directing Naked City, The Green Hornet, and dozens of Lassie episodes.
His last two feature films, both released in 1966, were the horror-westerns Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter. His next film was to have been a screen biography of Lupe Vélez, produced by and starring Estelita Rodriguez, but the project died with Rodriguez in 1966 and Beaudine never made another film. By the end of the decade William Beaudine was the industry's oldest working professional, having started in 1909. His final screen credit was posthumous: The Green Hornet was compiled from the TV series and released as a feature film in 1974.

Death

Beaudine died of uremic poisoning in 1970, aged 78, in California.

Legacy

In 1980, in their tongue-in-cheek book The Golden Turkey Awards, Michael and Harry Medved included William Beaudine in their list of worst directors of all time. They gave him the unflattering nickname "One-Shot," because he always seemed to shoot just one take, regardless of actors flubbing their lines or special effects malfunctioning. It is true that Beaudine shot economically—he usually had no choice—but he was always professional, and actually did shoot multiple takes of movie scenes.
The Academy Film Archive has preserved three films directed by William Beaudine: Little Annie Rooney, Mom and Dad, and A Husband in Haste.

Selected filmography

The following is a listing of the theatrically released, feature-length films directed by William Beaudine. Short subjects and television productions are not included.

1950s

1960s

1970s

Four episodes of The Green Hornet (TV series)