RIP, Maury Dexter.

L-R: Maury Dexter, Mara Corday, Jody McCrea on the set of The Hanging Judge, which was released as Naked Gun (1956).

Maury Dexter
June 12, 1929 – May 29, 2017

Maury Dexter was an extremely nice man. He didn’t know me from Adam, but after an introduction from Kit Parker, he spent hours telling me all about how Lippert, Regal and AIP operated — and how he fit into the operation. Being that I’m kinda obsessed with the Regalscope Westerns, I was in movie geek heaven.

Mr. Dexter worked as an assistant director on Little House On The Prairie for much of the show’s run (when Michael Landon died, Maury decided it was time to retire), so knowing him helped me score plenty of cool points with my daughter.

A friend and I helped Maury put together his memoirs. It’s a fun read, and I’m honored to have played a tiny part in getting it out there. He covers his childhood, stint in the military and Hollywood career — which includes everything from acting in a Three Stooges short to working for Lippert during the Regalscope years to directing The Mini-Skirt Mob to being a key member of Michael Landon’s production team.

After we got the memoirs finished, Maury’d call me up every so often just to say hello. I’d have a question about Frontier Gun or something, and we’d end up talking movies for quite a while. And you all know how much fun that is.

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50s Westerns DVD News #192: Two From API And Maury Dexter.

Robert Lippert’s Associated Producers, Inc. (API) followed in the footsteps of his Regal Films, supplying 20th Century-Fox with cheap ‘Scope movies to fill out double bills. The difference is, the API movies were sometimes in color. These films have been almost impossible to see over the last few decades — and haven’t been seen in the proper aspect ratio since they left theaters.

Walk Tall (1960)
Produced and Directed by Maury Dexter
Director Of Photography: Floyd Crosby
Starring Willard Parker, Joyce Meadows, Kent Taylor, Russ Bender

In Walk Tall (1960), a murderous gang massacres a Shoshone village, and an Army captain is charged with rounding up the gang and calming the Shoshones.

The Purple Hills (1961)
Directed by Maury Dexter
Director Of Photography: Floyd Crosby
Starring Gene Nelson, Joanna Barnes, Kent Taylor, Russ Bender

In The Purple Hills, two bounty hunters try to claim the same reward. The next thing you know, the dean man’s younger brothers and the Apaches are involved.

While these pictures won’t make you forget about The Searchers (1956), they’re fun and Floyd Crosby makes sure they look terrific. And it’s always a treat to discover a film that’s been largely unseen for a generation — which is exactly what we’ll be able to do thanks to Fox’s Cinema Archives collection. Both are on the way.

 

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Book Review: Talk’s Cheap, Action’s Expensive – The Films Of Robert L. Lippert.

A few weeks ago, I broke my glasses and began relying on an old (pre-trifocals) pair while I scrambled for an eye exam and new frames. Reading became very, very difficult. Not the best time to receive a book you’re really excited about. But that’s exactly when Mark Thomas McGee’s Talk’s Cheap, Action’s Expensive: The Films Of Robert L. Lippert, from BearManor Media, turned up in my mailbox.

Lippert Pictures (and related companies) cranked out cheap little Westerns like 1952’s Outlaw Women, along with gems such as Sam Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James (1949) and The Quiet Gun (1957). (They covered the other genres, too.) I’m a big fan of these films and was determined to make my way through the book with or without spectacles, holding it so close I risked paper cuts on my nose.

McGee set the book up very well. The first 80 pages or so read as a biography and history of Lippert and his career, from the theater business to film production. I had a working knowledge of the Lippert story going in, but was always coming upon something I didn’t know. There’s a filmography, arranged by company, that makes up the bulk of the book. And finally, there’s a listing of the Lippert theaters (the closest to me was in Chattanooga, TN).

What’s not to like about a book like this? It’s packed with information on movies I grew up with, movies I love. Rocketship X-M (1950). The Steel Helmet (1951). Superman And The Mole Men (1951). Forty Guns (1957). Showdown At Boot Hill (1958). The Fly (1958). The Alligator People (1959). House Of The Damned (1963). They’re all in here, and you’ll come away with a better understanding of what went into getting them made. Where I think McGee really excelled was in making sure the book, as informative as it is, stayed as fun as the films it’s about. (The same goes for his previous books on Roger Corman and AIP.)

If there’s a downside to this book, it’s that the filmography points out film after film that you’d love to track down and see. You’ll find a lot of them available from Kit Parker Films and VCI, and others scattered here and there. Some of the Fullers were even given the Criterion treatment. As for the rest, well, happy hunting.

It’s very easy to recommend Mark Thomas McGee’s Talk’s Cheap, Action’s Expensive: The Films Of Robert L. Lippert. Now that my new glasses are in, I’m reading it a second time.

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50s Westerns DVD (Maybe) News #99: The Oregon Trail (1959).

The Oregon Trail (1959), a color and CinemaScope picture made by Lippert/Regal for 20th Century Fox, was announced as part of the Fox Cinema Archives collection — with a release date of September 11 (this coming Tuesday). However, there was a bit of controversy with the first batch of FCA releases — mainly aspect ratio issues — and news has been a bit sketchy since. So who knows. Fred MacMurray’s late-50s Westerns have been a hot topic around here lately, so this would be a welcome addition.

Maury Dexter was part of the Lippert team cranking out Regalscope pictures for Fox. He mentioned The Oregon Trail in his memoirs, Highway To Hollywood, which are available here.

Maury Dexter: “We shot a film entitled The Oregon Trail starring Fred MacMurray and directed by Gene Fowler, Jr… Lou Vittes wrote the screenplay (with Fowler). Anyway, we had a last-minute script meeting on a Saturday afternoon, just prior to principal photography. The following Monday morning, several of the scenes that were altered or completely rewritten were scenes that had been scheduled to shoot on the first day. MacMurray was heavily involved with some of these scenes, so late Saturday, the mimeo company picked up the revised scenes and promised to have them printed by early Sunday morning. I was concerned about MacMurray getting late changes, so I instructed the mimeo company to hand deliver the new scenes to Fred’s home on Sunday morning. I personally called Fred and apologized for the late changes and told him that he would receive them on Sunday, in time to study them for the following day. He was very nice and said the following: ‘Don’t worry about it. For the amount of money you people are paying me… I’d ride a bicycle down Hollywood Boulevard in the nude!’ My kind of guy… nothing pretentious about him.”

If I find out anything further about the DVD release, or lack thereof, I’ll update this post accordingly. And if you come across anything, please let us know.

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A word from Margia Dean.

Margia Dean appeared in a number of 50s Westerns, from The Return Of Jesse James (1950) to Ambush At Cimarron Pass (1958, above). She’s also in the Hammer classic The Quatermass Experiment/The Creeping Unknown (1955). Then there’s winning a Shakespearean performance contest at 15, being crowned Miss California and producing a couple pictures in the 60s. I could go on and on.

Ms. Dean is mentioned in Maury Dexter’s memoirs, and she didn’t like, or agree with, what she read. Here’s her response:

“An author shouldn’t make accusations without being sure of the facts. I didn’t even know that Maginetti was fired, or why. I had no knowledge or participation in the business operations, or input. I would never have used any influence that I might have had to harm someone. It saddens me to have read that those whom I thought of as friends, were threatened by me and even boycotted me. I was nice to everyone.” — Margia Dean

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Frontier Gun (1958).

Directed by Paul Landres
Produced by Richard E. Lyons
Associate Producer: Maury Dexter
Written by Stephen Kandel
Director of Photography: Walter Strenge, ASC
Art Director: Edward Shiells
Supervising Film Editor: Robert Fritch, ACE
Music Composed by Paul Dunlap

CAST: John Agar (Sheriff Jim Crayle), Joyce Meadows (Peg Barton), Barton MacLane (Simon Crayle), Robert Strauss (Yubo), Lyn Thomas (Kate Durand), James Griffith (Cash Skelton), Morris Ankrum (Andrew Barton), Leslie Bradley (Rev. Jacob Hall), Doodles Weaver (Eph Loveman), Holly Bane (Tanner).

__________

In the mid-50s, B producer Robert Lippert entered into an arrangement with 20th Century-Fox where his Regal Films, Inc. would produce a series of second features for the studio — two black and white CinemaScope pictures a month. Lippert wanted to combine the economy of black and white with the draw of CinemaScope. They called the process Regalscope.

Regalscope is black and white CinemaScope, nothing more. Lippert made around 50 Regalscope features between 1956 and 1959 — all of them cheap, most of them Westerns. These Westerns feature folks like John Agar, Jim Davis, Beverly Garland and Forrest Tucker. One, Ambush At Cimarron Pass (1958) gave Clint Eastwood an early role. And each picture is a virtual parade of your favorite character actors.

Maury Dexter worked for Lippert during the Regalscope years, making sure they got a feature in the can in just a week. (He gets an associate producer credit on Frontier Gun.)

Maury Dexter: “We were shooting as many as 20 films a year… We had … first-rate production men with years of experience in their field. By name: Frank Parmenter, Herb Mendelshon, Clarence Eurist, Ralph Slosser and more. We hired directors of photography such as Floyd Crosby, Daniel Haller, James Wong Howe, Kenneth Peach, Ed Cronjager and Joe Birocletal – all top-flight cameramen, some Academy Award winners. We were churning out a feature every few weeks that included subjects such as adventures, thrillers, Westerns, Civil War and some science fiction like Kronos (1957) and The Fly (1958).”

Frontier Gun (1958) was produced by Richard Lyons.

Dexter: “[Lyon’s] claim to fame, at that time, was that his stepfather was an officer of Leows, Inc. So, Richard came to us as a wanna-be producer… Lippert assigned him to me to teach him the fine points of producing. Richard was an amiable, easygoing person and was eager to learn. He was finally given a project and I physically produced the show, but Richard learned a lot and, naturally, was given screen credit as producer.”

Lyons would eventually produce Ride The High Country (1962) for MGM. We all owe him for that one.

Frontier Gun is yet another town-tamer story. John Agar is Jim Crayle, son of noted lawman Simon Crayle (Barton MacLane). Agar’s given a badge by Honcho’s town council to take on Yubo (Robert Strauss) — one of those saloon owners intent on running the town — so Honcho can become a safe place for decent people to live. Agar’s an expert shot, but an old injury makes him slow on the draw. Eventually, the father rides into town to tell his son he’s not up to the task.

Paul Landres directed. By 1958, he was already a TV veteran, directing episodes of everything from Boston Blackie to The Lone Ranger. He was a dependable journeyman director who made only a handful of features. Here he does an admirable job with the money and schedule he had to work with. It was shot by Walter Strenge, who did a number of the Regalscope films, including Stagecoach To Fury (1956). For Frontier Gun, Landres and Strenge relied on the medium shots and long takes that make early widescreen films so interesting.

Frontier Gun was the second of three pictures Joyce Meadows made with John Agar.

Joyce Meadows: “I grew very attached to John. We worked very well together… I thought he had a very good presence on the screen. He worked hard and was very, very in favor of whomever was working with him, to share the camera.”

Robert Strauss, who usually plays comic badguys, is quite interesting as Yubo. Veteran character actors Doodles Weaver and James Griffith are on hand giving the picture a little extra B Western clout.

Joyce Meadows: “Morris Ankrum was also in that film. What a great character actor he was, and I enjoyed studying him when he performed.”

You have to cut the Regalscope pictures some slack. They’re a bit talky, and the lack of money and time can be quite obvious. But they have great casts, especially the Westerns, and the scripts usually play well. Frontier Gun is one of the better ones. It’s a real shame they’re so hard to track down, especially in some semblance of widescreen — because once you get into them, you really want to see them all. Anybody out there got a widescreen Stagecoach To Fury?

An interesting, and disturbing, bit of trivia: the 35mm print archived at UCLA is missing a couple reels.

SOURCE: Maury Dexter’s Highway To Hollywood; Ladies Of The Western by Michael Fitzgerald and Boyd Magers; Scream Sirens Scream! by Paul Parla and Charles P. Mitchell.

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Taking The Weekend Off.

It’s hard to even imagine it, but there’s more to life than 50s Westerns.

For me, there’s Surf Music. And I’m lucky enough to be just 34 miles from The Instro Summit, “America’s biggest all-instrumental music festival.” It’s more than 20 bands over three days, and it’s this weekend. All-Rockin’, No Squawkin’!

To mark the occasion, I give you Los Straitjackets’ terrific take on Elmer Bernstein’s “The Magificent Seven.”

Back in the saddle on Monday. In the meantime, go read Maury Dexter’s book.

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Free eBook: Maury Dexter’s Highway To Hollywood.

In what is, without doubt, one of the coolest developments since this blog (and book) got going, I’ve had the honor of helping producer-director Maury Dexter prepare his memoirs, Highway To Hollywood (The Hard Way).

Mr. Dexter covers his childhood, stint in the military and Hollywood career — which includes everything from acting in a Three Stooges short to working for Lippert during the Regalscope years to directing The Mini-Skirt Mob to being a key member of Michael Landon’s production team. I found it a fascinating read.

We can all thank Mr. Kit Parker (of Kit Parker Films) for making this happen. All I did was some proofreading and project management while a designer friend, Jim Briggs, took on the task of creating both a PDF and ePub from Mr. Dexter’s manuscript. (That’s the cover up top.)

Of course, we also owe a big thanks for Mr. Dexter for sharing his story. Make that giving us his story. It’ll cost you nothing.

You can download the PDF here:

Highway To Hollywood

L-R: Maury Dexter, Mara Corday, Jody McCrea on the set of The Hanging Judge, which was released as Naked Gun (1956).

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