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Even among B-movie directors, Jean Yarbrough was never one of the
bigger names, he was never quite as prolific as let's say Sam Newfield,
nor did his work excell its modest origins like the films of Edgar
G.Ulmer. Also he never was on the verge of becoming an A-movie director,
and quite frankly, he quite possibly did not have the talent to be one.
Plus, he did not have much of a personal style, which did allow him to
switch between genres (and later move over to television) with the
greatest of ease, even though most of his films were comedies and
musicals, with the horror genre he is now most famous for trailing far
behind. However,
to merely dismiss Jean Yarbrough as a studio hack would be wrong, with Devil
Bat and King
of the Zombies, he has at least made 2 shockers that many vintage
horror fans (me included) wouldn't want to have missed for the world (if
not necessarily for their directorial excellence). And there's more to
discover ... Jean Yarbrough was born in Marianna, Arizona in
1900, and after studying at the University of the South, he joined the
film industry in 1922. Being a prop man at first, he soon rose up the
ranks to assistant director at the Hal Roach Studios, working on
some early shorts starring Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson and the
like, many of them being scripted by Stan Laurel. Roughly with the
arrival of sound, Yarbrough moved to Roach's main competition Mack
Sennett, but soon enough, he found himself doing second unit work for a
variety of studios (even some majors), and even on feature films, like a
bunch of Wheeler & Woolsey comedies for RKO
in the mid 1930's. From that point of view it almost seems
inevitable that he eventually got into directing himself, beginning with
the comical short Don't be Like That for RKO.
Between 1936 and 1940, Yarbrough would direct (and also often write) a
total of 29 shorts, mostly comedies or musical featurettes, and his most
prominent shorts might be a series of films starring then poular comic
Leon Errol (A Rented Riot, Dummy Owner, Berth Quake, Crime
Rave). However, even while still busy doing the RKO-shorts,
Yarbrough had higher aspirations, and in 1938, he directed his first
feature film, Rebellious Daughters, for small-time producer Progressive
Pictures. Now to be quite honest, Rebellious Daughters, a film
starring Marjorie Reynolds, Verna Hillie and Sheila Bromley, is anyhting
but a classic, it's a cheesy morality play about a good girl throwing in
with the wrong kind of people because of her unsympathetic parents - yet in
today's age of exploitation (re-)discoveries being announced every other
week, the film would deserve more attention than it presently gets.
From
Rebellious Daughters though it was back to shorts at RKO,
and it took three more years for Yarbrough to become a full-fledged
feature director. In 1941, Jean Yarbrough started his feature
director-career with three films for poverty row studio PRC
[PRC history - click here ],
the notorious Devil
Bat, the comedy Caught in the Act, and the espionage drama South of
Panama (co-scripted by Sidney Sheldon). Of the trio, Devil
Bat is without a doubt the most famous, most interesting and also
the best film, an atmospheric flick in which a mad scientist invents a shaving lotion
that causes his giant bat to attack whoever wears it and which he uses to
avenge himself on those who (he thinks) wronged him. Now the plot might
sound about as silly as horror cinema can get, but somehow the film rises
over its silly story and its cheap production values and actually works as
a good, old-fashioned spooker - not at least due to the fact that the mad
scientist was portrayed by Bela Lugosi [Bela
Lugosi bio - click here] turning in one of his most chilling
performances (in no other movie did he - or anyone else for that matter - say a simple "good bye"
quite as menacingly). After the three films for PRC,
Jean Yarbrough moved over to Monogram,
which was actually a bit of a step up for Yarbrough - if only a tiny one -
for Monogram
was the more respected of the two production houses - but was still strictly
poverty row. Arguably, Yarbrough's first film for Monogram
was also his best or at least most fondly remembered one: King
of the Zombies. King
of the Zombies is one of these silly B-shockers with outrageous
plotlines that were produced in the 1940's by the dozen. This time around
the film is about a Nazi-scientist on a dessert island hell-bent on
creating a zombie army. But a duo of feds and their bumbling assistant
get wind of this and in the end spoil the mad doctor's evil plans ... What
distinguishes the film though from its comptetition is black comedian
Mantan Moreland [Mantan
Moreland bio - click here], giving one of his most memorable
performances. Though only credited as a supporting
actor, Moreland dominates every scene he's in and makes the film his own.
And he's quite hilarious, too.
Obviously, Monogram
must have been happy with Yarbrough's handling of the black comedian,
as they over the next two years gave him 4 more assingments to direct
Mantan Moreland: First, in 1941, came two films of the Frankie
and Mantan series, The Gang's All Here and Let's Go
Collegiate, comedies that teamed Moreland up with young (white) Frankie Darro [click
here for a Frankie Darro-biography], and in 1942, Yarbrough
directed Moreland in Freckles Comes Home -
a comedy about a country
kid outsmarting the big city mob - and Law
of the Jungle - one of these typical jungle films shot entirely on
studio sets featuring your typical man-in-a-gorilla-suit. (By the way,
even after Yarbrough changed from Monogram
to Universal
in 1943, he worked with Moreland 4 more times, in the musicals Hi'ya
Sailor [1943], Moon over Las Vegas and South of Dixie
[both 1944], and the Abbott & Costello-comedy Naughty Nineties
[1945], though Moreland had only small roles in those.) By and
large, Yarbrough's output for Monogram
consisted mostly of comedies of one sort or another (with a few crime
dramas being thrown in), his films from that era also included Father Steps
Out/City Limits - comedy about a railroad tycoon falling off
his private train car and finding himself teamed up with hobos
Frank Faylen and Charles Hall - and Top Sergeant Mulligan - comedy duo
Frank Faylen and Charles Hall in the army - from 1941, Meet
the Mob/So's Your
Aunt Emma - spinster Zasu Pitts taking on the mob -, She's in the
Army - title says all -, Lure of the Island - another studio-bound
jungle film with Robert Lowery and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams fighting Nazis
-, the propaganda effort Criminal Investigator/Crime
Reporter and the crime comedies Man from Headquarters and Police
Bullets from 1942, and Silent Witness/Attorney of the
Defense - starring Ace the Wonder Dog - from 1943. In
1943, Yarbrough moved up from poverty row to the (minor) majors when Universal
offered him a contract. Sure, Yarbrough was still confined to doing
B-pictures, but it was a step up nevertheless (from a
career-point-of-view, not necessarily concerning the quality of
Yarbrough's films). Initially he was assigned to do comedies (Good
Morning Judge [1943]), musicals (Follow the Band [1943], Weekend
Pass [1944], On Stage Everybody [1945], the Desi Arnaz-starrer Cuban
Pete/Down Cuba Way [1946] ...), and musical
Westerns (Twilight on the Prairie/Prairie Buckaroos [1944]
and Under Western Skies [1945]). Eventually, Yarbrough's career at Universal
found its peak when he was assigned to direct a trio of Abbott & Costello-movies, In Society (1944), Here Come the Co-Eds
(1945, this one also stars horror fave Lon Chaney jr [Lon
Chaney jr bio - click here]) and The Naughty
Nineties (1945). Now admittedly, Abbott & Costello
were not the greatest comedy duo around and on a pure quality level
they could never match the comedy of, let's say, Laurel
& Hardy, but still were able to amuse in their better
films and were making solid money for Universal,
so the job of directing these pictures wasn't handed over to just anybody. Besides
that, in Naughty Nineties, the duo would commit their "Who's on first
?" ("and Watt's on second ?")- routine to film, which would
eventually become the most famous and most enduring
Abbott & Costello-routine ever.
After
the Abbott & Costellos, Yarbrough's career took a rather
unexpected turn though: Instead of continuing in comedies and musicals,
Yarbrough found himself assigned to horror films, as Universal
(and producer Ben Pivar) desperately tried to revive their once great horror
cycle - which had become pretty pathetic in the mid-1940's - by creating, if at all possible, a new series to become
a money spinner. So Pivar went through the Universal
catalogue of
characters, and soon enough he came up with The Creeper, a
character first seen in the Sherlock
Holmes film Pearl of Death (1944, Roy William Neill). The Creeper
was actually a character based entirely on the acromegaly - a rare
disease causing uncontrollable growth in head, hands and feet - of its
actor Rondo Hatton, who, due to his predicament, was forever doomed to
play human monsters, as he did in Pearl of Death.
Eventually what was supposed to become The Creeper-series was handed over to Jean Yarbrough, and he directed
Rondo Hatton in House of Horrors/Joan Medford is Missing
(1946) - an artist saves the Creeper from drowning, only to use him as a
tool to wreak revenge on his critics - and The
Brute Man (1946) - a
football star gets facially disfigured and decides to take revenge on
those who wronged him. The Creeper-series however came to an
untimely end when Rondo Hatton in early 1946 died from causes related to
his acromegaly - which came as such a shock to Universal
that they - allegedly out of piety - decided to not distribute The
Brute Man. However, at the same time Universal
was not all that eager to lose money on the film either, so they sold the
distribution rights to poverty row studio PRC
[PRC history - click here ],
who were more than happy to distribute the flick - so much for Universal's
piety.
Apart from the
Creeper-series,
Yarbrough did one more horror film for Universal,
She-Wolf of London
(1946), a horror thriller/murder mystery about a woman made to believe
she's a werewolf. By and large though, these late entries into the Universal
horror
cycle were anything but great, rather they were badly scripted
and uninterestingly directed attempts to rehash former glory - not very
successfully though. After this handful of horror flicks and a
crime drama, Inside Job (1946, based on a story by Tod Browning and Garrett
Fort) - a film about two ex-convicts trying to go straight but being
bribed into doing another job -, Yarbrough left Universal,
which gave up B-movie production altogether - for a while -, and did not
make a single movie in 1947. In 1948 though, Yarbrough came back with a
trio of films, each for a different production house: Shed no Tears,
a noir for Eagle-Lion,
The Creeper for 20th
Century Fox
and Triple Threat, a football drama for Columbia. Of
these films, The Creeper is probably the most interesting, as it
was once again produced by Ben Pivar, formerly of Universal-fame,
who - as the title might suggest - still hasn't given up his idea for a Creeper-series,
though essentially this film is something else: It concerns a mad
scientist who turns a man into a catlike killer who commits the notorious claw
murders. At the same time, a woman who has just returned from Africa,
believes she has contracted something in the dark continent that turns her
into the Claw Killer. Though in this point highly derivative of She-Wolf
of London (and in fact oh so many other horror/mad
scientist-movies), The Creeper isn't half bad, an atmospheric
little shocker that is sure to please fans of vintage horror ... In
1949, Jean Yarbrough found himself back at Monogram
and back to directing mainly comedies and musicals like Holiday in
Havana (1949) - another musical starring Desi Arnaz -, Leave it to
Henry, Henry the Rainmaker (both 1949) and Father Makes Good
(1951) - a trio of comedies about a henpecked husband who's also an
inventor -, Joe Palooka meets Humphrey and Joe Palooka in
Humphrey Takes a Chance (1950) - two boxing comedies starring Leon
Errol -, Master Minds (1949) - a Bowery Boys comedy with
some horror elements starring Alan Napier and Glenn Strange in Jack Pierce
make-up -, Angels in Disguise (1949) and Triple
Trouble (1950) - two more Bowery Boys-comedies -, or
According to Mrs Hoyle (1951) - a remake of Meet
the Mob/So's Your
Aunt Emma -, with only the occasional adventure movie (The
Mutineers [1949]), drama (Big Timber [1950]) or crime film (Sideshow
[1950]) thrown in. 1952 saw a departure from Monogram
and a return to doing Abbott & Costello-comedies,
Lost in Alaska and Jack and the Beanstalk, but these films, like most of
the duo's 1950's efforts, only proved that their not too special humour has
grown somewhat tired over the years and is more fitted for television -
they had their own TV-show, The Abbott and Costello Show,
from 1952 to 1953 - than for the big screen. Interestingly enough, Jean
Yarbrough had his hands in directing and producing their TV-show as
well ... Eventually, Yarbrough returned to Monogram,
or more accurately its sister company Allied
Artists - a company initially founded by Monogram
to make more high-profile movies but soon found itself making just the
same B-fare as Monogram,
but still eventually proved successful enough
to outlive its mother company. Here Yarbrough found himself doing some more
B's like another pair of Bowery Boys-comedies (Crashing Las
Vegas and Hot Shots [both 1956]), a truck driving melodrama (Night
Freight [1954]) and a Western (Yaqui Drums [1956]). Besides
that, he also made another film for 20th
Century Fox, The Women of Pitcairn Island (1956), an
adventure film about the aftermath of the historical Mutiny of the Bounty
- however, the concept for this film, might sound much more interesting
than the finished product, which is little more than cheaply made South
Seas-escapism. None of Jean Yarbrough's films from the 1950's
however were destined to bring him any kind of lasting fame, and sometimes
one had the impression that Yarbrough did in fact not really care ...
which might even be true, because in the 1950's, Yarbrough had found a new
home for himself: Television Starting with Beulah
- a sitcom about a black housekeeper (Hattie McDaniel) who has more common sense than the
entire white family she works for - in 1950, Yarbrough would find himself
working on a wide variety of shows from virtually every genre: comedy -
above mentioned The Abbott and Costello Show,
Petticoat Junction, the classic Addams Family, My
Favourite Martian -, Western - Death Valley Days, Adventures
of Wild Bill Hickok, Gunsmoke, Bonanza
-, adventure - Border Patrol, the Buster Crabbe starrer Captain
Gallant of the Foreign Legion [Buster
Crabbe bio - click here] -, crime drama - the George Raft
starrer I'm the Law -, war - Navy Log -, and
whatever else there is inbetween. As a B-movie director trained in
various genres, he was of course the perfect choice for a TV-director: He
knew how to work on a tight schedule and an even tighter budget, he knew
how to quickly and effectively set up a shot and squeeze the most out of
every set-up, and he wouldn't let artistic aspirations get in the way of
getting the job done on time.
By the 1960's, Jean Yarbrough had
dedicated himself to television almost entirely, his forays into feature
filmmaking had grown incredibly rare indeed ... In 1967, Jean Yarbrough
released his last theatrical feature, Hillbillys in a Haunted House,
produced by the Woolner Brothers. The film however - a sequel to
the film Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966, Arthur C.Pierce), itself a
rip-off of the popular TV-show The Beverly Hillbillies - was
a sad swansong to his career (in fact it would have been to any career),
inasmuch as it is a jokeless mix of pseudo-backwoods comedy, country music
and horror clichés, made all the sadder by the fact that John Carradine [John
Carradine-bio - click here],
Lon Chaney jr [Lon
Chaney jr bio - click here] and Basil Rathbone [Basil
Rathbone bio - click here] all were in this one but could do little
to save it.
Jean Yarbrough's last made-for-TV-movie might be
worth mentioning though - if only not to let his career end with Hillbillys in a Haunted House
-, the 1969 effort The Over-the-Hill Gang, a
likeable comedy-Western about a quartet of ageing cowboys teaming up one
last time to clean up a lawless town. Pat O'Brien, Walter Brennan, Chill
Wills and Edgar Buchanan star as the oldtimers, with support by Gipsy Rose Lee and Ricky
Nelson. Eventually the film got a sequel in 1970, The
Over-the-Hill-Gang Rides Again, directed by George McCowan, with Fred
Astaire in a lead role. The Over-the-Hill Gang would be
the very last feature-length film Jean Yarbrough ever directed, after that
he only did a few more episodes of TV-shows and then went into
retirement. Jean Yarbrough passed away in 1975. The body of work he
left behind was not that of a great director, it was that of a craftsman
working dependably within the system, be it B-movies or TV-series. Many of
his films are now by and large forgotten, and most of them deservedly so,
however some of his films are fondly remembered by genre afficionados (and
vintage film afficionados by and large) to this day ... and these films
deserve every bit of limelight they are getting ...
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