William Beaudine

From Wikipedia William Beaudine January 15 1892 March 18 1970 was an American film actor and director He was one of Hollywoods most prolific directors turning out films in remarkable numbers and in a wide variety of genres In 1915 he was hired as an actor and director by the Kalem Company He was an assistant to director DW 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 1915 He would continue to direct shorts exclusively until 1922 when he shifted his efforts into making featurelength films Beaudine directed silent films for Goldwyn Pictures before it became part of MGM Metro Pictures also before MGM First National Pictures Principal and Warner Brothers In 1926 he made Sparrows the story of orphans imprisoned in a swamp farm starring Mary Pickford 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 Brothers Paramount and Universal Pictures His most famous credit of the early 1930s is The OldFashioned Way a comedy about oldtime show folks starring W C Fields Beaudine was one of a number of experienced directors including Raoul Walsh and Allan Dwan who were brought to England from Hollywood in the 1930s to work on what were in all other respects very British productions Beaudine directed four films there starring Will Hay including Boys Will Be Boys 1935 and Where Theres a Will 1936 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 1960 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 horrorwesterns Billy the Kid vs Dracula with John Carradine and Jesse James Meets Frankensteins Daughter By the end of the decade he was the industrys oldest working professional having started in 1909 Beaudine died of uremic poisoning in 1970 in California and was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood