Jed Buell

Jed Buell born May 21, 1897 in Denver, Colorado died September 29, 1961 was an American film producer, director and screenwriter who specialised in low budget B pictures in a variety of subjects including singing cowboy films featuring midgets and black actors.

Career

The son of William J. Buell and Dora Phelps, Buell was educated at the Corona school and North Denver High School. He began his film career as treasurer of the Denver Orpheum Theatre and Denham Theatre as well as the business manager of Denver's Elitch Theatre. In 1928 he became general manager of California Universal Chair Theaters. He joined Mack Sennett as a publicist and in 1930 was made director of all publicity at the Mack Sennett Studios in Hollywood.[1]

In 1937 Buell started his own production company for one of the strangest westerns of all time, The Terror of Tiny Town with an all midget cast. Buell recruited a troop of actors under four feet tall formerly called the Singer Midgets that Buell renamed the Jed Buell Midgets. The film was picked up for release by Columbia Pictures.

Buell continued with singing cowboy films by bringing them into the race film genre by producing Harlem on the Prairie (1937) with singer Herb Jeffries[2] who had seen The Terror of Tiny Town.[3] and approached Buell to feature him as a black singing cowboy.

Buell and Rev. James Kempe Friedrich formed Cathedral Films and Church-Craft Pictures to make a series of Christian films including The Great Commandment (1939).[4].

During this time Buell rejoined Sam Newfield who he had worked with on his Fred Scott Westerns by producing several non-Western films for Producers Releasing Corporation such as Misbehaving Husbands (1940), Emergency Landing (1941) and Broadway Big Shot (1940) with William Beaudine.

In March 1940 Buell created Dixie National Pictures, Inc and Dixie National Film Exchange Inc to distribute the films together with Ted Toddy and Rev. James Friedrich. Dixie National had offices in six large cities of America with the idea to make and distribute all black cast films to the estimated 400 Negro cinemas and film venues in the US.[5] Buell made several comedies with director William Beaudine and Mantan Moreland where Buell was credited with directing one and writing another.

Television

Buell went television following the war where he produced a soap opera called The Adventures of Kitty Gordon however Buell disagreed with network executives and the show ended[6].

Personal life

Buell married journalist Helen Gurley (no relation to Helen Gurley Brown) in 1934 with Helen acting as a story editor on several of Buell's films. The couple had one son Jed Buell Jr. born in 1939[7].

Death

Buell died on died September 29, 1961

References

  1. ↑ p, 202 The Film Daily Product Guide and Director's Annual Film Daily, 1937
  2. ↑ "Herb Jeffries - obituary". Telegraph. Retrieved 2017-10-20.
  3. ↑ "Pioneering Black Singing Cowboy, Herb Jeffries, 100". filmbuffonline.com. Retrieved 2017-10-20.
  4. ↑ p. 28 Lindvall, Terry & Quicke, Andrew Celluloid Sermons: The Emergence of the Christian Film Industry, 1930–1986 NYU Press, 2011
  5. ↑ pp.205-206 Marshall, Wendy L. William Beaudine: From Silents to Television Scarecrow Press, 2005
  6. ↑ Miller, Cynthia J. Tradition, Parody and Adaption: Jed Buell's Unconventional West in Hollywood's West: The American Frontier in Film, Television, and History edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor University Press of Kentucky, 11 Nov. 2005
  7. ↑ http://www.b-westerns.com/tinytown.htm
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