Jed Buell

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

Career

Buell, born in Denver, Colorado to Dora Phelps and William J. 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]

Buell made his first venture into 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.

The next year, Buell utilized his own production company for one of the strangest westerns of all time, The Terror of Tiny Town with an all-midget cast, which would also feature songs. Buell recruited a troop of actors under four feet tall formerly called Leo Singer that Buell renamed the Jed Buell Midgets. The film was picked up for release by Columbia Pictures.

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 with whom he'd worked 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 American citieswith 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

After the war, Buell went into television by producing the soap opera The Adventures of Kitty Gordon, but the show ended when he disagreed with network executives.[6]

Personal life

Buell married journalist Helen Gurley in 1934. She was no relation to Helen Gurley Brown; she served as story editor on several of Buell's films. Their son, Jed Buell Jr., was born in 1939.[7]

Filmography

As producer

Death

Buell died on 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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