Ben Judell

Ben Judell was a man with a vision; he holds an important position in Hollywood history, but sadly very few people know his name. Judell's entire career was spent in movies, primarily as manager of the Mutual Film Exchanges (one-time producer of Charles Chaplin's shorts) and became an independent film distributor in 1917, learning the ins and outs of marketing low-budget feature films, and spent 20+ years developing a solid industry reputation.

Head of Producers Distributing Corp., a distributor of low-budget films in the 1930s.

Everything should have cruised along nicely, but Judell made essentially the same crucial misstep that had killed off Grand National Pictures in 1937: he chose to produce an expensive feature he couldn't derive cash flow from.

Grand National's Something To Sing About (1937) was its $900,000 time bomb; Judell's equivalent was Hitler: Beast of Berlin (1939) (later retitled "Goose Step") which, while not technically a "bomb", just couldn't pass the censorship boards of various states, localities (some scandalously sympathetic to Nazi Germany) and foreign countries. Cash failed to flow in, liens piled up and PDC was on the verge of collapse. Sigmund Neufeld stepped in after the distributors asked the principal lien holder, Pathe Film Labs, to delay foreclosure on a $90,000 processing bill (six other features were in various stages of completion), then kicked in to pay past debts. Neufeld's new company, Sigmund Neufeld Productions, was backed by Robert S. Benjamin, an attorney for Pathe, and neither had any further use for the services of Ben Judell. In a span of three months, Judell had built a studio in Arizona, established a distribution network, fought a number of censorship battles, produced seven low-budget features that were in various stages of completion and burned through $1 million. Not even nine months from his first press release, however, Judell's dream was over. His place in Hollywood history lies in what emerged from the ashes of his dream. Pathe, a French company, had a major presence in the US during the silent era--it once distributed product from such powerhouses as Hal Roach and Mack Sennett--but its film distribution operations virtually disintegrated when its US representative, Paul Brunet, returned to France in the mid-'20s, leaving only its processing operations intact domestically. At the time of PDC's collapse, Neufeld successfully cut a deal giving Pathe a percentage in the new company. With France under Nazi occupation, Pathe likely saw the deal only as a means to recoup what it was due, not as a tactic to re-enter the market as a production player. This is evidenced by Pathe not pressing for a recognizable brand connection, despite its equity position with the reorganized studio (having its name associated with Neufeld's films would have been an embarrassment compared to its glory days distributing superstar Harold Lloyd's early films for Roach).

In 1938 he briefly joined Progressive Pictures and produced a small number of exploitation pictures, which whet his appetite for bigger things.

Judell formed Producers Distributing Corporation, better known as "PDC", and boldly placed a two-page ad in Box Office Magazine during the summer of 1939, proclaiming that the American public demanded action-based features (and, by inference, PDC was going to give it to them).

Judell soon announced an ambitious 1939 production schedule, which included three separate western series, each with eight features, to star Tim McCoy, George Houston and an oddball-sounding Andy Hardy series clone, "The Sagebrush Family", set in the southwest starring veteran character actor James Gleason and his real-life wife and son.

The energetic Judell then took out another trade ad announcing PDC's securing a million-dollar production budget for the 1939-40 season and doubled the number of pictures to be released. Puffery or not, Judell went to work lining up a competent production staff and building a studio in Prescott, AZ. Former Puritan Pictures (another "Gower Gulch" company) producer Sigmund Neufeld signed on, six associate producers and veteran directors were hired, deals were cut and all-important distribution agreements with 12 film exchanges (assuring cash flow) were finalized.

Regardless, in November 1940 Neufeld's company was reworked as Producers Releasing Corporation, better known as PRC, which became infamous for a long line of notoriously cheap B-grade features. Even independent theater owners showing its films complained about the poor production values of its earliest releases.

PRC's product improved to some degree and, truth be known, a small number of its productions remain curiously interesting (The Devil Bat (1940), Corregidor (1943), Detour (1945), The Enchanted Forest (1945) and Railroaded! (1947) usually constitute the rather short list).