Security Pictures

Security Pictures was a film production company of Philip Yordan and Sidney Harmon.[1][2]

The company began in 1947 as Yordan Enterprises, with Mike Frankovich in partnership with Yordan.[3] It was renamed Security Pictures. The initial production was Anna Lucasta in 1949. This was based on Philip Yordan's hit Broadway play, and Yordan co-wrote the script and producer.[4]

By 1952 Harmon and Lerner were working for Security Pictures on the film Man Crazy, which Yordan and Harmon wrote and produced, and Lerner directed.[5] In 1954 Security co produced The Big Combo with the company of Cornel Wilde.

In 1956 Security Pictures signed an eleven picture contract with United Artists starting with The Wild Party.[6][7] The two most successful movies of the company, Men in War and God's Little Acre, were directed by Anthony Mann.[8] The company became famous for giving work to many victims of the Hollywood blacklist including Ben Maddow and Bernard Gordon.[9] Harmon produced another version of Anna Lucasta but it was made for Longridge Enterprises. In 1959 Security signed a four picture deal with Columbia.[10]

Security Pictures shifted to Europe in the 1960s, being mostly based in Spain. In 1963 Security Pictures announced they would make ten films for Allied Artists over two and a half years, including The Tribe That Lost Its Head; Gretta, based on a book by Erskine Caldwell; a Western called Bad Man's River; and a science fiction film Crack in the World.[11] Some of these were not made. Among those that were made were The Thin Red Line.[12]

The company wound up in the late 1960s and Yordan went to work for Benmar Productions.

Select films

References

  1. ↑ Gordon, Bernard (1999). Hollywood exile, or, How I learned to love the blacklist : a memoir. University of Texas Press. p. 207.
  2. ↑ McGilligan, Patrick (1991). Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s. University of California Press. p. 357.
  3. ↑ "Frankovich, yordan form indie". Variety. 26 November 1947. p. 4.
  4. ↑ "Anna Lucasta as Rapper's first". Brooklyn Eagle. 2 November 1948. p. 14.
  5. ↑ "Behind the cameras". The Shawnee American. 5 December 1952. p. 2.
  6. ↑ "New York soundtrack". Variety. 26 September 1956. p. 4.
  7. ↑ Balio, Tino (1987). United Artists : the company that changed the film industry. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 120.
  8. ↑ Wicking, Christopher; Pattinson, Barrie (July–October 1969). "Interviews with Anthony Mann". Screen. Vol. 10. p. 39.
  9. ↑ Jones, J.R. (2015). The lives of Robert Ryan. Wesleyan University Press. p. 157.
  10. ↑ "Switches to Columbia". Variety. 4 February 1959. p. 10.
  11. ↑ "Allied artists, Yordan set deal for ten pictures". Los Angeles Times. Mar 15, 1963. ProQuest 168298336.
  12. ↑ "Harmon maps film on school dropouts". The Los Angeles Times. 28 April 1964. p. 11 Part 4.
  13. ↑ 'Big Combo' Will Star Cornel Wilde; Vanessa Brown Debates Musical Schallert, Edwin. Los Angeles Times 23 June 1954: B7.
  14. ↑ "Bev Hills City National Bank In Initial Film Financing". The Hollywood Reporter. Vol. 166, no. 32. Hollywood. August 18, 1961. p. 1.
  15. ↑ "The crews behind". Kinematograph Weekly. 28 September 1961. p. 9.
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