About Sam Katzman
Sam Katzman was an American film producer and director. Katzman's specialty was producing low-budget genre films, including serials, which had disproportionately high returns for the studios and his financial backers. In the 1930s, he produced numerous Western films for Victory Pictures and Puritan Pictures, and in the 1940s, he produced 22 East Side Kids features for Monogram Pictures. As well as producing the Jungle Jim series, in the 1950s, Katzman and his studio Clover Productions made science fiction, horror, and teen films for Columbia Pictures, including Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), Rock Around the Clock, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, The Werewolf, and The Giant Claw (1957). Katzman also produced two musicals starring Elvis Presley for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM): Kissin' Cousins (1964) and Harum Scarum (1965). In 1935 Katzman founded Puritan Pictures, a film distribution group, their first film being Suicide Squad (1935). Fay walked out on the series after the first film, Spotlight Scandals (1943), and Katzman replaced him with Gilbert's closest friend, Shemp Howard. In June 1946 Katzman announced he would make his first feature for Columbia, a remake of The Last of the Mohicans starring Jon Hall.
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