Samuel Sax

Samuel Sax (September 5, 1880 –January 2, 1962) was an American film producer. He produced 80 films between 1925 and 1946, including the last films of Roscoe Arbuckle. From 1938 to 1941, Sax headed Warner Brothers's British subsidiary at Teddington Studios in London.

During the late silent film era, Sax owned his own Hollywood poverty row outfit, Gotham Studios. In late 1931 Sax, considered “a no-nonsense studio executive of the old school”, began work with Warner Brothers as general production manager for their Brooklyn Vitaphone facility.

Sax embarked upon his duties during the severest phase of the Great Depression, corresponding to a general collapse in studio box-office receipts. As such, Sax’s task was to reorganize production of Warners one- and two-reel shorts, “films that could be sold without difficulty anywhere in the country”, so as to maximize short-term profits. Indeed, many of the major studios curtailed feature production in favor of shorts during the financial crisis, limited mostly to comedies and light musicals. Most of these were produced in the New York area due to its local talent pool, including Broadway cast members enlisted to appear in screen talkies. The organizational methods Sax included highly structured and disciplined work schedules enforced by the trade unions, which banned overtime and providing film product delivered at or under budget.

Sam Sax emerged as an outstanding practitioner of the studio “factory” system for short film production in Brooklyn, rivaling Hollywood production methods. In 1935, Sax defended his “film factory” approach to filmmaking in a The New York Sun interview:

By 1938, Sax was presiding over the filming of about 140 reels of shorts per year for Warners, each with an average screen duration of 5 or 6 minutes. As to the quality of these shorts, film historian Richard Koszarski observes “Sax proved to be the most consistently successful producer of high-quality short films in the East [i.e. East Coast].”[10]

The Vitaphone operations were greatly enhanced by the abundant entertainment troupes and entertainers who could moonlight briefly on film short productions, without compromising their stage or vaudeville commitments. Sax reported that as many as five thousand of these entertainers appeared in his shorts annually, in addition to his contracted talent of over 600.[11] In an effort to profitably utilize all available footage, Sax devised the assembly of “vaudeville compilations”, unrelated snippets of “one forgotten act after another” used to create entertaining shorts that had little thematic unity.[12] Comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle attempted to resume his screen career with six two-reelers at Vitagraph’s Big V Comedies logo under Sax’s auspices and were well-received. Arbuckle died shortly after completing these comedies and before his Tomalio (1933), directed by Ray McCarey was released.[13]

Warner brothers, despite a major investment in a 26,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art studio in Brooklyn, was already relocating short film operations to their Burbank, California studio. By April 15, 1939, the move was complete. Sax was transferred to England to manage Warners’ Teddington Studios in London. In 1940 Sax was back in Hollywood promoting Phonovision.[14][15]

Sax would produce his final film with Producers Releasing Corporation in 1945, Why Girls Leave Home.[16]