Jules White (born Julius Weiss; hu, Weisz Gyula; 17 September 190030 April 1985) was a Hungarian-American film director and producer best known for his short-subject comedies starring
The Three Stooges
The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy team active from 1922 until 1970, best remembered for their 190 short subject films by Columbia Pictures. Their hallmark styles were physical farce and slapstick. Six Stooges appeared ...
Early years
White began working in motion pictures in the 1910s, as a child actor, for
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères (, styled as PATHÉ!) is the name of various French people, French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest ...
Studios. He appears in a small role as a Confederate soldier in the landmark silent feature ''
The Birth of a Nation
''The Birth of a Nation'', originally called ''The Clansman'', is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play ''The Cla ...
'' (1915). By the 1920s his brother
Jack White
John Anthony White (; born July 9, 1975), commonly known as Jack White, is an American musician, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the duo the White Stripes. White has enjoyed consistent critical and popular success and is widely c ...
had become a successful comedy producer at
Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures, also known as Educational Film Exchanges, Inc. or Educational Films Corporation of America, was an American film production and film distribution company founded in 1916 by Earle (E. W.) Hammons (1882–1962). Educational pr ...
, and Jules worked for him as a
film editor
Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology.
The film edit ...
. Jules became a
director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
in 1926, specializing in comedies such as
The Battling Kangaroo
The Battling Kangaroo is a two reel, slap stick comedy film directed by Jules White in 1926. Fox Film Corporation produced and distributed the film. Fox Film released it in the US on December 5, 1926.
Sterling Holloway made his motion picture de ...
(1926).
In 1930 White and his boyhood friend Zion Myers moved to the
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded o ...
studio. They conceived and co-directed M-G-M's gimmicky
Dogville Comedies From 1929 to 1931, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer produced a series of nine short comedy films called ''All Barkie Dogville Comedies'', sometimes known as the "barkies" (in a parody of "talkies")."Movieland Goes Roman", Performing and Captive Animals' Defen ...
, which featured trained dogs in satires of recent Hollywood films (like ''
The Dogway Melody
''The Dogway Melody'' is a 1930 comedy short film that recreates scenes from early musical films, particularly The Broadway Melody. The entire cast are trained dogs with human voiceovers. It was directed by Zion Myers and Jules White and it form ...
'' and ''So Quiet on the Canine Front''). White and Myers co-directed the
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression ...
feature ''
Sidewalks of New York'' (1931), and launched a series of "
Goofy Movies
Peter Schmidt (September 4, 1892 – January 12, 1979), known professionally as Pete Smith, was an American Film producer, producer and narrator of short film, short subject films.
A native of New York City, Smith began working as a publi ...
," one-reel parodies of silent-era melodramas.
Columbia Pictures
In 1933, Jules White was appointed head of
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...
' short-subject division, which became the most prolific comedy factory in Hollywood. In a time when theaters were playing more double-feature programs, fewer short comedies were being made; by the mid-1930s the three major comedy producers —
Hal Roach
Harry Eugene "Hal" Roach Sr.Randy Skretvedt, Skretvedt, Randy (2016), ''Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies'', Bonaventure Press. p.608. (January 14, 1892 – November 2, 1992) was an American film and television producer, director, a ...
,
Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures, also known as Educational Film Exchanges, Inc. or Educational Films Corporation of America, was an American film production and film distribution company founded in 1916 by Earle (E. W.) Hammons (1882–1962). Educational pr ...
and
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...
— scaled back their operations. In contrast, by 1938 Columbia's two-reel-comedy department was busier than ever, and White split it into two units. White produced for the first unit and
Hugh McCollum
Hugh McCollum (March 9, 1900March 16, 1968) was an American film producer best known for his credits on Three Stooges short subject comedies.
Career
McCollum was born in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. He attended the Epi ...
(former executive secretary for Columbia head
Harry Cohn
Harry Cohn (July 23, 1891 – February 27, 1958) was a co-founder, president, and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation.
Life and career
Cohn was born to a working-class Jewish family in New York City. His father, Joseph Cohn, wa ...
) for the second. The Columbia comedy stars alternated between the White and McCollum units.
With McCollum shouldering some of the administrative burden, White was free to pursue his first love: directing. He began directing the Columbia shorts in 1938 and would become the department's most prolific director. He directed his sound films as though they were silent comedies: he paced the visual action very fast, and he coached his actors to gesture broadly and react painfully, even demonstrating the movements and grimaces he wanted. This emphasis on cartoonish slapstick worked well in the right context, but could become blunt and shocking when stretched too far. White was generally under pressure to finish his productions within a few days, so very often White the producer did not tone down White the director, and the outlandishly violent gags stayed in. Still, moviegoers loved these slam-bang short comedies, and Columbia produced more than 500 of them over a quarter-century.
Directorial style
Physical comedy was the main ingredient in White's short features. Some of his personal favorite gags were used repeatedly over the years: a comedian being arrested protests, "I ''demand'' a cheap lawyer!" (later "I'm gonna get myself a cheap lawyer!"). Or the star comedian accidentally collides with the villain and apologizes, "Sorry, mister, there was a man chasing me... ''you're the man!''" White's most familiar gag is probably the one where an actor is stuck in the posterior by a sharp object, and then yells, "Help, help! I'm losing my mind!"
White's style is most evident in his string of two-reelers starring comics
Wally Vernon
Walter J. Vernon (May 27, 1905 – March 7, 1970) was an American comic and character actor and dancer.
Early life
Vernon was born in New York City in 1905. He was in show business from the age of three, appearing in vaudeville and stock thea ...
and
Eddie Quillan
Edward Quillan (March 31, 1907 – July 19, 1990) was an American film actor and singer whose career began as a child on the vaudeville stages and silent film and continued through the age of television in the 1980s.
Vaudeville and silent fi ...
. Vernon and Quillan were old pros whose dancing skills made them especially agile comedians. White capitalized on this by staging the kind of rough-and-tumble slapstick not seen since silent-movie days, with the stars and supporting players doing pratfalls, crossing their eyes, getting hit with messy projectiles, having barehanded fistfights and being knocked "cuckoo" in film after film. These comedies were pet projects for White: he kept making Vernon and Quillan shorts long after most of his other series had ended.
Later films
By the 1950s, White was working so quickly and economically that he could film a new short comedy in a single day. His standard procedure was to borrow footage from older films and shoot a few new scenes, often using the same actors, sets, and costumes. A "new" 15-minute comedy could contain clips from as many as three vintage comedies. Though most of White's comedies of the 1950s are almost identical to his comedies of the 1940s, he still made a few films from scratch, including three
3-D comedies, ''
Spooks!
''Spooks!'' is a 1953 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard). It is the 148th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the co ...
'' and ''
Pardon My Backfire
''Pardon My Backfire'' is a 1953 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard). It is the 149th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring ...
'' (1953), both starring
The Three Stooges
The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy team active from 1922 until 1970, best remembered for their 190 short subject films by Columbia Pictures. Their hallmark styles were physical farce and slapstick. Six Stooges appeared ...
, and ''Down the Hatch'', starring dialect comic Harry Mimmo.<
In 1956, after other studios had abandoned short-subject production, Jules White had the field to himself and experimented with new ideas. Many of his Stooge comedies now consisted of all-new material, featuring science-fiction or musical themes, and often including topical references to
rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from Africa ...
and then-current feature films. White even launched a new series, "Girlie Whirls," as musical-comedy vehicles for plump comedian
Muriel Landers
Muriel Landers (October 27, 1921 – February 19, 1977) was an American actress, singer and dancer. She made more than thirty film and television appearances between 1950 and 1971.
Career
Born in Chicago, Landers began her career as a con ...
; only one film was made before White reassigned her to one of the Stooge comedies.
Retirement and death
Jules White decided to retire at the end of 1957, and closed Columbia's comedy-shorts department. White dabbled in television at Columbia's
Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American brand name used by Sony Pictures' Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group, a subsidiary of Japanese multinational conglomerate, Sony Group Corporation. It has served several different purposes for its parent ...
subsidiary in the early 1960s, creating the 1962
situation comedy
A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...
''
Oh! Those Bells
''Oh! Those Bells'' is a 1962 United States Comedy, comedic television series starring The Wiere Brothers about the misadventures of three brothers who work in a Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood theatrical supply shop. It aired from March 8 to M ...
'' with the
Wiere Brothers
Harry Wiere (23 June 1906 in Berlin, German Empire – 15 January 1992), Herbert Wiere (27 February 1908 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary – 5 August 1999) and Sylvester Wiere (17 September 1909 in Prague, Austria-Hungary – 7 July 1970), ...
, and co-producing its pilot episode with his brother
Sam White, but soon retired, saying, "Who needs such a rat race?"
Almost 40% of White's output stars
The Three Stooges
The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy team active from 1922 until 1970, best remembered for their 190 short subject films by Columbia Pictures. Their hallmark styles were physical farce and slapstick. Six Stooges appeared ...
; the other films feature such screen favorites as
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker. He is best known for his silent film work, in which his trademark was physical comedy accompanied by a stoic, deadpan expression ...
,
Andy Clyde,
Harry Langdon
Harry Philmore Langdon (June 15, 1884 – December 22, 1944) was an American comedian who appeared in vaudeville, silent films (where he had his greatest fame), and talkies.Obituary ''Variety'', December 27, 1944, page 39.
Life and career
Bor ...
,
Hugh Herbert
Hugh Herbert (August 10, 1885 – March 12, 1952) was an American motion picture comedian. He began his career in vaudeville and wrote more than 150 plays and sketches.
Career
Born in Binghamton, New York, Herbert attended Cornell Univers ...
,
Vera Vague
Barbara Jo Allen (born Marian Barbara Henshall; September 2, 1906 – September 14, 1974) was an American actress. She was also known as Vera Vague, the spinster character she created and portrayed on radio and in films during the 1940s and 19 ...
,
Gus Schilling
August "Gus" Schilling (June 20, 1908 – June 16, 1957) was an American film actor who started in burlesque comedy and usually played nervous comic roles, often unbilled. A friend of Orson Welles, he appeared in five of the director's films †...
and
Richard Lane, and
El Brendel
Elmer Goodfellow "El" Brendel (March 25, 1890 – April 9, 1964) was an American vaudeville comedian turned movie star, best remembered for his dialect routine as a Swedish immigrant. His biggest role was as "Single-0" in the sci-fi musical ' ...
. To date, only the Stooges, Charley Chase, and Keaton series have been released to DVD in their entirety; other comedies (Andy Clyde, The Glove Slingers) have been included as bonus features on DVDs.
White died of
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens. It is the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in short-term me ...
on April 30, 1985. His interment was at
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a full-service cemetery, funeral home, crematory, and cultural events center which regularly hosts community events such as live music and summer movie screenings. It is one of the oldest cemeteries in Los Angeles ...
.
Filmography
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
*
Jules White – The Three Stooges*
{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Jules
1900 births
1985 deaths
20th-century American comedians
20th-century American Jews
20th-century American male actors
American film directors
American male child actors
American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent
Deaths from Alzheimer's disease
Deaths from dementia in California
Hungarian Jews
Hungarian emigrants to the United States
Jewish American male actors
Male actors from Budapest