Rudolph C. Flothow (November 23, 1895 - December 21, 1971) was a movie and television producer active from 1915 through the mid-1950s, producing more than 45 films and over 80 television episodes. Most of his productions were crime films for

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 ...

, including the 1943 Batman serial, and Crime Doctor, Whistler, Boston Blackie, and

Ellery Queen Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...

films. He directed the sound sequences in the early sound feature Lucky Boy, starring George Jessel.

Life and career

Flothow was born November 23, 1895, in

Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

, into a mercantile family involved in the China shipping trade, and was apparently a distant relation of the Bavarian composer

Friedrich von Flotow Friedrich Adolf Ferdinand, Freiherr von Flotow /flo:to/ (27 April 1812 – 24 January 1883) was a German composer. He is chiefly remembered for his opera ''Martha'', which was popular in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. Life ...

. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1914. He married a former model, Martha Tekla Sikorski, the daughter of Polish immigrants, and had one son, Rudy Flothow. His half-brother Wolfgang Hoeffer, a U.S. counterintelligence agent, was found shot to death in the immediate aftermath of Otto John's defection to East Germany. His earliest involvement in the film industry was in distribution, joining

Paramount Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to: Entertainment and music companies * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. The following busin ...

in 1915. Flothow consistently worked with small budgets, with film shoots typically lasting just 21 days. Flothow had a reputation for delivering a lot of movie for the money, an impression reinforced by

Ralph Bellamy Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned 65 years on stage, film, and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and ...

's recollection of Flothow as being "always on the set" during the filming of the

films. In the wake of the film industry's slowdown in the late 1940s, Flothow transitioned into the nascent television market, with the idea of doing for television syndication "...just what he had done before, hard-hitting, low-cost shows, a lot of male-driven action". The result was ''

Ramar of the Jungle ''Ramar of the Jungle'' is an American television series that starred Jon Hall as Dr. Tom ReynoldsMcNeil, Alex (1996). ''Total Television''. Penguin Books USA, Inc. . P. 683. (the titular "ramar" being an African title for a white medicine man). ...

'', a syndicated television program that reran for decades. The program's African setting had its source in Flothow's longstanding fascination with Africa, crystallizing in a dressing-room conversation with Jon Hall. Flothow "used a regular stable of heavies. He was actually very fond of these guys with mean faces who were actually very sweet." He died on December 21, 1971 in

Culver City Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. Founded in 1917 as a "whites only" sundown town, it is now an ethnically diverse city with what was called the "third-most ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

References

American film producers American television producers 1895 births 1971 deaths German emigrants to the United States {{US-film-producer-stub