They were that rarity in Hollywood: independent filmmakers who thrived.
They were the Neufeld brothers, Sig and Sam, filmdom’s most prolific producer-director team of the Twentieth Century. From the tenements of the Lower East Side to Hollywood’s independent film colony, the brothers flourished from the earliest days of the industry in New York until the B-film’s ubiquity came to a flickering end in the late 1950s.
Producer Sigmund Neufeld and his brother, director Sam Newfield—the modified surname was adopted early on—were permanent denizens of Hollywood’s cinematic underbelly, unflattering known as Poverty Row. While they dabbled in most genres—the comedy shorts of the silent era to the dramas, mysteries, musicals, comedies, and horror films of sound—it was the Western genre that they both thrived in, and are most remembered for. Featuring the likes of such sagebrush heroes as Tim McCoy, Bob Steele, and Buster Crabbe, the brothers were collectively responsible for more than 300 films over their lengthy careers, both as a team and individually. And that’s a modest count: Sig had his hands in countless films from 1911 to 1929 for which he received no credit, and Sam directed many using pseudonyms—we know of two for certain—shunning credit altogether for others, the titles of which remain unknown. And despite the frugal underpinnings of most of their films and the casts of green newcomers and fading has-beens alike, several notables received boosts to their fledgling careers in Sig’s films, Shirley Temple, Alan Ladd, and Julie London among them.
Up until 1948 when the U.S. Supreme Court forced the divestiture of the major film studios’ considerable theater holdings, there co-existed thousands of smaller, independently owned neighborhood and rural theaters. Essentially cut off from the major studios’ more prestigious output, these smaller theaters survived on a steady diet of films from independent producers such as Producers Releasing Corp, Monogram, and dozens of other, in many instances fly-by-night operations. Sig and Sam, benefiting from years of experience in production harkening back to cinema’s earliest days, produced a seemingly endless stream of surprisingly entertaining and reliably affordable fare, the lifeblood of those small, unaffiliated theaters. A nearly half-century presence in the industry, the brothers’ longevity and productivity bears mute testimony to their place in the world of low budget cinema, and their importance to theater owners nationwide.
POVERTY ROW ROYALTY provides a frank and detailed look at the lives and careers of two of Hollywood’s minor (but nonetheless important) mainstays, filmmakers who have been unfairly dismissed over the intervening years, now finally receiving the attention and reassessment they most rightly deserve.
About the author:
THOMAS REEDER is the acclaimed author of MR. SUICIDE: HENRY “PATHÉ” LEHRMAN AND THE BIRTH OF SILENT COMEDY; TIME IS MONEY! THE CENTURY, RAINBOW, AND STERN BROTHERS COMEDIES OF JULIUS AND ABE STERN; AND STOP YELLIN’: BEN PIVAR AND THE HORROR, MYSTERY, AND ACTION-ADVENTURE FILMS OF HIS UNIVERSAL B-UNIT.Reeder, a lifelong lover of low budget cinema and silent comedy, has also contributed numerous film-related articles to such publications as Films of the Golden Age, Filmfax, Silent Film Quarterly, and Comique.
Foreword by author and B-movie expert ED HULSE!
Profusely illustrated with hundreds of rare photographs, and thoroughly researched and written by a leading film historian. 7"x10", 550 pages, available in softcover or hardcover (cover design by Marlene Weisman).
