The Wild Maverick Life of Gordon McLendon Producer Gordon Mclendon was an entrepreneur who dabbled in various businesses, all quite successfully. Born in Paris Texas June 8th 1921, the family moved to Oklahoma when he was very young. Educated at Yale University, he studied Far Eastern languages while running the campus radio station and being the business manager of The Yale Literary Magazine. Accepting a Navy commission , McLendon was an interpreter as well as interrogator during WWII, while still finding time to work on armed forces radio. After the war he worked in radio in Texas before starting his own station (KLIF) in Dallas, which was the first station to broadcast live baseball games. In 1947, he and his father (Barton) formed the Liberty Broadcast System, which by 1952 became the second largest radio network in the U.S. Supposedly his stations were the first all-news stations as well as providing traffic reports. However, he was also an extremist right wing political figure, whose political commentaries attacked federal aid to education, racial desegregation, and equal voting rights. Supposedly, when Jack Ruby was arrested, he shouted for his friend Gordon McLendon. On top of all this, McLendon and family owned the Tri-State drive-ins that became the largest drive in chain in the state (totaling at one point 70 theatres).A major portion of his money came from the sale of some of his radio stations to purchase the land that the drive ins were built on. McLendon and family also created the concept of a multi-screen theatre. Gordon also got interested in movie promotions on his radio stations in 1954, and his campaigns were so successful, that Hollywood reached out to him to create campaigns for them. The promotions were distributed to radio stations nationwide ,being so successful that McLendon Corporation was the largest producer nationally of such campaigns .His idea was to produce various campaigns for each film ,so listeners wouldn’t get bored .United Artists hired him as an exclusive producer of their campaigns from 1963 to 1966. All of this led McLendon to dip his toes into motion picture production. He knew how to promote films, and owned both radio stations to promote them as well as drive-ins that needed product. Why pay for someone else’s movies and share the profits, when he could, he felt do it all? Gordon and his father thus formed McLendon Radio Pictures Corporation in 1959. He spent ¾ f a million dollars buying land and building his own studios in near Denton Texas. There was even a lodge to house his cast and crew during filming, calling it Cielo Studios. McLendon bragged “no studio in the country produced more pictures outside Hollywood “.He was talking about three films that he produced at Cielo. His first film was THE KILLER SHREWS (1959) that he produced for $125,000. The film starred actor James Best and Ingrid Goude .Miss Goude was a former Miss Sweden 1957 as well as a runner-up for Miss Universe. Also in the cast was Ken Curtis, who had appeared in several John Ford films, also served as a producer, and later achieved greater fame on TV’s “Gunsmoke “starring as Festus. Gordon also played a scientist in the film. Variety: February 4, 1959: DALLAS-MADE FEATURE CANNED FOR $ 300,000 Hollywood Pictures Corp., headed by the broadcaster-exhibition family, B. R. and Gordon McLendon, put its first feature length film, The Killer Shrews, in the can Jan. 30 after two weeks shooting at Lake Dallas, with the windup filmed at United National The second film was THE GIANT GILA MONSTER (1959) starring unknown Don Sullivan and Lisa Simone (Miss France 1957).Ken Curtis once again produced. Director of all the Cielo Studio films was Ray Kellogg (formerly a 20th Century Fox matte artist /effects expert, who had worked on THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL; 1951). Both films were shot back to back between mid- January until mid-March, 1959. Variety: June 10, 1959: The new McLendon picture company has completed two pictures and is in the process of winding up a third, all shot in Dallas. The completed ones are The Killer Shrews, made for $ 123,000, and The Giant Gila Monster, brought in at $ 138,000 As these films were being prepped, he shot a family film, MY DOG BUDDY for a mere $73,000, once again directed by Kellogg and costarring Ken Curtis. Both his horror films premiered as a co-bill on June 25, 1959, just three months after wrapping, at the Majestic Theater in Dallas and The Palace Theatre in Fort Worth. The horror films got lukewarm to outright pans in reviews. His reply to one critic: “I resent your allegation that THE KILLER SHREWS was one of the worst movies of all time. I made two other movies that were worse than that”’. Still, like many horror films at the time, the movies did good box office. July 2, 1959 Motion Picture Daily: “The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster grossed a big $20,010 at the Majestic. Variety: September 9, 1959 Last week, Killer Shrews (AD and Giant Gila Monster (AD first runs. Sock $ 15,000 for best of season in these outdoor cinemas. Variety Jan 20, 1960: NY holdovers predominate with plenty of mild biz around. ….Killer Shrews at the Paramount and Cuban Rebel Girls at Trans-Lux. Both SHREWS and GILA MONSTER were later picked up for national distribution by American International Pictures (AIP) while MY PAL BUDDY was picked up Columbia. More films were announced (TOM SAWYER’S TREASURE) also in the family genre. However, a decline in the family movie market as well as outside business interests plus political aspirations pulled McLendon out of motion picture production. In the 1970s, he was, along with Sy Weintraub, one of the largest stockholders in Columbia Pictures until the company was bought by Coca-Cola. He did return to production in the 1982 , (RETURN TO) VICTORY, a $15 million movie directed by John Huston and starring Michael Caine Sylvester Stallone, and soccer legend Pele. The film was a flop, yet Gordon still wanted to produce films, such as Ayn Rand’s ATLAS SHRUGGED and other projects that he never made. He still found time to dabble in politics. He ran against incumbent US Senator Ralph Yarborough in 1964 with support from luminaries such as John Wayne. A conservative Democrat, McLendon lost. He ran again in 1968 but left the Democratic Party due to disagreements about President Johnson’ Viet Nam war policies. He also wrote many books about politics as well as broadcasting, before he passed away from cancer near Lake Dallas, Texas, on September 14, 1986.Gordon McClendon was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1994 ,with his net worth estimated by Forbes Magazine to be around $200 million . (Sources – GORDON MCLENDON: THE MAVERICK OF RADIO by Ronald Garey ;Greenwood Press,1992; VARIETY; MOTION PICTURE DAILY; National Radio Hall of Fame ) -Kevin G Shinnick
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 16:40:29 +0000