Jungle Sam

"If you were to X-ray every Oscar," says Movie Producer Sam Katzman, waving a cigar the size of a shinny stick, "you'd find every one of them has an ulcer inside." "Jungle Sam" Katzman probably will never have either an Oscar or an ulcer. He specializes in such surefire blends of sex and adventure as Serpent of the Nile and Battle of Rogue River, plus a stream of quickies for the cap-pistol set (Chief of the Senecas, Jet Commandos), and a seemingly endless chain--ten so far--of Jungle Jim pictures. Jungle Sam never spends more than half a million dollars on a film, and in 21 years of producing he has not made a single picture that lost money. "I got a kind of feeling, a knack," he claims. "Knock on wood--I've never been wrong yet."

Those Old Arabs. Sam Katzman, a bouncy, bulb-shaped 51, has his own formula for keeping his earning record perfect. His five sound stages (at Columbia's dingy old subsidiary studio) are usually buzzing with assorted pygmies, giants, animals (wild and tame), half-dressed women (wild & wild-eyed), cowboys and papier-mache interplanetary vehicles. With these props Sam can roll into a picture at the drop of a dollar. Says he: "We don't get stories. We get titles and then write stories around them or to fit them. For instance, we had this title Flame of Calcutta. Naturally, we had that area of India around Bombay in mind, and naturally we worked in those old Arab tribes."

An average Katzman schedule calls for ten pictures a year, but Jungle Sam keeps his program "flexible," i.e., a batch of titles adaptable to any situation, usually some front-page news. A few days after the Korean war broke out, a Columbia executive sighed for a Korean film. "How would you like A Yank in Korea?" asked Sam. "Great!" replied the executive. Six weeks and two days later, A Yank in Korea (a remake of A Yank in the R.A.F. and predecessor of A Yank in Indo-China) was ready for distribution.

"Love That Chimp." Producer Katzman's most successful serial is his Superman, which grossed more than $1,000,000, and was so popular in South America that the whole 31-reel cliff-hanger--5 hours 10 minutes long--was run off as a single feature. Sam pre-tests the plots and chapter endings on his 15-year-old son Jerome and playmates. "If they guess how the guy gets out of the predicament each week, it goes out immediately and we rewrite until they can't guess."

The Jungle Jim pictures, starring ex-Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller, and a chimpanzee named Tamba, are Sam's biggest grossers. Each picture costs about $300,000, brings in close to $1,000,000. Says Sam fondly: "I love that chimp. He's out there now learning new tricks for his next picture . . . I love animals anyway, because the audience loves them."

Last week Producer Katzman cut his way out of his leafy jungle and put his name to a new contract with Columbia. The schedule: three serials, 17 features (Prisoners of the Casbah, Charge of the Lancers, Jesse James Meets Bill Dalton), and probably at least one more like the Biblical epic Slaves of Babylon, soon to be released. Says Jungle Sam: "We got underwater stuff and we got overwater stuff and we got those three characters in the fiery furnace and on top of that we got Linda Christian doing her first screen dance." He frankly admits that many of his pictures are obvious remakes of past smashes. But he beams: "They were good in the old days. They're good now. We got a new generation, but they got the same old glands."

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