Irwin Allen

Irwin Allen was born in New York City, the son of poor Jewish immigrants from Russia.[2] He majored in journalism and advertising at Columbia University after attending City College of New York for a year. He left college because of financial difficulties caused by the Great Depression.

Allen moved to Hollywood in 1938, where he edited Key Magazine followed by an 11-year stint producing his own program at radio station KLAC. The success of the radio show led to him being offered his own gossip column, Hollywood Merry-Go-Round, which was syndicated to 73 newspapers.[3]

He produced his first TV program, a celebrity panel show also called Hollywood Merry-Go-Round with announcer, and later Tonight Show host, Steve Allen (no relation), before moving into film production.[4]

Allen became involved in film production at a time when power was beginning to shift from studios to talent agencies. He put together packages consisting of directors, actors and script, and sold them to film studios.

Allen's first film as producer was Where Danger Lives (1950) at RKO with Robert Mitchum, directed by John Farrow and written by Charles Bennett. Allen produced it with Irving Cummings Jr.

The two men made two more films for RKO: Double Dynamite (1951) with Jane Russell, Groucho Marx and Frank Sinatra, and A Girl in Every Port (1952), again with Marx and William Bendix.

Allen made his directorial debut with the documentary, The Sea Around Us (1953), at RKO.[4] This was based on Rachel Carson's best-selling book of the same name. It was made with largely stock footage and won the 1952 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[5]^:87 Carson was so disappointed with Allen's final version of the script that she never again sold film rights to her work.[6] The film includes gory images of whales being killed that are more shocking to modern audiences than they were at the time. It was a success, making a profit of over $2 million.[7]

Allen returned to producing with the 3-D film Dangerous Mission (1954), his final film for RKO. It starred Victor Mature, Bendix, Piper Laurie and Vincent Price.

Allen directed a semi-documentary about the evolution of life, The Animal World (1956). Again he made heavy use of stock footage, but he also included a nine-minute stop-motion dinosaur sequence by Ray Harryhausen. Before release, he toned down the gore from both the live action and the animation.

The film was released by Warner Bros. So was Allen's next film, The Story of Mankind (1957), a very loose adaptation of the Hendrik Willem van Loon book of the same name. It featured many well-known actors including the Marx Brothers, Ronald Colman, Hedy Lamarr, Vincent Price, and a young Dennis Hopper. The actors were each paid $2,500 for a single day's work with Allen relying on stock footage for the rest of the film.[8]

Allen co-wrote (with Bennett) and produced The Big Circus (1959) for Allied Artists Pictures with Mature, Red Buttons, Peter Lorre and Price. Allen was interested in making "an exciting colourful show - something the public can't see on television."[9]

Allen went to 20th Century Fox where he co-wrote (with Bennett) produced and directed three films: The Lost World (1960), from the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962).

Willis O'Brien, who had also worked on the pioneering special effects of the original Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933) films, was disappointed when Allen opted to save time by using live alligators and lizards instead of stop-motion animation for the film's dinosaurs. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a scientifically dubious, Jules Verne-style adventure to save the world from a burning Van Allen belt. It was the basis for his later television series of the same name. The family film, Five Weeks in a Balloon was a loose adaptation of the Verne novel.[4] Lost World was a moderate hit and Voyage was very successful. Five Weeks was a box office disappointment.

With 20th Century Fox scaling back their film productions due to the massive expenditure on films like Cleopatra (1963), in the mid 1960s Allen concentrated on television, producing several overlapping science fiction series for 20th Century Fox Television. They featured special effects by L. B. Abbott who won three Emmys for his work.[10]^:204 Allen used many of the same craftsmen on his TV shows as he did on his films, including composer John Williams as well as costume designer and general assistant Paul Zastupnevich.[10]^:6

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964–68, ABC TV) established both Allen's and 20th Century Fox's reputation as television producers. The financial viability of the series was enormously helped by the re-use of many of the sets from the film; the cost of the Seaview submarine sets alone exceeded the budget of a typical pilot show of the era.[10]^:11 The series also benefited from Allen's by now notorious use of stock film footage, particularly from Hell and High Water (1954), The Enemy Below (1957) and Allen's The Lost World.[10]^:16

Allen had originally intended Lost in Space (1965–68, CBS TV) to be a family show, a science fiction version of The Swiss Family Robinson.[10]^:116 It quickly developed into a children's show with episodes concentrating on the young Will Robinson, the robot, and, especially, the comic villain, Dr. Smith.[4]^:36–7 The show popularized several science fiction elements that have since become widespread, such as the comic robot (e.g. Silent Running, Star Wars) or android (Logan's Run, Star Trek: The Next Generation), the heroic child (Meeno Peluce in Voyagers!, Wesley Crusher), and the wacky lovable alien (Albert in Alien Nation, Vir in Babylon 5).[10]^:124

The Time Tunnel (1966–67, ABC TV), with each episode set in a different historical time period, was an ideal vehicle for Allen's talent for smoothly mixing live action with stock footage from films set in the same period. A change in network management led to the show being cancelled after just one season.[10]^:204

Land of the Giants (1968–70, ABC TV) was the most expensive show of its day at roughly $250,000 per episode.[11] As another castaway themed show, Allen incorporated some of the successful elements from Lost in Space, although this time he did not allow the treacherous character to dominate the series.[10]^:273

Allen also produced several television films, such as City Beneath the Sea, which recycled many props and models from Voyage, Lost in Space, and Man From The 25th Century. Both were intended as pilots for new TV series projects, but his small-screen success from the 1960s largely eluded him in the 1970s.

Lost in Space's Bill Mumy said of Allen that, while he was very good at writing television pilots that sold, his unwillingness to spend money hurt his shows' quality once on the air. A monster costume that appeared on one of his shows, for example, would appear on another a few weeks later with new paint.[12] Writer Jon Abbott described Allen as paradoxical. "Here was a man who, when told the cost of a spaceship for a Lost in Space alien, snapped, 'Let him walk!' ... and then let the show be canceled rather than take a cut in the budget".[10]

In 1969 Allen signed a three-picture deal with Avco Embassy to make The Poseidon Adventure, Mo Man's World and Almost Midnight.[13] However the deal did not lead to any films.

In the 1970s, Allen produced the most successful films of his career: The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974), directing the action scenes for both. Their showmanship was compared to that of P. T. Barnum and Cecil B. DeMille, and they prompted scholarly analysis of the subsequent popularity of the disaster genre.[14]

The Poseidon Adventure was based on the Paul Gallico novel of the same name and directed by Ronald Neame. Unable to find a studio to fully back the venture, Allen raised half the $5 million budget, with 20th Century-Fox putting up the rest; the film eventually grossed over $100 million. L. B. Abbott and A. D. Flowers won a Special Achievement Academy Award for the film's optical and physical effects.[4]^:38[15]

Allen hoped to follow up on the success of The Poseidon Adventure with a film based on the novel The Tower, but the film rights had already been taken by Warner Bros. He looked for an alternative and found a similar story in The Glass Inferno. Rather than produce competing movies, 20th Century-Fox and Warner Bros. agreed to coproduce The Towering Inferno with a script based on both novels and a $14 million budget. It was the first time two major studios made a film together, splitting the costs. Despite its nearly three-hour running length, the film, directed by John Guillermin, was a hit and won three Academy Awards.[4]^:39

The success of the films led to Allen receiving an offer to make three television films. "I missed television", said Allen. "There's a hysteria and an excitement in television that exists nowhere else in business."[16]

Each was made for Fox television at a budget of $1 million with a view to possibly going to series. They screened on different networks: Adventures of the Queen (1975), The Swiss Family Robinson (1975) and Time Travelers (1976). Only Swiss Family was picked up for a series, running for 20 episodes.[16]

Allen left 20th Century Fox when a change in management cancelled the remaining three planned disaster films. He was offered a deal at Warner Bros. by Jon Calley, who built an office building for Allen. Allen continued to work there for the remainder of his career.[17]

The rise of new filmmakers like George Lucas reportedly caught him off guard. According to one book, the success of Star Wars (1977) bewildered him; he could not understand how a film with apparently no stars or love story could enrapture audiences so fervently.[18]

Allen produced three made-for-TV disaster movies: Flood! (1976), Fire! (1977), and Hanging by a Thread (1979). He also made Viva Knievel! (1977), The Amazing Captain Nemo (1978), and The Memory of Eva Ryker (1980).

For theatrical release, he produced and directed The Swarm (1978) and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979), and produced When Time Ran Out (1980). These three films were box office disappointments.

"No, I'm not going to run out of disasters", he said in a 1977 interview. "Pick up the daily newspaper, which is my best source for crisis stories, and you'll find 10 or 15 every day ... People chase fire engines, flock to car crashes. People thrive on tragedy. It's unfortunate, but in my case, it's fortunate. The bigger the tragedy, the bigger the audience."[19]

Allen later went to Columbia to make a short lived TV series, Code Red (1981–82). His last films for Warners were The Night the Bridge Fell Down (1982), and Cave-In! (1979, though not released until 1983). Shortly before Cave-In! made its TV debut, Allen was awarded a Worst Career Achievement Golden Raspberry Award.

While at Columbia, Allen made a $14 million TV version of Alice in Wonderland (1985).[20] His last credit was the TV movie Outrage! (1986).

Allen planned to make a star-studded musical of Pinocchio, but his declining health forced his retirement in 1986. He died in Los Angeles from a heart attack on November 2, 1991.[21][22] He is buried in the Garden of Heritage 5, upper level wall crypt 39J in Mt Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles.[23]