Willis Kent

Willis Kent (June 8, 1878, Michigan – March 11, 1966, Los Angeles, California) was an independent American film producer.

Willis Kent Productions was active from 1928-58. Its films, about 40 in all, consisted mostly of low-budget westerns, many of which starred short-lived cowboy star and former football player Lafayette Russell (aka Reb Russell), and cheap, sensationalist exploitation epics. The company's first release, The Pace That Kills (1928), was about innocent young teens being lured into the netherworld of cocaine addiction. Kent remade it, using the same title and same director, adapted with sound in 1935. In some markets it was retitled as Cocaine Fiends, which is the title used on most VHS and DVD copies of the film.

For at least two releases in the mid-'30s Kent joined forces with Dorothy Davenport, who had forged her own career in early exploitation films following the death of her husband, the morphine-addicted star Wallace Reid.

Most of these films are now in the public domain.