William Beaudine

I've seen several movies directed by William Beaudine. I thought they were pretty good. The worst of them were fairly well-made.

Beaudine was a silent film director. He directed Sparrows with Mary Pickford and a young Milton Berle. But his career went bad. He traveled to England, it did him no good. He finally began directing B movies and was extremely prolific.

He went on to direct a low budget exploitation film about unwed pregnancy which ended with a shot of the actual birth of a baby. He directed Spin & Marty on The Mickey Mouse Club and episodes of Lassie and The Green Hornet.

But the Michael Medved and his less successful brother, Harry, trashed Beaudine in one of their books. Anyone who reads the book then watched any of Beaudine's movies would be surprised at how dishonest the Medved boys were. They falsely claimed that he was known as "One Shot" Beaudine. In fact, they were the only ones who ever called him that.

In any case, in B movie production, as in television, you didn't shoot retakes unless you had to. If you could shoot a scene in a single take, you would. There was no time or money for retakes.

I've seen quite a few of Beaudine's movies. I didn't see any of the technical flaws the Medveds claimed.

Their attack in him seemed to be based entirely on the fact that he directed B movies. He brought them in on time and on budget and did quite well considering the limitations. What would a better director have done?