Edward L. Cahn (February 12, 1899 – August 25, 1963) was an American film director.

Early life and education

Cahn was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York. He went to work at

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...

in 1917 while still a student at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

Career

He is best known for directing '' Our Gang'' comedies from 1939 to 1943, and a long line of other short subjects and B-movies afterward. He is also known for directing the 1958 film '' It! The Terror from Beyond Space'', the film that inspired the 1979 film '' Alien''. He made a number of films for

American International Pictures American International Pictures (AIP) is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing fi ...

.Mark McGee, ''Faster and Furiouser: The Revised and Fattened Fable of American International Pictures'', McFarland, 1996 p52

Personal life

His brother was

film editor Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology. The film ed ...

Philip Cahn Philip Cahn (1894–1984) was an American film editor who edited more than eighty films and television series. He also directed the 1935 film '' I've Been Around''. Philip Cahn, I. James Wilkinson and Ben Lewis founded ''The Society of Motion Pic ...

, who was the father of film editor

Dann Cahn Daniel Richard "Dann" Cahn (April 9, 1923 – November 21, 2012) was an American film editor who received the Career Achievement Award from the American Cinema Editors (ACE). Cahn was best known as the head editor of the TV series, ''I Lo ...

, who, in turn, was the father of film editor Daniel T. Cahn.

Selected filmography as director

*''

The Homicide Squad ''The Homicide Squad'' is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film directed by George Melford and Edward L. Cahn and written by John Thomas Neville, Charles Logue and Tom Reed. It is based on a 1928 Henry La Cossitt short story that originally ran in ...

'' (1931) *''

Radio Patrol ''Radio Patrol'' is a police comic strip carried in newspapers from August 7, 1933 to December 16, 1950 in the dailies, with a Sunday strip that ran from November 25, 1934 to October 20, 1946. It was created by artist Charles Schmidt and writer E ...

'' (1932) *''

Law and Order In modern politics, law and order is the approach focusing on harsher enforcement and penalties as ways to reduce crime. Penalties for perpetrators of disorder may include longer terms of imprisonment, mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws a ...

'' (1932) *'' Afraid to Talk'' (1932) *''

Laughter in Hell ''Laughter in Hell'' is a 1933 American Pre-Code drama film directed by Edward L. Cahn and starring Pat O'Brien. The film's title was typical of the sensationalistic titles of many Pre-Code films. Adapted from the 1932 novel of the same name by ...

'' (1933) * ''Emergency Call'' (1933) * ''Confidential'' (1935) *'' Death Drives Through'' (1935) *''Hit and Run Driver'' (1935) *''A Thrill for Thelma'' (1935) *''Foolproof'' (1936) *''The Perfect Set-up'' (1936) *''Behind the Headlines'' (1936) *''Servant of the People: The Story of the Constitution of the United States'' (1937) * ''Bad Guy'' (1937) *''Grid Rules'' (1938) *'' Dad for a Day'' (1939) *''The Giant of Norway'' (1939) *''Angel of Mercy'' (1939) *'' Alfalfa's Double'' (1939) *'' Time Out for Lessons'' (1939) *''

Redhead Red hair (also known as orange hair and ginger hair) is a hair color found in one to two percent of the human population, appearing with greater frequency (two to six percent) among people of Northern or Northwestern European ancestry and ...

'' (1941) *''

Main Street After Dark ''Main Street After Dark'' is a 1945 American drama film directed by Edward L. Cahn and written by John C. Higgins and Karl Kamb. The film stars Edward Arnold, Selena Royle, Tom Trout, Audrey Totter, Dan Duryea, Hume Cronyn and Dorothy Morris. ...

'' (1945) *''

Dangerous Partners ''Dangerous Partners'' is a 1945 American adventure film directed by Edward L. Cahn and written by Marion Parsonnet and Edmund L. Hartmann, based on the novel “Paper Chase” by Oliver Weld Bayer, the pen-name of Leo and Eleanor Bayer (later kn ...

'' (1945) * ''

Gas House Kids in Hollywood Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...

'' (1947) *'' Experiment Alcatraz'' (1950) (and producer) *'' Destination Murder'' (1950) *'' Creature with the Atom Brain'' (1955) *'' Girls in Prison'' (1956) *''

Zombies of Mora Tau ''Zombies of Mora Tau'' (also known as ''The Dead That Walk'') is a 1957 black-and-white zombie horror film directed by Edward L. Cahn and starring Gregg Palmer, Allison Hayes and Autumn Russel. Distributed by Columbia Pictures, it was produced by ...

'' (1957) *''

Invasion of the Saucer Men ''Invasion of the Saucer Men'' (U.K. title: ''Invasion of the Hell Creatures''; working title: ''Spacemen Saturday Night''), is a 1957 black-and-white comic science fiction/horror film produced by James H. Nicholson for release by American Int ...

'' (1957) *'' Curse of the Faceless Man'' (1958) *'' It! The Terror from Beyond Space'' (1958) *''

Pier 5, Havana ''Pier 5, Havana'' is a 1959 American Neo- noir, action, adventure, mystery, thriller crime film directed by Edward L. Cahn starring Cameron Mitchell and Allison Hayes. Plot Steve Daggett ( Cameron Mitchell) fights to protect Fidel Castro fr ...

'' (1958) *''

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake ''The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake'' is a 1959 American black-and-white horror film written by Orville H. Hampton and directed by Edward L. Cahn. It was one of a series of films they made in the late 1950s for producer Robert E. Kent on contract ...

'' (1959) * ''

Inside the Mafia ''Inside the Mafia'' is a 1959 film noir crime film based on a true incident. It was based on the Albert Anastasia murder and subsequent Apalachin Meeting. Plot The gangster Augie Martello is riddled with bullets in an assassination attempt orga ...

'' (1959) *'' Invisible Invaders'' (1959) *'' A Dog's Best Friend'' (1959) * '' Operation Bottleneck'' (1961) * ''Beauty and the Beast'' (1962)

Editor

* ''Surrender'' (1927) * ''The Man Who Laughs'' (1928) * ''Broadway'' (1929) (associate editor) * '' The White Hell of Pitz Palu'' (1929) * ''

The Last Performance ''The Last Performance'' is a 1929 American film directed by Paul Fejos and starring Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin. The film was made in two version: a silent version and Movietone version complete with music, talking sequences, and sound effe ...

'' (1929) * ''All Quiet on the Western Front'' (1930)

References

External links

* 1899 births 1963 deaths

Cahn Cahn is a Germanized form of the Jewish surname Cohen, another variant of which is Kahn. People with the surname Cahn * Jonathan Cahn (born 1959), American Messianic minister and writer * Andrew Cahn (born 1951), British civil servant * Anne ...

Film directors from New York City Horror film directors Science fiction film directors {{US-film-director-stub