Rudolph C. Flothow (November 23, 1895 - December 21, 1971) was a movie and television producer active from 1915 through the mid-1950s, producing more than 45 films and over 80 television episodes. Most of his productions were crime films for

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...

, including the 1943 Batman serial, and Crime Doctor, Whistler,

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, and

Ellery Queen Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City ...

films. He directed the sound sequences in the early sound feature Lucky Boy, starring George Jessel.

Life and career

Flothow was born November 23, 1895, in

Frankfurt, Germany Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the foreland of the Taunus on its namesake Main, it forms a contin ...

, into a mercantile family involved in the China shipping trade, and was apparently a distant relation of the Bavarian composer Friedrich von Flotow. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1914. He married a former model, Martha Tekla Sikorski, the daughter of Polish immigrants, and had one son, Rudy Flothow. His half-brother Wolfgang Hoeffer, a U.S. counterintelligence agent, was found shot to death in the immediate aftermath of Otto John's defection to East Germany. His earliest involvement in the film industry was in distribution, joining

Paramount Paramount (from the word ''paramount'' meaning "above all others") may refer to: Entertainment and music companies * Paramount Global, also known simply as Paramount, an American mass media company formerly known as ViacomCBS. **Paramount Picture ...

in 1915. Flothow consistently worked with small budgets, with film shoots typically lasting just 21 days. Flothow had a reputation for delivering a lot of movie for the money, an impression reinforced by

Ralph Bellamy Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned 65 years on stage, film, and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and award ...

's recollection of Flothow as being "always on the set" during the filming of the

films. In the wake of the film industry's slowdown in the late 1940s, Flothow transitioned into the nascent television market, with the idea of doing for television syndication "...just what he had done before, hard-hitting, low-cost shows, a lot of male-driven action". The result was '' Ramar of the Jungle'', a syndicated television program that reran for decades. The program's African setting had its source in Flothow's longstanding fascination with Africa, crystallizing in a dressing-room conversation with Jon Hall. Flothow "used a regular stable of heavies. He was actually very fond of these guys with mean faces who were actually very sweet." He died on December 21, 1971, in

Culver City Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. It is mostly surrounded by Los Angeles, but also shares a border with the unincorporated area of Ladera Heights to the ea ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

References

Film producers from California American television producers 1895 births 1971 deaths Emigrants from the German Empire to the United States {{US-film-producer-stub