Arnold Laven - 1950s

1950s

In September 1951, Laven formed a production company with Jules V. Levy and Arthur Gardner, both of whom he had met while working in the First Motion Picture Unit. The company, which eventually became Levy-Gardner-Laven, was initially called "Allart Pictures, Inc." The company opened offices at Goldwyn studios and announced plans to begin casting on their first feature, Without Warning!, a thriller about a psychopathic killer on the loose. Laven directed, and Adam Miller was cast as a gardener who murdered women with his garden shears. Operating on a shoe-string budget, the film was shot on the streets of Los Angeles—on the Hollywood Freeway, in Chavez Ravine, at the Produce Terminal, and plant nurseries, cocktail bars, and taxi offices. On seeing the end product, the Los Angeles Times reported that Laven and his partners had "succeeded in parlaying a $15,000 investment into a film production that is likely to gross well over $1,000,000, so decisive is its merit."

In May 1952, Hedda Hopper announced the arrival of the new team as follows:

"THREE FELLOWS, Jules Levy, Arthur Gardner and Arnold Laven, met in the army in World War II. Recently they got together to make a picture 'Without Warning.' Though it cost less than $100,000, Sol Lesser saw it and was so impressed that he bought an interest in it and arranged for its release. Then he put the trio under contract to make two pictures annually for three years."

The trio's second feature was Vice Squad, a 1953 detective drama directed by Laven and starring Edward G. Robinson and Adam Williams.

The third feature, Down Three Dark Streets, was another semidocumentary-style film noir starring Broderick Crawford as an FBI agent. The film's climax took place around the Hollywood Sign. A newspaper review of the 1954 film noted the promise of the three young producers:

"'Down Three Dark Streets' is the third film of the young trio composed of Arthur Gardner, Jules V. Levy and Arnold Laven. The three, all under thirty-five, laid plans for their production company while they were serving in the army in World War II. Their previous pictures as a team, 'Without Warning' and 'Vice Squad,' were critical and boxoffice successes."

In 1956, Laven went out on his own to direct The Rack, a drama starring Paul Newman and Lee Marvin about a soldier who is court-martialed for collaborating with the enemy after spending two years in a North Korean prison camp. The film was based on a United States Steel Hour program written by Rod Serling.

In 1957, Levy-Gardner-Laven team turned their focus to the popular science fiction and monster genres. Laven received directing and producing credits on The Monster That Challenged the World, a feature about an army of giant mollusks that emerge from the Salton Sea in California's Imperial Valley. A review in the Los Angeles Times called the film "distinctly chilling," noted that "Laven never lets the tension slacken," and described the plot as follows:

"An earthquake opens a deep crevice under the Salton Sea and salt water, perhaps aided by atomic radiation, hatches long buried eggs of the phylum Mollusca. ... hese sea-going prehistoric cousins ... leave silvery, smeary tracks, are as long as giraffes, as hungry as Great Danes and about as kindly disposed as panthers. Fortunately, as good snails, they don't get around too speedily; unfortunately, as good snails, they can lay about 3000 eggs in their brief life cycle."

The trio followed with a pair of vampire movies, The Vampire, a 1957 release about a small town doctor who mistakenly ingests an experimental drug made from the blood of vampire bats, and The Return of Dracula, a 1958 feature about a vampire who murders a Czech artist, assumes his identity, and moves to the United States.

In the late 1950s, Laven also directed Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, a crime drama set on the docks starring Richard Egan and Walter Matthau, and Anna Lucasta, a feature starring an all-African American cast that included Eartha Kitt and Sammy Davis, Jr.