Edward Small (born Edward Schmalheiser, February 1, 1891 – January 25, 1977) was an American film producer from the late 1920s through 1970, who was enormously prolific over a 50-year career. He is best known for the movies The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), The Corsican Brothers (1941), Brewster's Millions (1945), Raw Deal (1948), Black Magic (1949), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Solomon and Sheba (1959).
Early life and career
Small was born on February 1, 1891, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, the son of Rose (née Lewin) and Philip Schmalheiser. His mother was born in Prussia and his father was born in Austria; he had three sisters and two brothers. He began his career as a talent agent in New York City. In 1917, he moved his agency to Los Angeles where his acting clients included a young Hedda Hopper. His first production appears to have been the wartime propaganda film, Who's Your Neighbor? (1917).
In the 1920s the Edward Small Company produced stage sketches. He helped William Goetz begin his career in the industry by recommending him for a job at Corinne Griffith.
Asher Small Rogers
Small began producing films in the 1920s, when it became his full-time occupation. He formed the firm Asher, Small and Rogers, as a partner with Charles Rogers and E. M Asher. The partnerships early films were all based on plays: The Sporting Lover (1926), The Cohens and Kellys (1926) (which led to a lawsuit with the author of Abie's Irish Rose), The Gorilla (1927), McFadden's Flats (1927), and Ladies' Night in a Turkish Bath (1928).
Of these Cohens and Kellys was particularly popular, leading to a number of sequels starting with The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris (1928). Small also produced My Man (1928) with Fanny Brice, and Companionate Marriage (1929).
Except for The Gorilla all these early films were comedies. In 1926 Small said, "Making a comedy requires far more care than is necessary for any other form of screen production because audiences are more exacting than in any other form of entertainment."
"Picture making is a youngster's game", he added the same year. "When a man gets older he doesn't want to take a chance to try something new. And this business moves so fast that if you don't change your methods with every picture you're out of luck. In a few years I won't have a thing to do with the creative. Afraid, I'll hire young men with plenty of nerve to handle that for me."
In early 1928, the original Asher Small Rogers partnership dissolved. However they then re-teamed and started producing films; towards the end of the year they invested in a studio complex in Sherman Oaks.
Small then worked for a time at Columbia Pictures, making Song of Love (1929) with Belle Baker. For his own company he made Clancy in Wall Street (1930) starring Cohens and Kellys star Charles Murray.
Small sent an expedition to the Arctic and they made the documentary Igloo (1932).
Reliance Pictures and United Artists
In 1932, Small formed Reliance Pictures together with partner Harry M. Goetz. The new company was to be made with finance from Art Cinema, a subsidiary company of United Artists, in a deal brokered by Joseph Schenck. On the basis of this verbal commitment, Small and Goetz started pre production on three films. However, when Schenck presented the deal to Art Cinema's board, it was turned down. An embarrassed Schenck decided personally put up half the cost of the three films, with the other half met by Small and Goetz.
The films were I Cover the Waterfront (1933), a crime drama based on a book with Claudette Colbert; Palooka (1934), a comedy based on the comic Joe Palooka with Jimmy Durante; and The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), a swashbuckler based on the Dumas novel starring Robert Donat and the first screen credit for Philip Dunne. Of the three Monte Cristo was an especially big hit and Small would go on to produce a number of swashbucklers.
William Phipps then stepped in to provide financing in Schenck's place and Reliance made five more movies for United Artists over two years: Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934), a musical comedy; Let 'Em Have It (1935); a gangster movie; Red Salute (1935), a screwball comedy with an anti-Communist slant starring Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Young; The Melody Lingers On (1935), a melodrama; and Last of the Mohicans (1936), based on the classic novel, starring Randolph Scott and co-written by Dunne. The latter was a big hit.
In 1935, Small announced plans to make a series of 4,000-foot films (i.e. short features) based on short stories and novelettes as an alternative to the double bill but this did not seem to come to fruition.