The White Gorilla (1945)

Interesting facts

The White Gorilla is a 1945 American film written and directed by Harry L. Fraser and starring Ray Corrigan, Lorraine Miller, and George J. Lewis. The film was made by re-editing Fraser's 1927 silent serial Perils of the Jungle, and adding new footage as a framing plot. This was done without regard to differences in film quality or speed. This film is in the public domain.

Production and reception

In 1945 producer Louis Weiss urgently needed a first-run "gorilla picture" when theaters couldn't get many new films, owing to a shortage of film stock. Weiss asked Fraser to write and direct a feature film in time for a San Francisco premiere six weeks later, which had already been arranged. Fraser came up with The White Gorilla, which he frankly admitted was pure hokum.

True to the Weiss tradition of cutting costs, most of the action was taken from Fraser's 1927 silent serial Perils of the Jungle, starring silent-screen Tarzan Frank Merrill. Unlike most Hollywood jungle pictures of the 1940s, which use occasional vintage stock shots of wild animals to add atmosphere, The White Gorilla devotes fully half of the feature's running time to the vintage-1927 footage, with music and sound effects added.

Despite the obvious patchwork, the film did well as an exploitable attraction. It was distributed not by a major studio or even a minor one, but through independent channels, so it didn't reach some cities until 1946 or 1947. The White Gorilla, as Fraser recalled in his memoirs, "played in movie theaters across the country, making a bundle for several years, for the Louis Weiss company and for Harry Fraser, who got his cut regularly.

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