Jean Yarbrough

Jean Yarbrough (August 22, 1901 – August 2, 1975) was an American film director.

Biography

Jean Yarbrough was born in Marianna, Arkansas on August 22, 1901. He attended the University of the South located in Sewanee, Tennessee. In 1922, Yarbrough entered the film business working in silent pictures: first as a prop-man and later rising thru the ranks to become an assistant director. By 1936, he was a bona fide director, first doing comedy and musical shorts for RKO which was founded by Joseph P. Kennedy among others. His directorial debut for a feature-length film was Rebellious Daughters which was made by the low-budget studio, Progressive Pictures in 1938. His greatest success came in the 1940s, when he directed movies that are still fondly remembered to this day, such as The Devil Bat, King of the Zombies, She-Wolf of London, and a number of Abbott and Costello comedies. Yarbrough directed two of The Bowery Boys movies which was the longest running series in American movie history. Angels in Disguise and Master Minds were both directed by Jean Yarbrough in 1949. Yarbrough found little difficulty in transitioning from the traditional B-movies which were on the decline to the new medium of television. He directed many, many episodes for different TV series throughout the 1950s and 1960s which is widely considered to be the Golden Age of Television. In addition to directing, he had a two-year stint working as both producer and director of the very popular Abbott and Costello Show. He directed some episodes of The Silent Service and Navy Log, also during the 1950s, which were military dramas based on true stories of the United States Navy.

He subsequently directed episodes of Walter Brennan's western series The Guns of Will Sonnett. His last theatrical film was 1967's Hillbillys in a Haunted House, a mixture of comedy, horror and country music...starring Basil Rathbone and Lon Chaney, Jr.

Filmography

• The Devil Bat (1940)
• King of the Zombies (1941)
• The Gang's All Here (1941)
• Father Steps Out (1941)
• Good Morning, Judge (1943)
• In Society (1944)
• Here Come The Co-Eds (1945)
• The Naughty Nineties (1945)
• House of Horrors (1946)
• Inside Job (1946)
• She-Wolf of London (1946)
• Cuban Pete (1946)
• The Brute Man (1946)
• Shed No Tears (1948)
• The Creeper (1948)
• The Challenge (1948)
• Holiday in Havana (1949)
• Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)
• Lost in Alaska (1952)
• Crashing Las Vegas (1956)
• The Women of Pitcairn Island (1956)
• Saintly Sinners (1962)
• Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967)
• The Over-the-Hill Gang (1969) TV-movie

References

External links

• Jean Yarbrough biography, Search my Trash.com; accessed March 17, 2014.
• NY Times filmography

Jean Yarbrough at the Internet Movie Database