The Alfred Santell Story

September 14 was the birthday of Alfred Santell (1895-1981). Santell was a director who started out in the days of silent slapstick comedies and made over 100 films over a 30 year period. He is not to be confused with Alfred Latell, the animal impressionist in vaudeville.

Santell was born in San Francisco and studied architecture at Los Angeles University, but got his foot in the door in the industry on the East Coast, with the Lubin Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia. By 1915 he was writing scenarios for Keystone, Flying A, and other studios, working with comedians like Ford Sterling and the team of Kolb and Dill. In 1917 he began directing Ham and Bud comedies at Kalem. Within months he was directing other comedians like Fay Tincher, Smiling Billy Parsons, Neal Burns, Billy Mason, and the Hallroom Boys (Edward Flanagan, Neely Edwards, et al.) At Universal in 1919 he supervised the production of comedies starring Joe Martin the ape. For Hal Roach he made Hale and Hearty (1922) with Snub Pollard and Marie Mosquini.

By the mid ’20s Santell was directing features like Bluebeard Seven Wives (1925) with Ben Lyon; Sweet Daddies (1926) with Charles Murray and George Sidney; the original 1927 version of The Gorilla; and Show Girl (1928) with Alice White. Many of his films from the talkie era are notable and some are even well-remembered. They include The Arizona Kid (1929) with Warner Baxter; the original version of Jack London’sThe Sea Wolf (1930, later remade with Edward G. Robinson); the 1931 version of Daddy Long Legs (1931) with Janet Gaynor; Polly of the Circus (1932); the Marian Nixon version of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932); Tess of the Storm Country (1932) with Gaynor; People Will Talk (1935) with Charles Ruggles and Mary Boland; Cocoanut Grove (1938); The Arkansas Traveler (1938) with Bob Burns; Having Wonderful Time (1938), which contained Red Skelton’s feature film debut; Jack London (1943); and two notable stage adaptations: Maxwell Anderson’s Winterset (1936), and Eugene O’Neill’sThe Hairy Ape (1944).

After working at most of the major large studios (R.K.O., Paramount, Fox, and United Artists), by the mid ’40s, Santell found himself at the minor league Republic, where he directed Mexicana (1945) starring opera singer Tito Guízar and That Brennan Girl a.k.a. Tough Girl (1946) starring James Dunn and Mona Freeman.

In 1947, Santell’s 30th year as a director, he parted ways with Republic over a contractual issue, and ended up being out of the business was good. He was only 52, so surely he had another good decade or two left in him. It was perfect timing to break into television, but he doesn’t appear to have done so. The early retirement may have had something to do with the recent death of his wife Jane Keithley (1908-1944), a minor actress who’d played chorus girl parts in such things as Paramount on Parade, The Floradora Girl, and Eddie Cantor’s Whoopee!, all in 1930. She had played the female lead in Santell’s The Sea Wolf, and was fifth billed in The Secret Call (1931). It’s likely pregnancy ended this promising career. The Santells had four children. The marriage was apparently rocky. They separated in 1942 and Keithley sued for divorce on the grounds of cruelty in 1943 but they reconciled. Her death a year later seems notable. And as we mentioned, right after this Santell left the big studios for Republic and retired soon after that.

Santell’s brother Marty Santell (1900-81) was a second unit director and A.D. on films by Santell and others.

For more on silent and slapstick comedy film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube — now also available on audiobook.