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Morris R. Schlank, the eponymous boss of Morris R. Schlank Productions, is vaguely remembered as a Poverty Row producer who continued to turn out silent films into the 1930s for his main market of third-run rural movie theaters. In the pantheon of movie producers, Schlank was to Irving Thalberg what Pauly Shore is to Charles Chaplin among comedians.
Schlank was born on 1879 in Omaha, Nebraska. By 1914 he had established himself in Hollywood with a costume rental business. In 1919 he produced his first motion picture, the comedy short The Janitor (1919) starring Hank Mann, who had played one of the Keystone Cops. Schlank produced a plethora of comedy shorts with Mann, at least one of which was directed by Charley Chase, a talented second-tier silent comedian himself who at the end of his career directed shorts starring The Three Stooges (if the entertaining Chase was second-rate, Mann's rating as a cinema stooge likely was junk status). The other King of Comedy at Schlank's studio was Bobby Ray, another "star" whose light has been snuffed out by the sifting sands of time, albeit a star that never burned very brightly in the first place.
Schlank's first feature film was Storm Girl (1922), which was directed by Francis Ford (John Ford's brother), who also starred in the picture. Once a major filmmaker and star, Ford was on the downside of his career, a situation that typified Morris R. Schlank Productions employees, such as director/writer/producer/actor Ben F. Wilson, who ended his prolific career at Schlank's studio. Other than his featuring of "Never-Will-Be's", the hallmark of Schlank productions was the use of "Has-Been's"--actors and filmmakers in the twilight of their careers.
Dangerous Trails (1923) likely was the highlight of the output of Schlank's studio; the western starred character actor Noah Beery and Irene Rich, a frequent co-star of Will Rogers in the early 1920s. The studio cranked out low-budget westerns starring Al Hoxie, the brother of the more famous (and equally forgotten) cowboy star Jack Hoxie.
A Morris R. Schlank production was made very quickly on an extremely low budget. A Schlank picture was silent up through 1930. After taking a year off, Schlank returned to the screen in 1932 with Shop Angel (1932), his first sound movie. There would be two more Schlank sound productions released in 1932: Drifting Souls (1932) and Exposure (1932).
Morris R. Schlank died of a heart attack on June 29, 1932, while vacationing at Murietta Hot Springs, CA. He was 52 years old.
