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David F. Friedman was born in Birmingham, Alabama. His father was a local newspaperman and his mother was a professional musician who played the piano and organ in silent-movie theaters and in churches. Friedman was exposed to the adult world at the age of four or five when his parents took him out "on the town" to restaurants, movies and stage shows. His father, already in his 50s when he was born, died when Friedman was 13. His mother re-married a few years later. After graduating from high school, Friedman was drafted into the US Army and served in Europe during World War II. After his discharge in 1945 he settled i
David F. Friedman was born in Birmingham, Alabama. His father was a local newspaperman and his mother was a professional musician who played the piano and organ in silent-movie theaters and in churches. Friedman was exposed to the adult world at the age of four or five when his parents took him out "on the town" to restaurants, movies and stage shows. His father, already in his 50s when he was born, died when Friedman was 13. His mother re-married a few years later. After graduating from high school, Friedman was drafted into the US Army and served in Europe during World War II. After his discharge in 1945 he settled in Chicago, where he married and found work in filmmaking at Essanjay Films, where he knew co-owner Irwin Joseph, and they collaborated on making 8mm and 16mm underground sex hygiene films.
During the 1950s Friedman worked for Paramount Pictures as well as Essanjay Films--which later became Modern Films--as well as the independent Apex Attractions in producing and working on a number of short pictures of the underground softcore set. Friedman met Herschell Gordon Lewis in 1960 while he was working in Chicago pitching for producers for his first low-budget film, The Prime Time (1960). He and Lewis formed a partnership, with Friedman in charge of obtaining production financing, to make what were known as "nudie-cuties", very low-budget, crudely made films featuring female nudity, which was not seen in "mainstream" films.
Over the next few years Friedman and Lewis worked as mercenary filmmakers, with Friedman being the producer and sound man and Lewis being the director and cameraman. They made a series of softcore sex films, the first of which was The Adventures of Lucky Pierre (1961), then Daughter of the Sun (1962), Nature's Playmates (1962), Goldilocks and the Three Bares (1963), Boin-n-g (1963) and their first "roughie", a softcore sex film with some rather strong violence committed on the female characters, called Scum of the Earth (1963). Most of these films were shot on location in and around Miami, Florida, during winters when Friedman and Lewis lived there, away from the cold winters in Chicago.
Wanting a change of pace away from the nudie-cutie exploitation genre, Friedman and Lewis worked together to produce Blood Feast (1963), which was filmed in Miami only a few days after filming their last nudie-cutie effort, Bell, Bare and Beautiful (1963). Despite many bad reviews and the low production values, "Blood Feast" brought in more money than they had gotten making "nudie-cuties", which soon led to their turning out Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), followed by Color Me Blood Red (1965). After that Friedman ended his partnership with Lewis for a variety of reasons, both artistic and financial. Friedman moved to Los Angeles in 1964 to continue his production work there.
In 1965 Friedman formed his own filmmaking company to make "roughies", and produced, co-wrote and co-directed The Defilers (1965), a low-budget exploitation film about two guys who kidnap and hold hostage a young woman "just for kicks". The film was a hit and restarted his career in the softcore field. A stream of more roughie and soft-core exploitation movies followed throughout the 1960s, which he produced, co-wrote and even acted in; some of these were A Sweet Sickness (1968), Casting Couch (1967), A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine (1966), The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966), The Brick Dollhouse (1967), The Lustful Turk (1968), among many others.
By 1969 Friedman's career began to slide as the Hollywood film industry abolished the Hays Code and adopted the new Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) rating system in which independent and Hollywood mainstream filmmakers began producing X-rated, hardcore sex films, which soon swept aside the softcore roughie. Unwilling to get into the hardcore adult film industry, which was very profitable (but also very illegal), Friedman turned down several offers to direct hardcore sex films because he felt that it was "not as fun" as producing or directing the simulated roughie films. He continued to produce and direct a number of softcore sex films during the early and mid 1970s, such as The Adult Version of Jekyll & Hide (1972), The Sexcapades of Don Diego (1972), Come One, Come All (1970) and the violent grindhouse vigilante flick Johnny Firecloud (1975).
In addition to producing, Friedman also ran a theater in Los Angeles for several years which ran many of his exploitation films. Though producing exploitation movies was no longer lucrative, he occasionally dabbled in various independent productions in Los Angeles through the 1970s and into the 1980s. By then, Friedman more or less retired from film producing and re-settled back in Alabama, though he continued to come out of retirement to lend a hand at producing independent erotic or gore horror films, as he put it, "just for fun." Most recently was when he was reunited with Herschell Gordon Lewis in 2001 to produce Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002), as well as co-produce a remake of "Two Thousand Maniacs!" that was titled 2001 Maniacs (2005).
Coined the term "Mall-seleum" to refer to multiplex cinemas.
After World War II, he bought some brand-new army-surplus searchlights and advertised them for sale. His first customer was the "king of exploitation", Kroger Babb. His meeting with Babb led to an association with the showman, especially with the producer's notorious roadshow attraction Mom and Dad (1945).
Because of his film experience as a civilian, when he went into the army he was assigned to the Signal Corps, where he attended Army Film School and was trained in motion picture production, distribution and exhibition.
His first jobs in the industry included a stint as a film booker at a Paramount exchange by day and a union projectionist and stagehand by night. These jobs were interupted by a draft notice during World War II.
He was a partner in Modern Film Distributors.
Lives in retirement since the early 1990s in his home town of Birmingham, Alabama. [February 2008]
Owner of Entertainment Ventures Inc., a film production/distribution company.
Unlike many of his fellow "exploitation" producers, Friedman came from a wealthy and prominent family--his father was a newspaper publisher in Birmingham, Alabama, and a close friend of US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.
Started, with partner Dan Sonney, the Pussycat Theater chain of adult-film theaters. They sold it to Vince Miranda in 1968.
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Tags: Writer (1), American (1), Producer (1), Actor (1), Director (1), Filmmaker (1), Born 1923 (1), Died Aged 87 (1), Died 2011 (1), Died February 14 (1), Born December 24 (1), The Mighty Monarch Of Exploitation (1)
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