Description:
Maury Dexter first entered the business as a teenage actor in The Three Stooges short, Uncivil War Birds (1946). After a few additional movie roles, he busied himself with stage and TV work until the Korean War and military service intervened; following his discharge, he landed an acting job on TV's The Hank McCune Show (1950) and was soon working there behind the scenes as well. A clerical job at Robert L. Lippert's Regal Films eventually led to producing and directing gigs at that independent production company, where many of the movies were shot in seven days on $100,000 budgets. He directed over 20 features there, at America
Maury Dexter first entered the business as a teenage actor in The Three Stooges short, Uncivil War Birds (1946). After a few additional movie roles, he busied himself with stage and TV work until the Korean War and military service intervened; following his discharge, he landed an acting job on TV's The Hank McCune Show (1950) and was soon working there behind the scenes as well. A clerical job at Robert L. Lippert's Regal Films eventually led to producing and directing gigs at that independent production company, where many of the movies were shot in seven days on $100,000 budgets. He directed over 20 features there, at American International Pictures and abroad before he became, for the first time in his career, an assistant director, working mostly for Michael Landon on his TV series Little House on the Prairie (1974) and Highway to Heaven (1984). Landon's 1991 death prompted Dexter to retire.
An unpretentious man who wanted to do things right when producing or directing a film, and who used to call himself a «farm boy from California», Maury Dexter was the most reliable man producer Robert L. Lippert had in his film company during the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Arkansas, Dexter's family relocated to California when he was a little boy. After his father died and his three brothers were sent to war, his mother took him to acting lessons. Eventually he joined professional theater, and made his film debut in The Three Stooges' comedy "Uncivil War Birds" (1946), when he was 17 years old. For a while he performed on films, stage and early live television, before going to the war front in Korea.
Upon his return, Dexter joined the television and film industries, but not as an actor. He found work at the production department of Lippert's Regal Films, which would later become Associated Producers, Inc. (API). When Twentieth Century-Fox began to finance B movies made by Regal, Dexter became head of production: he worked with top cinematographers Floyd Crosby, and Lucien Ballard, producer Gene Corman, and filmmakers Kurt Neumann, Roy Del Ruth, Edward L. Bernds, William F. Claxton, Buzz Kulik and Roger Kay, among others.
By the early 60s, when Fox was not satisfied with the deal and Lippert had to cut the already very low budgets, Dexter had to double as producer-director, most frequently from his friend Harry Spalding's scripts. Among the API works he directed for Fox, the best are the cult horror film "House of the Damned", which included circus performers in its cast; the distressing science-fiction drama "The Day Mars Invaded Earth", and the western Young Guns of Texas, which starred the siblings of famous actors Alan Ladd, Joel McCrea, and Robert Mitchum: Alana, Jody, and James.
After Fox abruptly ended the contract with API, Dexter took a needed rest in Europe, but also made a western and a war film there. When he returned to California, he joined American International Pictures (AIP), and directed a few of the popular exploitation movies for which the company was famous. He made films like "Maryjane", a «marihuana flick» starring singer Fabian; the «byke mini-sagas» "The Mini-Skirt Mob" and "Hell's Belles" and something along the "Rebel Without a Cause" line called "The Young Animals". Dexter then left AIP and went back to television.
In the final phase of his career, Dexter directed chapters for several TV shows, and became, for the first time in his life, an assistant director. During one of his assignments, he became acquainted with actor Michael Landon, who hired him for his popular series Little House on the Prairie. Dexter also directed several chapters, but when his good friend Landon passed away, Maury Dexter retired from the entertainment industry. He died in 2017, in California.
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