Bernard Glasser

Chicago-born Bernard Glasser grew up in what he calls "the movie generation" and fell in love with pictures at the ripe old age of four. In the late 1940s, while working as a teacher at Beverly Hills High School, he got his feet wet in the film industry by working as a production assistant. In 1950 he invested in an old motion picture studio and turned it into a rental lot, Keywest Studios. Glasser leased his facility to producers like Roger Corman (The Fast and the Furious (1954)), Burt Lancaster (Apache (1954)) and others as well as using the facilities to make a five-day, $50,000 film of his own--The Three Stooges' Gold Raiders (1951), directed by Glasser's friend Edward Bernds. When Glasser's studio lease expired in 1955, he and Bernds combined forces on a series of budget features for Robert L. Lippert's Regal Films. Working overseas during the 1960s, often in collaboration with producer/writer Philip Yordan, Glasser added to his filmography such well-remembered films as Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Day of the Triffids (1963) and Crack in the World (1965).