Film producer and director Bernard Glasser has died, one day before his 90th birthday. A substitute teacher who broke into the business by borrowing some money from his landlord, Glasser made his film debut as a producer with Gold Raiders, a 1951 Three Stooges feature that was budgeted at $50,000. Although that film’s director, Edward Bernds, later complained that Glasser had to beg him not to abandon the project, the two of them went on to work together again on the Westerns The Storm Rider (1957) and Escape From Red Rock (1957), the sci-fi films Space Master X-7 (1958) and Return Of The Fly (1959), and Alaska Passage (1959).
Glasser also worked on the British films The Day Of The Triffids (1963)—though he kept his name off the credits to qualify it for a government subsidy—and Battle Of The Bulge (1965), as well as the first film version of James Jones’ World War II novel The Thin Red Line (1964), which predated the Terrence Malick version by 34 years. His last films were Run Like A Thief (1968) and Triangle (1970), which he both produced and directed. After retiring from filmmaking, he worked in real estate for many years.