Jules White

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Jules White (born Jules Weiss on 17 September 1900 in Budapest, Hungary, died 30 April 1985 in Van Nuys, California) was a movie director and producer of the silent film era.

Starting as a child actor, White first worked for Pathé Studios during the 1910s. In the early 1920s he went on to became a film editor. He became a director in 1926, specializing in comedies. In 1930 White and Zion Myers co-directed M-G-M's gimmicky "Dogville" comedies, which featured trained dogs in satires of recent Hollywood films. In 1933 White was appointed head of Columbia Pictures' short film division, which became the most prolific comedy factory in Hollywood. Between 1934 and 1957 Jules White produced and/or directed 136 (out of 190) Three Stooges shorts.

White's approach to directing was rooted in silent comedy, so he made his sound films the same way. He paced the visual action very fast, and coached his actors to gesture broadly and react violently. This emphasis on cartoonish slapstick worked well in the right context, but could become blunt and shocking when stretched too far. White was generally under pressure to finish his productions within a few days, so very often producer White had no inclination to tone down director White, and the outlandishly violent gags stayed in. (Jules White's personal favorite gag, which he used again and again, is probably the one where an actor is stuck in the posterior by a sharp object, and then yells, "Help, help! I'm losing my mind!") Still, moviegoers loved these slam-bang short comedies, and Columbia produced more than 500 of them over a quarter of a century. White dabbled in television in the early 1960s but soon retired, saying, "Who needs such a rat race?"

Almost 40 percent of Jules White's output stars The Three Stooges; the other films feature such screen favorites as Buster Keaton, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon, Hugh Herbert, Vera Vague, and El Brendel. To date, only the Stooges and Keaton material has been released to home video.

White is profiled in two books, The White Brothers (also known as Behind the Three Stooges: The White Brothers) by David Bruskin, ISBN 1882766008, and The Columbia Comedy Shorts by Ted Okuda with Edward Watz, ISBN 0786405775.