Arthur Ronald Marks (August 2, 1927 – November 13, 2019) was an American film and television director, writer, producer and distributor best known for his work in the blaxploitation genre, directing films such as Bonnie's Kids, Detroit 9000, Friday Foster, Bucktown, The Monkey Hu$tle and J. D.'s Revenge. He also directed and produced numerous episodes of the American legal drama Perry Mason, as well as episodes of Starsky & Hutch, Mannix, I Spy, My Friend Tony, The Dukes of Hazzard, Steve Canyon, and Young Daniel Boone.
Early life and career
Arthur Marks was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1927 to parents who had moved to Hollywood to find work in the film industry. His father, David Marks, worked a series of film jobs, from sound man to assistant director, on films like Hell's Angels and The Wizard of Oz, spending the last 30 years of his career at MGM. As a child, Marks frequently appeared as an unbilled extra in films such as Boy's Town and The Good Earth and the Andy Hardy series. After serving in the Merchant Marines during World War II and briefly attending USC as a journalism major, Marks dropped out of college and took a job with the MGM production department. He did production work on 75 MGM films over the next three years, eventually working as an assistant director at Columbia Studios and doing uncredited reshoots in post-production for The Lady from Shanghai and The Caine Mutiny, as well as numerous other films, Westerns and serials, and numerous feature films before beginning his own career as a director. During the early 1950s, he briefly left Hollywood to serve in the United States Navy during the Korean War.
Directorial career
Marks worked as an assistant director on television shows The Man Behind the Badge, Treasury Men in Action, Casablanca, Broken Arrow and The 20th Century Fox Hour, before becoming involved with the pilot episode of the legal drama Perry Mason. He worked as an assistant director on 15 episodes of Perry Mason, and, starting in the middle of the first season, began working as a director. He would go on to direct 76 episodes of the series, and eventually worked as the producer as well.
Following the conclusion of Perry Mason, Marks began to move into feature films, beginning with 1970's independently distributed Togetherness starring George Hamilton and Peter Lawford. Following that film, he directed Bonnie's Kids, building on his previous model of independent distribution to turn the film into a lucrative drive-in success. Successful serial-killer films The Centerfold Girls (which he produced but did not direct) and The Roommates followed, as Marks began exploiting a lack of studio pictures and a strong market for more exploitation films in the drive-in circuit. In the 2010 documentary short, Arthur's Kids, Marks explains that major Hollywood Studios tended to dismiss the drive-in circuit and refused to allow their films to be shown there, creating an opportunity for smaller independent distributors to build a business model based on supplying the drive-ins with cheaply produced, titillating fare. To capitalize on this market, Marks formed GFC (General Film Corporation), an independent distributor through which he produced and distributed his own early films as well as other cult fare (including Guerdon Trueblood's The Candy Snatchers, among others).
His positive experience working with actor Alex Rocco on Bonnie's Kids led Marks to cast Rocco in Detroit 9000, a gritty crime story which also featured Hari Rhodes and Scatman Crothers. The film was written by Academy Award Nominee Orville H. Hampton (who had worked with Marks previously on episodes of Perry Mason) and shot in Detroit, featuring numerous local personalities and landmarks. It was a financial success upon its release in 1973, but remained little-remembered until director Quentin Tarantino championed it decades later, re-releasing it theatrically through his short-lived Rolling Thunder Pictures in 1998, and on video in 1999. Tarantino also incorporated a line of dialogue from the film into the soundtrack for his own Jackie Brown.
Along with his theatrical output in 1973, Marks also made a return to television, directing two episodes of The New Perry Mason, a revival of the character Marks had begun his directorial career working with (now played by Monte Markham instead of Raymond Burr). The series was short-lived, ending mid-season after only 15 episodes.