Alex Gordon, who produced low-budget exploitation movies in the 1950s and '60s, such as "The She-Creature," "Dragstrip Girl," and "Shake, Rattle and Rock," but devoted most of his professional life to his childhood western screen hero, Gene Autry, has died. He was 80.
Gordon, longtime vice president of Autry's Flying A Pictures and director of licensing for the Gene Autry Music Group, died of cancer Tuesday at a nursing home in Hollywood.
The London-born Gordon was working as publicist for Autry's personal appearance tours when he executive-produced his first picture, "The Lawless Rider," a 1954 western starring Johnny Carpenter.
Linking up with the fledgling American International Pictures, Gordon produced a string of feature films, including "Flesh and the Spur" and "Voodoo Woman." Both those movies featured a young actor billed as Touch Connors, who became better known as Mike Connors.
"Alex was a cheerful, happy-go-lucky guy, always laughing and smiling," Connors, who starred in "Tightrope" and "Mannix" on television, said this week. "He was one of the nicest people I've known in the business in 50 years."
With a laugh, Connors acknowledged that the handful of Gordon-produced, shoestring-budgeted films he appeared in are not prominently featured on his acting resume. The promotional slogan for "Shake, Rattle and Rock," a 1956 film in which Connors starred, was "Rock 'n' Roll vs. the Squares."
"In those days, when you were looking for your next meal, you'd take anything to get credits and experience," he said.
Connors, who also appeared in the Roger Corman-directed 1956 film "Day the World Ended," for which Gordon was executive producer, said Gordon was often on the sets of his films.
"He was one of those guys that just ate, slept and loved to talk movies," Connors said. "If you sat down and started asking questions about old movies, he was in seventh heaven."
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Film Enthusiast
A lifelong film buff, Gordon was known for casting veteran, sometimes forgotten actors in small parts in his movies.
As he told the Los Angeles Times in 1959, "My greatest delight now as a producer is to be able to use in my pictures many of the wonderful character actors I always admired when I was just a plain movie fan."
