Edward Nassour

Who was Edward Nassour?

Edward Nassour born April 7, 1911, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA died December 15, 1962, Sherman Oaks, California, USA was an American producer, head of a motion picture studio, and a special effects animator. He was the brother and business partner of William Nassour.

Edward Nassour was a Los Angeles businessman engaged in aircraft manufacture with an interest in stop motion animation. In the early 1940s he teamed up with Walter Lantz to make a stop motion Technicolor dinosaur film for Columbia Pictures entitled Lost Atlantis. Lantz and Nassour made a test reel but the venture proved too expensive and it was never completed. The two animators decided to form a company to make a series of stop motion films but the plan never eventuated.

In 1946 the Nassours purchased a four acre lot on Sunset Boulevard and built a studio complex featuring four stages, a projection room, dressing rooms, and offices. A variety of independent films and television shows were made there including Africa Screams. After selling his studio complex, Edward supervised the dinosaur sequences in The Lost Continent. Later the Nassours made the television series Sheena, Queen of the Jungle in Mexico.

Nassour developed his special effects process he called Regiscope that Nassour claimed to have spent 18 years developing from his Lost Atlantis project. It was used in the Mexican international co-production The Beast of Hollow Mountain that Edward directed based on designs by Willis O'Brien for his then unproduced The Valley of Gwangi.