S. S. Millard

Who is S. S. Millard?

Sam S. Millard was a filmmaker of the 1920s through the 1950s and 1960s. Nicknamed "Steamship", he was one of the Forty Thieves of exploiters. Considered an early father of the roadshow-style exploitation film circuit, his film productions and presentations laid the groundwork for a number of later exploitation films.

Millard's actual date and place of birth is unknown, but it is believed he is of Romanian descent, and was once able to pass off as Romanian nobility to a former Romanian queen. While a financially successful individual, he often gave an appearance of a man who struggled to make ends meet. David F. Friedman, an exploitation filmmaker and presenter who worked with Millard in the 1940s and 1950s, described Millard's appearance at a meeting as someone who "did not project an aura of prosperity," with a wrinkled suit and dirty shirt. He gained a reputation for huckstering and making every last dollar he could from his distributors and film buyers, which gained him both respect and resentment from his peers.

Millard mainly dealt in what would now be called exploitation filmmaking. Like most of the genre's films of the time, Millard's movies were typically compilations of other controversial short films, stock footage, and medical reels. Millard spent his professional career producing and presenting these films around the United States. In one of Millard's most noteworthy presentations, Millard was forced to retitle his film Is Your Daughter Safe? to The Octopus in order to meet the demands of San Diego city officials who found the title objectionable. The film, which was a compilation of footage that was, in some cases, nearly fifteen years old, included medical footage of venereal diseases and stock footage depicting white slavery. The film was described by Variety as "possibly the strongest and most dangerous" film of its kind at that point, but it still passed the standards of a group coordinated by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America's Jason Joy, with the group initially stating that the movie taught "a very splendid lesson and that every girl over sixteen years of age ought to be compelled to see it." The MPPDA, surprised at the lack of a condemnation, was eventually successful in gaining the condemnations from various women's groups and succeeded in withdrawing the film from a number of theaters in the northwestern United States, paving the way for further challenges to the genre. Another story, which was passed along by Friedman, involved Millard shamelessly tricking fellow exploiter Isadore Lazarus into paying Millard $2500 for an unproduced print, and then charging nearly an extra thousand for the finished product.