Irwin Allen (born Irwin O. Cohen; June 12, 1916 – November 2, 1991) was an American film and television producer and director, known for his work in science fiction, then later as the "Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. His most successful productions were The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). He also created and produced the popular 1960s science-fiction television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.
Irwin Allen was born in New York City, the son of poor Jewish immigrants (Joseph Cohen and Eva Davis) from Russia. He majored in journalism and advertising at Columbia University after attending City College of New York for a year. He left college because of financial difficulties caused by the Great Depression.
Allen moved to Hollywood in 1938, where he edited Key magazine followed by an 11-year stint producing his own program at radio station KLAC. The success of the radio show led to him being offered his own gossip column, "Hollywood Merry-Go-Round", which was syndicated to 73 newspapers.
He produced his first TV program, a celebrity panel show also called Hollywood Merry-Go-Round with announcer, and later Tonight Show host, Steve Allen (no relation), before moving into film production.
Allen became involved in film production at a time when power was beginning to shift from studios to talent agencies. He put together packages consisting of directors, actors, and a script, and sold them to film studios.
Allen's first film as producer was Where Danger Lives (1950) with Robert Mitchum, directed by John Farrow and written by Charles Bennett. Allen produced it with Irving Cummings, Jr. The two men made two more films for RKO: Double Dynamite (1951) with Jane Russell, Groucho Marx, and Frank Sinatra, and A Girl in Every Port (1952), again with Marx and William Bendix.
Allen made his directorial debut with the documentary, The Sea Around Us (1953). This was based on Rachel Carson's best-selling book of the same name. It largely used stock footage and won the 1952 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Carson was so disappointed with Allen's final version of the script that she never again sold film rights to her work. The film includes gory images of whales being killed. It was a success, making a profit over $2 million.
Allen returned to producing with the three-dimensional film Dangerous Mission (1954), his final film for RKO. It starred Victor Mature, Bendix, Piper Laurie, and Vincent Price.
Allen directed a semidocumentary about the evolution of life, The Animal World (1956). Again, making use of stock footage, but he also included a 9-minute stop-motion dinosaur sequence by Ray Harryhausen. Before release, he toned down the gore from both the live action and the animation.
The film was released by Warner Bros. So was Allen's next film, The Story of Mankind (1957), a very loose adaptation of the Hendrik Willem van Loon book of the same name. It featured cameos from the Marx Brothers, Ronald Colman, Hedy Lamarr, Vincent Price, and Dennis Hopper. The actors were each paid $2,500 (equal to $28,658 today) for a single day's work with Allen relying on stock footage for the rest of the film.
Allen co-wrote (with Bennett) and produced The Big Circus (1959) for Allied Artists Pictures with Mature, Red Buttons, Peter Lorre, and Price. Allen was interested in making "an exciting, colorful show – something the public can't see on television." Allen was fascinated by circuses as a child and briefly worked as a carnival barker at age 16. In addition to The Big Circus, he worked circus-themed episodes into his TV programs Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and would try for years to get a widescreen, 3-D project called Circus, Circus, Circus into theaters.
Allen then went to 20th Century Fox, where he co-wrote (with Bennett), produced, and directed three films: The Lost World (1960), from the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962).
Willis O'Brien, who had also worked on the pioneering special effects of the original Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933) films, was disappointed when Allen opted to save time by using live alligators and lizards instead of stop-motion animation for the film's dinosaurs. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was a scientifically dubious, Jules Verne-style adventure to save the world from a burning Van Allen belt. It was the basis for his later television series of the same name. The family film, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was a loose adaptation of the Verne novel. Lost World was a moderate hit and Voyage was very successful. Five Weeks was a box-office disappointment.
With 20th Century Fox scaling back their film productions due to their huge expenditure on films such as Cleopatra (1963), in the mid-1960s, Allen concentrated on television, producing several overlapping science-fiction series for 20th Century Fox Television. They featured special effects by L. B. Abbott, who won three Emmys for his work. Allen used many of the same craftsmen on his TV shows as he did on his films, including composer John Williams and costume designer and general assistant Paul Zastupnevich.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (ABC TV, 1964–1968) established Allen's reputation as a television producer. The financial viability of the series was assisted by the reuse of many of the sets from the film; the cost of the Seaview submarine sets alone exceeded the budget of a typical pilot show of the era. The series also benefited from Allen's by-now notorious use of stock film footage, particularly from Hell and High Water (1954), The Enemy Below (1957), and Allen's The Lost World.
Allen had originally intended Lost in Space (CBS TV, 1965–1968) to be a family show, a science-fiction version of The Swiss Family Robinson. It quickly developed into a children's show with episodes concentrating on the young Will Robinson, the robot, and especially, the comic villain, Dr. Smith. The show used several science-fiction elements that have since become common, such as the comic robot (e.g. Silent Running, Star Wars) or android (Logan's Run, Star Trek: The Next Generation), the heroic child (Meeno Peluce in Voyagers!, Wesley Crusher), and the wacky, lovable alien (Albert in Alien Nation, Vir in Babylon 5).
The Time Tunnel (ABC TV, 1966–1967), with each episode set in a different historical time period, was an ideal vehicle for Allen's talent for smoothly mixing live action with stock footage from films set in the same period. A change in network management led to the show being cancelled after just one season. Allen cited The Time Tunnel as his favorite of all of his television productions and he would attempt to revamp and relaunch the concept numerous times including a filmed pilot in 1976 called The Time Travelers and unfilmed concepts that included one called Time Travel Agency and another called The Time Project that went through several incarnations.
Land of the Giants (ABC TV, 1968–1970) was the most expensive show of its day at roughly $250,000 per episode. As another castaway-themed show, Allen incorporated some of the successful elements from Lost in Space, although this time he did not allow the treacherous character to dominate the series.