Sidney Pink on AllMovie

The associate producer of Bwana Devil, the film that introduced audiences to the concept of 3-D, writer/producer/director Sidney Pink was also responsible for such endearingly awful sci-fi chillers as The Angry Red Planet (1959) and Reptilicus (1961). A Pittsburgh native, Pink majored in business administration and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh before embarking on a career as a film projectionist in his wife's family's theater. Following a move to Hollywood in 1937, Pink would find work as a production budget manager at Grand National Pictures shortly before relocating to Columbia Pictures to work as a budget manager on Lost Horizon (1937). Pink would later purchase a circuit of L.A. theaters before serving in the Army Transportation Corps and Special Services during WWII. Upon his return stateside, Pink jumped back into the film industry as an importer of foreign films and a producer of L.A. burlesque shows. A chance meeting with writer/producer/director Arch Oboler resulted in such films as Five (1951) and The Twonky (1953), though it was Bwana Devil, with its startling images which leapt from the screen, that found Pink a special place in celluloid history. A menacing tale of railroad workers stalked by a pair of murderous lions, Bwana Devil terrified audiences with striking images that seemed to attack the audience. Subsequently moving to Denmark, Spain, and Puerto Rico, Pink continued to produce and direct such films as 1965's Finger on the Trigger (one of the first spaghetti Westerns) and the following year's Joe Navidad. As the producer of 1968's Madigan's Millions, Pink was the first to cast future luminary Dustin Hoffman in a film. In his later years, the former producer would open a series of movie theaters in Puerto Rico and Florida. On October 12, 2002, Sidney Pink died in Pompano Beach, FL, following an extended illness. He was 86.