Lesley Selander (1900-79) had his beginnings in the film industry as a lab technician. As was possible in the 1920s, he worked his way up to become a camera operator, and eventually an assistant director. He directed a few low-budget pictures in 1926, including two starring Pal the Wonder Dog, but otherwise remained an AD until the mid thirties.
Selander worked on nearly thirty films as AD, including The Thin Man (1934), Fritz Lang’s Fury ( 19360 and Hawks’s Ceiling Zero (1936). He also worked on two of MGM’s musicals, The Cat and the Fiddle and A Night at the Opera.
After turning to directing, Selander worked on a record 107 low-budget westerns with what has been considered a better-than-average sophistication and style. Occasional forays into other genres include Return from the Sea (1954) a romance starring Neville Brand and Jan Sterling.
Selander directed a lot of television episodes from the late fifties onwards, including a return to canine adventures with over fifty episodes of Lassie (1958-59).
His final feature was Arizona Bushwackers (1968), with Howard Keel, John Ireland and Yvone De Carlo, one of A C Lyles’s low-budget productions, known derogatorily as ‘geezer westerns’.
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