The Films of Russ Doughten, Part 1: 1961–1968
Russ Doughten’s first screen credit was on a film that few could have guessed would go on to cinematic immortality: The Blob (1958). Doughten was credited as an associate producer on that film, a b-horror production that would grow in influence and esteem to the point that it would receive a deluxe home video release from the Criterion Collection decades after its theatrical run. Jack H. Harris, executive producer of The Blob, had a long career producing genre films including Equinox (1970), John Landis’s Schlock (1973), John Carpenter’s Dark Star (1974), and Fred Olen Ray’s Star Slammer (1986) in addition to Beware! The Blob (1972) and the 1988 remake of The Blob directed by Chuck Russell.
Russ Doughten also continued to work in film, but his career went in a very different direction. He will probably always be best known for his collaborations as producer with director Donald W. Thompson, specifically their series of Christian evangelical “End Times” films that began with A Thief in the Night (1972). But unlike Harris, who only directed one film in his post-Blob career (1966’s Unkissed Bride), Doughten directed one short film and ten features between 1961 and 1983. Most of these were explicitly evangelical Christian films produced by Heartland Productions, the company Doughten helped found in 1965 to produce films in his home state of Iowa.
The 1950s
Russ Doughten grew up in Iowa, graduating from Drake University in Des Moines with a bachelor’s degree in drama. He taught English and drama for a short time in the early 1950s, then left Iowa to earn a master’s degree in drama from Yale. Doughten graduated Yale in 1954 and was hired by Good News Productions, a Christian film production company based out of Pennsylvania. In the early 1950s Good News Productions purchased the former summer school campus of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Chester Springs and premiered their first film Twice Convicted on August 30 1952. Between 1952 and 1958, the company released over 160 films made for television and church screenings. Doughten acted as a producer and director for the company, and was recognized by the National Evangelical Film Foundation for his work on the film Desperate Measure (1957) produced with the Salvation Army.
In 1956 Jack Harris approached head of Good News Productions Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr. about getting into the production business. They formed a “secular” offshoot of Good News Productions called Valley Forge Films, and the new company’s first production fell into place when Yeaworth met Kate Phillips at the National Prayer Breakfast in February of 1957. Phillips, an actress who had worked on dozens of films in the 1930s and 1940s and had written for the television series Lux Video Theatre and The United States Steel Hour, was enlisted to write the screenplay for The Blob. Doughten moved to California in 1957, well before The Blob‘s theatrical release the following year. He tried to find work in the film industry in hopes of producing evangelical films instead of sci-fi teen pictures. Frustrated by his inability to find film work, he eventually returned to teaching drama at South Pasadena High School for a time. While he was unable to find feature film production or directing work at major studios, Doughten was able to apply his previous experience at Good News Productions when he was hired to direct an evangelical short film for teenagers.
“Teenage Diary” (1961)
“Teenage Diary” was produced in San Diego, and its earliest screenings on record took place in the Fall of 1961. The opening titles list the film as “An Alpha Omega Production for Dave Grant Productions.” Dave Grant was a minister with the organization Youth for Christ, and the film was a co-production between his production company and another company called Alpha-Omega based out of Glendale, California, contracted by Byron Wright. Wright was an Ohio-based Assemblies of God evangelist who dubbed himself “The U.S. Ambassador to the World’s Teens” and traveled the world with musician Paul Myers (“Wizard of the Keyboard”) speaking to young audiences. The film screened at churches all across the country throughout the decade, often at teen-oriented events with Dave Grant or Byron Wright and Paul Myers in attendance.
“Teenage Diary” opens with Penny Harris (Vonda Van Dyke), a teenager about to go on a big school dance date with Brad Martin (Harrell Poarch), writing about her excitement for the date in her diary. Her father Dan (Joe Folino) is an abusive drunk who berates Penny and her mother Ella (Margaret Middleton) when he sees the $49 dress Ella bought Penny for the occasion. Brad arrives and drives Penny to a tiki lounge where they meet their fellow teens. While they ride to the dance, Brad witnesses to Penny and says he asked God if he should ask her to the dance. Back at home Dan and Ella bicker until Dan angrily storms out to a bar. Eventually Dan gets drunk enough that he crashes the dance and finds Penny and Brad canoodling on the beach. In a rage, he shoves Penny into the ocean and beats Brad badly enough to put him in the hospital.
The following day Penny sneaks out of the house to go visit Brad. In the hospital, Brad’s parents explain that Dan “had good reason” to beat him up. Brad’s father Russ (Edmund Penney) explains the difference between God’s love and Brad’s idea of love. When they leave him alone in his room, Penny sneaks in to visit him, but due to a misunderstanding she thinks Brad has rejected her. She flees from the hospital and hops into the car of one of her lascivious classmates for a joyride to Mexico. When she returns home drunk her parents scream and hit her again, so she steals their car and drives to a high cliff overlooking the ocean. Brad and his parents, along with Penny’s parents, manage to reach her in time to prevent tragedy. Penny accepts the lord and the Harrises become a happy churchgoing family.
Thanks to Doughten’s extensive experience at Good News Productions, “Teenage Diary” is relatively accomplished for a low-budget independent short subject of its era. The most striking visual aspect of the film is its lighting. There are splashes of lurid colored lights in the tiki bar, and the late-night scenes at the Harris home are dominated by deep shadows. The aim for the film was clearly to address issues facing teenagers (especially Christian teens) in a way they would identify with. As with most such entertainment of its time, this means the dialogue is seriously overheated: while Brad lies beaten on the beach, he cries to the heavens “I love her, God! Is that so wrong?” The film’s soapy depiction of teen life must have felt hopelessly dated by the late 1960s, which coincided ironically with circumstances that considerably boosted its profile.
In the Fall of 1964, the film’s top-billed star Vonda Van Dyke was crowned Miss America 1965. It appears that screenings of the film across the country increased quite a bit following this, and at some point after she won the title “Teenage Diary” was issued as an LP on Word Records with an introduction by Dave Grant. The album consists of Grant narrating the action of the film while the sound from the movie plays. After the end of the film story, there is a brief interview between Grant and Van Dyke. Grant mentions working together with her on another film project, but that never materialized. Van Dyke was naturally extremely busy with her schedule as Miss America, which also included continuing her ventriloquist work with her dummy Kurley Q. She and Kurley made numerous appearances with influential evangelist Billy Graham; Van Dyke later became a gospel recording artist as well.
Most of the cast of “Teenage Diary” have no additional acting credits. Margaret Middleton appeared in Candy Stripe Nurses (1974) and extra Marjorie Swain would later appear in Doughten’s feature film Sammy (1977), making her the only member of the cast of this film to work with Doughten again. Joe Folino appeared in a pair of biker movies — Hell’s Chosen Few (1968) and The Hard Ride (1971) — but one other member of the cast went on to a long acting career. While Edmund Penney only appeared in two other feature films after “Teenage Diary” (1974’s Black Eye and 1977’s Billy Jack Goes to Washington), his subsequent television credits included appearances on a number of popular series in the 1980s like Remington Steele, Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Dynasty.
Similarly, many of those who worked behind the camera on the film had few if any other credits. Associate Producer Tim Frawley worked on the TV series Davey and Goliath as a production manager and production assistant Tracey Owen worked as assistant art director on Beach Ball (1965), produced by Gene Corman. Two other members of the crew did go on to notable careers in film and television. “Teenage Diary” was the first credit for Ted Gomillion, who later worked on a number of exploitation films including Boss Nigger (1975), Black Shampoo (1976), Once Upon a Girl… (1976), and Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979). Ray Storey earned his first credit as a production designer on the film, and he later collaborated with Doughten on several of his Heartland and Mark IV Pictures films in the 1970s. He also worked as art director on Spider Baby (1967), Some Call It Loving (1973), and Blue Sunshine (1977), and his other production design credits include Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985) and the TV series Baywatch, The Bradys, and Hunter among others. Storey’s further exploitation cinema credentials included work as a set decorator on The Farmer’s Other Daughter (1965), a producer on The House on Skull Mountain (1974), and visual consultant on Return of the Living Dead II (1988).
One other noteworthy alumnus of “Teenage Diary” was Marcy Tigner. While working on the film, Tigner became friends with star Vonda Van Dyke. Van Dyke encouraged Tigner to pursue ventriloquism, and the result was “Little Marcy.” Tigner released dozens of albums and performed with Little Marcy for decades, eventually gaining attention and becoming something of a celebrity among fans of outsider music. Tigner continued to perform at churches and events after her official retirement to Oregon in the 1980s. She passed away in 2012.
The Hostage (1967)
Heartland Productions was officially organized in July of 1965, with Russ Doughten named president. The company’s aim was to produce feature films out of Heartland’s home base in Iowa, and their first project was a thriller titled The Hostage adapted from the novel by Henry Farrell of the same name. Farrell’s work had previously been adapted in two high-profile Hollywood studio films of the 1960s: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). By October of 1965 sets were being built in a building on the Iowa State Fair grounds, and photography was completed by March of 1966. The Hostage was the first feature film shot entirely in the state of Iowa. The film’s editing, score, and titles were finished in California under Doughten’s supervision. Doughten took a finished print of the film to New York in July of 1966 in order to exhibit it for distributors, and it was acquired by Crown International Pictures for theatrical release. Heartland held the film’s official world premiere on October 26 1966 in Des Moines, which was followed by a ten-city tour of the film around Iowa with some of its cast and crew.
The Hostage stars Don Kelly as Bull, a dangerously violent man who kills a man in a drunken rage while his partner Eddie (Harry Dean Stanton) looks on helplessly. Bull and Eddie are movers, and the following day they have a job that Bull thinks will give them a perfect cover to move and dispose of the body. They arrive at the home of Steve and Carol Cleaves (Ron Hagerthy and Jennifer Lea) as the couple rushes to finish packing while their young son Davey (Danny Martins) restlessly mopes around outside by the moving truck. A homeless man named Otis (John Carradine) happens by during the move and the Cleaves’s gossipy neighbor Miss Mabry (Ann Doran) sees Davey speaking to Otis as she peeps on the proceedings. In the confusion of the move, Davey gets stuck in the back of the moving truck and accidentally tags along with Bull and Eddie as they load up the body and take it out to the woods to bury it. Steve and Carol frantically search for Davey and Otis in town after Miss Mabry tells them she saw the two together. Meanwhile, the boy is chased through the countryside by the unhinged Bull and Eddie, whose conscience may finally get the best of him when he realizes Bull’s plans for the boy.
Heartland’s aim was to produce feature films for wide distribution, and they succeeded on that count right away. If anything, it’s surprising that the film wasn’t picked up by a larger distributor. Crown was well-established, but the production quality of The Hostage is on par with modestly-budgeted major studio features of its era. The film is a big step up from the relatively small production of “Teenage Diary,” and Doughten’s hiring of film and television veterans on both sides of the camera paid off. The most noticeable area in which its low budget is most evident is in a pair of awkwardly staged vehicle accidents, both rapidly cut to a point of near-incomprehensibility. Otherwise the film looks and sounds like a solid studio B-picture, with an able cast of familiar faces, some effectively tense scenes, and a brisk 81-minute running time.
While young Danny Martins won his role through an open casting call in Iowa, the rest of the film’s principal cast were all seasoned film and television actors. John Carradine and Ann Doran had each accrued literally hundreds of credits in their respective careers by the time they appeared in The Hostage. Harry Dean Stanton — credited as “Dean Stanton” — had a handful of feature film credits but had appeared in dozens of television series in the 1950s and 60s. Ron Hagerthy and Jennifer Lea were similarly seasoned television actors. The undisputed star of the film, however, was Don Kelly. Like his costars, Kelly had played on a number of popular television series as well as appearing in several feature films. The Hostage could have been his breakout performance, but he died suddenly following a surgery in Culver City, California on October 2 1966.
Behind the camera, Doughten’s crew consisted largely of veterans of Roger Corman’s American International Pictures and other films that had been distributed by Crown International. Makeup artist William Condos’s first credit was Secret File: Hollywood (1962), and just before The Hostage he worked on Blood Bath (1966) and Queen of Blood (1966). Sound supervisor Lee Strosnider was cinematographer on The Skydivers (1964) and sound mixer on Single Room Furnished (1966), Jayne Mansfield’s final film (which shared several crew members with The Hostage). While many of these AIP and Crown alumni would later have lengthy careers in the film industry, one in particular enjoyed huge mainstream success in his later endeavors. Assistant director and editor Gary Kurtz had previously worked as assistant director on Beach Ball (1965) and Monte Hellman’s Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), and as a producer he was nominated for two Academy Awards in the 1970s for American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977).
Composer Jaime Mendoza-Nava was a regular collaborator of director John Hayes. Before The Hostage, Mendoza-Nava previously worked on Hayes’s debut feature The Grass Eater (1961, starring Rue McClanahan) and Shell Shock (1964) and later scored some of Hayes’s subsequent features. He also scored a number of other exploitation films including Bigfoot films The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) and Creature from Black Lake (1976), true crime/horror docudrama The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Cirio H. Santiago’s Vampire Hookers and Death Force (both 1978), and the video store cult favorite Mausoleum (1983). Boom operator Austin McKinney had a similarly distinguished career in cult and exploitation films after The Hostage in a variety of different roles behind the camera. He was cinematographer on Pit Stop (1969), Axe (1974), and Redneck Miller (1976), and his additional sound credits include Desert Hearts (1985) and Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992). McKinney also worked in special effects and photography for a number of classic genre films including Escape from New York (1981), Galaxy of Terror (1981), Night of the Comet (1984), and The Terminator (1984).
One of Doughten’s major collaborators on The Hostage, however, would go on to a level of status in cult/exploitation cinema far beyond any of the rest of the film’s cast and crew. The film’s director of photography was Ted V. Mikels, the legendary director of The Black Klansman (1966), The Astro-Zombies (1968) and The Corpse Grinders (1971). John Waters himself said of Mikels: “Ted V. Mikels puts the ‘exploit’ in exploitation. He’s pretty amazing.” Before The Hostage, Mikels had directed a handful of films of his own in addition to working as cinematographer on Day of the Nightmare (1965). He later acted as an executive producer on Bob Clark’s Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972), and continued working in filmmaking up until his death in 2016.
Mikels was a fascinating character, a fiercely independent filmmaker who infamously lived for a time in a “castle” in California with a revolving crew of women he called “Castle Ladies” who helped work on his films. In Christopher Wayne Curry’s book Film Alchemy: The Independent Cinema of Ted V. Mikels, Mikels recalled how he went drinking with John Carradine one evening during the filming of The Hostage:
“We’re sitting in this bar having a few drinks and John looks at me and says, ‘What the hell are you and I doing in Des Moines, Iowa, anyway? We’re the only two people on this set who are professionals.’ That was funny, and then later something not so funny happened. After a few more drinks, John began reciting Shakespeare aloud; and someone at the bar apparently wasn’t interested in hearing it, so he socked John square in the eye and put him in the hospital overnight.”
In short, it is difficult to imagine Mikels and the strait-laced Doughten working together. One can’t help but wonder what their working relationship must have been like.
Fever Heat (1968)
In May of 1967, Heartland announced that it had acquired the film rights to two novels by West Des Moines author Henry Gregor Felsen: Fever Heat (which was originally published under Felsen’s pen name Angus Vickers) and Rag Top (one of a series of books Felsen wrote geared towards teenagers). Felsen’s work focused on car racing, a reliably popular subject for contemporary films at every level of production from William Asher’s teen stock car action/comedy Fireball 500 for American International Pictures to John Frankenheimer’s 65mm epic Grand Prix (both 1966) for MGM. Principal photography on Fever Heat began in Iowa on September 13 1967 and was finished on October 18, and post-production was completed in March of 1968.
When it came time for Heartland to find distribution for the film, they were able to aim for bigger companies since they had completed The Hostage and secured distribution for it. They also had a major incentive to bypass lower-tier distributors: they felt Crown International had mishandled the release of The Hostage. Heartland finished its first year with a large operating loss thanks to less profit than expected from The Hostage and the steep cost of producing Fever Heat. They made a deal for national distribution of Fever Heat with Paramount Pictures, including a premiere engagement beginning May 1 1968 in Los Angeles with 100 prints and rolling out to a wider release with up to 300 prints across the country.
In Fever Heat, mechanic and former stock car racer Ace Jones (Nick Adams) happens upon an auto garage run by young widow Sandy Richards (Jeannine Riley) when his truck breaks down. Sandy’s husband Bob ran the garage for a time before he was killed in a crash during a stock car race, and now she wants nothing to do with the sport or its drivers. But Ace talks her into hiring him on and making him her business partner, and soon he’s pitching the garage’s services to all the local racers as well as calling due all the debts they owe Sandy. Ace’s hiring angers Bob’s younger brother Ronnie (Daxson Thomas), who stayed on to work for Sandy after Bob’s death along with Toad (Vaughn Taylor), the old mechanic who has worked at the garage longer than some of his coworkers have been alive.
Ace tries to put the squeeze on local track owner Herbert (Norman Alden) by threatening to repossess all the parts on all the area racers’ cars unless Herbert agrees to give him a split of the track’s profits until the parts are paid for. This puts Ace and Herbert at odds in both business and love, as Herbert seems to have eyes for Sandy. For her part, Sandy is head over heels for Ace despite his consistently unpleasant demeanor and his plan to rebuild the car that Bob died in so Ronnie can race in it. Ace falls for Sandy, too, but soon he’s lured back into the driver’s seat and finds himself unable to give it up. Will he and Sandy be able to live happily ever after, or will his single-minded drive for glory destroy them all?
Despite its high production values and major-studio distribution, Fever Heat was not the hit Heartland Productions hoped it would be. There’s no question as to why Paramount picked it up — Fever Heat was clearly a much more expensive production than The Hostage, one easily on the level of studio pictures of the day. The racing sequences of the film are exciting, and the chemistry between leads Adams and Riley is compelling. However, at 105 minutes Fever Heat is Doughten’s longest film by nearly half an hour and it drags when its focus moves to interpersonal drama. The further the action drifts from the race track, the more aimless it feels. Nearly the entire film takes place at the track or Sandy’s garage, so despite being filmed entirely in Iowa the film doesn’t really take advantage of its locales the way The Hostage did. In a bizarre echo of Don Kelly’s death before the release of The Hostage Nick Adams died of a drug overdose in February of 1968, three months before the theatrical premiere of Fever Heat. It is possible the film would have fared better at the box office with its star to promote it, but it seems unlikely. Heartland’s investment in making a Hollywood-quality production resulted in a glossy, well-made film but one with very little personality.
While none of the cast of The Hostage appeared in Fever Heat, several crew members returned to work with Heartland on their second film. Virginia Martindale did casting for both films and worked with Doughten and Thompson on some of their later productions, as well as television series Family Affair and My Three Sons and the film Return to Boggy Creek (1977). Assistant producer Dick Talarico also collaborated on some of the later Heartland films as a producer and writer. Ray Storey returned as production designer and Jaime Mendoza-Nava composed the film’s score. Lee Strosnider was the film’s sound mixer, and Austin McKinney graduated from boom operator on The Hostage to assistant sound mixer on Fever Heat. Key grip Tom Ramsey also worked on both films and was credited as key grip on a number of later cult classics and mainstream hits including Targets (1968), Easy Rider (1969), A Boy and His Dog (1975), The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), Heart Like a Wheel (1983), Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1985), Above the Law (1988), and Sleepwalkers (1994).
Brianne Murphy was credited with continuity on The Hostage and Fever Heat, two of an impressively varied array of credits in her distinguished career. Prior to working on the Heartland films, Murphy acted in Jerry Warren’s Teenage Zombies and supervised the production of his film The Incredible Petrified World (both 1959), and was script supervisor on Lon Chaney, Jr.-starring horror film House of Black Death (also starring John Carradine) and “beach party” movie One Way Wahine (both 1965). Following her work on Fever Heat she worked as a production assistant on The Gay Deceivers (1969) and cinematographer on dozens of films and television series up through the 1990s including Wonder Woman, Trapper John, M.D., Little House on the Prairie, and The Louie Show. Murphy also directed the occult horror film Blood Sabbath (1972) featuring Dyanne Thorne and Anthony Geary, vaguely Christian teen drama To Die, to Sleep (aka Mortal Danger, 1994) with Ami Dolenz and Charles Napier, and six episodes of the 1998 run of the heavily Andy Sidaris-indebted TV action series Acapulco H.E.A.T. Her television work garnered her four Emmy nominations and one win for cinematography, and she became the first female member of the American Society of Cinematographers. In 1980 she was the first female director of photography on a major studio union production (Fatso, directed by Anne Bancroft). She also shared a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award with Donald Schisler for development of a system to protect crew while shooting moving vehicles in 1982.
Two crew members working with Heartland for the first time on Fever Heat had long subsequent careers as well. This film was the first screen credit for Ron Foreman as makeup artist, which he followed up with makeup work on Schoolgirls in Chains, The Young Nurses, and Invasion of the Bee Girls (all 1973). Foreman moved into art direction and production design in the 70s and worked his way up from cult curiosities like Die, Sister, Die! (1972) and Inside Amy (aka Swingers Massacre, 1974) to studio pictures including Rocky III (1982), Colors (1988), and Bad Influence (1990). Editor Tom Boutross was credited as editor and co-director of The Hideous Sun Demon (1959), and after Fever Heat he directed several episodes of The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. As an editor, Boutross reunited with a number of other Heartland alumni on The Legend of Boggy Creek and The Town That Dreaded Sundown, both directed by Charles B. Pierce. He edited Pierce’s films Winterhawk (1975) and Winds of Autumn (1976), as well as writer/director Earl E. Smith’s horror/western The Shadow of Chikara (1977) starring Joe Don Baker and Sondra Locke. Boutross was credited as a co-producer on The House on Skull Mountain (which shared several crew with Heartland’s 1960s productions) and producer on absurdist slasher Appointment with Fear (1985) and teen comedy Free Ride (1986), both executive produced by Halloween (1978) producer Moustapha Akkad.
Following the disappointing box office returns of Fever Heat, Heartland Productions abandoned their plan to produce Rag Top as a follow-up. In 1969 Heartland acquired the rights to adapt William Butler’s novel The Butterfly Revolution, a move which sparked some controversy among the company’s shareholders who were concerned about how to approach nudity in their films. Their concern was likely exacerbated by Paramount’s suggestive advertising for Fever Heat — including the tagline “I’m a woman, Ace. And I do everything that women do…” — which had drawn some negative attention from conservative cultural critics and probably did not go over well with the Heartland board.
Due to heavy losses on The Hostage and Fever Heat, however, Heartland had decided to expand their investments in Iowa theaters and focus entirely on film exhibition by April of 1970. The company’s involvement in exhibition had been a controversial issue among shareholders from the beginning, but it had become the only thing that could keep the company afloat. Heartland’s Wakonda Theatre was apparently something of an “arthouse” theater, in 1971 bringing premiere Iowa runs of Brother John, Vanishing Point, Friends, and Walkabout. Regardless of how the more conservative shareholders of the company may have felt about those films, their worst fears were realized when Heartland was charged with “exhibiting an obscene show” and fined $100 for screening Danish sex comedy Without a Stitch (1968) at the Century Cinema in April of 1971. By this point it seemed Heartland had strayed quite far from its original mission, and the future looked bleak.
By the end of 1972, the situation at Heartland had taken a major turn. That year Russ Doughten met a young man named Donald W. Thompson, who approached Doughten with a revolutionary idea that would have a cultural impact beyond what either man could have imagined: a modern-day “End Times” film called A Thief in the Night.
Continue to “The Films of Donald Thompson, Part 1: 1972–1975”
Newspaper sources:
“All around the town: Studded with History… Happy! Here 5 Years….” Pottstown Mercury [Pottstown, Pennsylvania] 6 September 1952: 13
Bass, Milton R. “The Lively World.” Bennington Banner [Bennington, Virginia] 24 June 1968: 10
“Buys Film Rights to Felsen Novels.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 26 May 1967: 12.
Clark, Tom. “The Business Side: Clow, With Moderate Gain In ’68, Sees Growth Ahead.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 6 April 1969: 9
Clark, Tom. “The Business Side: Heartland Now Exhibitor; Still Hopes To Produce.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 19 April 1970: 8-G
Clark, Tom. “The Business Side: Heartland Stockholders Object To Theater Plan.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 12 April 1967: 16
Clark, Tom. “The Business Side: Heartland Will Handle Nudity ‘Very Carefully.’” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 9 April 1969: 13
Clark, Tom. “Paramount Film Agrees To Handle New Iowa Movie.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 10 April 1968: 14
Eggers, Jack. “Filmmaker is a prophet of sorts.” The Kerrville Times [Kerrville, Texas] 24 December 1999: 9A
“Evangelist Launches Cobo Hall Convention: Gambles on God — and Teens.” Detroit Free Press [Detroit, Michigan] 16 December 1961: 6
“Film Premiere Scheduled Here.” Pottstown Mercury [Pottstown, Pennsylvania] 27 August 1952: 1
Harvey, Paul. “Miss America has fourth dimension.” The Brazosport Facts [Freeport, Texas] 24 September 1964: 4
“‘Hostage’ Bus Scheduled for Carroll Stop.” Carroll Daily Times Herald [Carroll, Iowa] 25 October 1966: 1
“Iowa Film Group Uses Des Moines As Movie Locale.” The Lincoln Star [Lincoln, Nebraska] 8 October 1965: 22
“Iowa’s Movie to New York.” Ames Daily Tribune [Ames, Iowa] 8 July 1966: 7
Kneeland, Debra. “Praying is paying off for Christian filmmaker.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 30 July 1981: 1C
Lamberto, Nick. “Lincoln Firm Purchases 3 D.M. Movie Theaters.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 19 December 1972: 3
“Miss America Appears in Teen Movie.” El Paso Herald-Post [El Paso, Texas] 28 November 1964: A3
“Obscenity Charges Filed Against Heartland Cinema.” Ames Daily Tribune [Ames, Iowa] 7 April 1971: 12
“Out of Escrow.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 27 March 1966: 9-L
“Phoenix Girl Has Lead In Movie On Religion.” Arizona Republic [Phoenix, Arizona] 25 November 1961: 23
“Plan Iowa Production Of Movies.” The Mason City Globe-Gazette [Mason City, Iowa] 15 July 1965: 2
“Plead ‘no contest’ to obscenity charge.” Ames Daily Tribune [Ames, Iowa] 8 April 1971: 10
“Premiere Oct. 26 of ‘The Hostage.’” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 18 September 1966: 2-L
“Star of Iowa Film Dies After Surgery.” Estherville Daily News [Estherville, Iowa] 5 October 1966: 7
“Stars of Iowa-Made Movie Visit the City.” Iowa City Press-Citizen [Iowa City, Iowa] 28 October 1966: 4
“TV Star Nick Adams Found Dead In His Home; No Signs Of Foul Play.” The Daily Herald [Provo, Utah] 8 February 1968: 14
Weinberg, Steve. “Filmmaker sees the light, focuses on making religious movies.” The Des Moines Register [Des Moines, Iowa] 10 April 1977: 4F
Williams, Edgar. “A Switch at Chester Springs: Instead of religious movies, now science fiction.” The Philadelphia Inquirer Today Magazine [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] 16 November 1958: 40, 42
“Youth Rallies Set At First Assembly Of God.” Santa Cruz Sentinel [Santa Cruz, California] 7 February 1964: 14
