Hugh McCollum

Hugh McCollum (March 9, 1900 – March 16, 1968) was an American film producer best known for his credits on Three Stooges short subject comedies.

Career McCollum was born in the Philadelphia suburb of Ridley Park, Pennsylvania. He attended the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and later matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania for one year. In 1929, McCollum was hired as a secretary to the Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn. He gradually worked his way up the corporate ladder, and when the studio's short-subject department became successful enough to support two units, department head Jules White led the first unit, and Hugh McCollum was placed in charge of the second. Years later, Bernds discussed his trying experience during the filming of A Bird in the Head:

It was an awful tough deal for a novice rookie director to have a Curly who wasn't himself. I had seen Curly at his greatest and his work in this film was far from great. The wallpaper scene was agony to direct because of the physical movements required to roll up the wallpaper and to react when it curled up in him. It just didn't work. As a fledgling director, my plans were based on doing everything in one nice neat shot. But when I saw the scenes were not playing, I had to improvise and use other angles to make it play. It was the wallpaper scene that we shot first, and during the first two hours of filming, I became aware that we had a problem with Curly.

Later years After Columbia, McCollum became the production manager for Gene Autry's Flying A Productions,

Hugh McCollum died on March 16, 1968, in the Corona del Mar section of Newport Beach, California.