Sid Davis

Sidney "Sid" Davis (April 1, 1916 – October 16, 2006) was an American director and producer who specialized in social guidance films.

Early life

Davis was born on April 1, 1916 in Chicago, Illinois. He was born to a housepainter father and a seamstress mother. He moved to Los Angeles in 1920. The family moved to Hollywood, California when Davis was four years old. In 1920 he began working as a child actor for a comedy made by Harold Lloyd. He began working in the film industry as a child, landing bit parts. He dropped out of junior high school to help support his parents. When he was older he often worked as a stand-in for Leif Erickson and John Wayne. Peter L. Stein of the San Francisco Chronicle said "as a young man, because of his strapping stature, he earned steady work as a stand-in for John Wayne."

Filmmaking career

In November 1949 Linda Joyce Glucoft, a six-year-old girl in Los Angeles, California, was molested and murdered by a man named Fred Stroble. The story made front-page news in the Los Angeles Times for a week as police and the FBI searched for Stroble. The story was picked up by Time Magazine and other national media, and led to a flurry of reported rapes and attempted rapes. Some media began to speculate that the supposed epidemic of rape was simply media manipulation of public perception.