Career
He was the father of Edward L. Alperson Junior. (April 3, 1925-October 31, 2006). Alperson started his Hollywood career as a film salesman for B. P. Schulberg"s Preferred Pictures Corporation.
Prior to the firm"s 1925 bankruptcy, Alperson joined the film distribution section of Warner Brothers in 1924.
In 1934 Alperson formed Grand National Distributors initially to distribute films from independent producers and British films to be released in America. However, in 1936 he expanded Grand National into Grand National Pictures to produce its own films and acquired the studio complex of the defunct Educational Pictures as a production facility.
Grand National initially began with a variety of low-budgeted films, including westerns with Tex Ritter, a Renfrew of the Royal Mounted series, singing cowgirl Dorothy Page, adventure films shot in Cinecolor, melodramas such as In His Steps, based on the book of the same name, and it released British films such as Boris Karloff"s Juggernaut. What promised to be Alperson"s good fortune turned out to be his downfall when he befriended James Cagney, then on suspension from Warner Brothers
Alperson produced a crime film for Cagney called Great Guy but when Cagney refused another crime film, Angels With Dirty Faces--later filmed by Cagney at Warners--the studio overspent on a musical for Cagney, Something to Sing About, that was a major box-office failure and spelled the end of Grand National.
He bounced back, however, in 1942 as the general manager of Radio-Keith-Orpheum Pictures" theater circuit. The first film he produced for Fox was Black Beauty. His films used a variety of names for the production company such as "Alco", "Alson", "Alplee" and "National Pictures".
Finishing with Fox after September Storm (1960), Alperson acquired distribution rights to a pair of Japanese science-fiction films, The Last War and The Human Vapor.
He later (1963) acquired the film rights to director Billy Wilder"s Irma Louisiana Douce--his last project of note--for Mirisch Productions but without the music