Background
Karlson, Phil was born on July 2, 1908 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Karlson, Phil was born on July 2, 1908 in Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Studied at Loyola University, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Karlson has a modest but secure place in the history of crime movies with Scandal Sheet. The Phenix City Story, The Brothers Rico, and The Scarface Mob. It took some fifteen years of odd jobs around the industry before he directed. Karlson had a long duty as assistant director: The Countess of Monte Cristo (34, Karl Freund); Manhattan Moon (35, Stuart Walker); Rio (39, John Brahm); and Seven Sinners (40, Tay Garnett).
He soon showed himself a competent director of adventure pictures, but had an especially fertile period with violent, urban thrillers. The acute sense of corruption in Phenix City Story is several years ahead of a general acknowledgment of sordid city life in America. While in Five Against the House he made one of the most exciting planned- crime movies, aided by the sultry presence of a young Kim Novak. Also notable are the character studies in his Western, Gunman’s Walk, and the uninhibited brutality of an early European espionage movie, The Secret Ways. His final work lacked the impact of the pictures made in the middle and late 1950s.