16 Facts About Sid Davis

Sidney Davis was an American director and producer who specialized in social guidance films.

The family moved to Los Angeles, California in 1920, when Sid Davis was four years old.

Sid Davis dropped out of junior-high school to help support his parents.

Sid Davis stated that the tragedy particularly disturbed him because his daughter Jill, then six years old herself, did not seem to pay attention to his warnings about strangers.

Sid Davis talked to John Wayne saying that a film about this should be made, and Wayne suggested that Sid Davis make the film.

Sid Davis used schoolchildren and police officers instead of professional actors.

Sid Davis sold copies of the film to schools and police departments, reaping a $250,000 profit.

Sid Davis used the money to make more than 150 films over the next few decades.

Sid Davis' films are typically 10 to 30 minutes long; he prided himself on making each one for $1,000, a minuscule film budget even at that time.

Sid Davis's films cover topics such as driver safety, marijuana use, heroin addiction, and gang warfare.

Also in 1961, Sid Davis made the film Seduction of the Innocent, targeting teenagers with the message that marijuana use leads to heroin addiction, a message that many marijuana activists dispute as an example of a slippery slope fallacy.

In 1964 his company Sid Davis Productions distributed his film Too Tough to Care, aimed at undermining teenage resistance to anti-smoking education.

Sid Davis' work is consistently about a relatively small group of themes: that strangers must be treated with caution, that the world itself is an unfriendly place, regardless of the presence of strangers, and that children must think before acting.

Sid Davis became involved in the real estate market in Los Angeles during the 1950s, at a time when it was booming due to development resulting from the influx of people to work in the defense industry.

Later in his life, Sid Davis became famous among mountain climbers, securing the world record for climbing California's Mt.

Sid Davis died in his house on October 16,2006, in Palm Desert, California, at age 90, of lung cancer.