[1] LeBorg is perhaps best known for the horror films he made at Universal studios in the 1940s for the Inner Sanctum Mystery series, including Calling Dr. Death (1943) and Weird Woman (1944).
[2] A perennial director of low-budget “B movie” Hollywood productions, LeBorg was notable for striving to render “every nuance and visual flair” from even the most mediocre screenplay.
[3][4] LeBorg's accomplishment is the scope of his oeuvre, spanning every film genre, including opera, musicals, crime drama, romantic comedy, westerns, science fiction and horror.
[25] When Blue Network began airing the popular Inner Sanctum Mystery on radio in 1941, Universal Pictures acquired the screen rights from Simon & Schuster to adapt the series to film.
He also did works for other series by Universal, such as Jungle Woman (1944) and The Mummy's Ghost (1944),[28] The popularity of these pictures was such that LeBorg became “typed as a horror director,” much to his disgust.
[37] San Diego, I Love You (1944): An opportunity to escape his low-budget B movie projects materialized when LeBorg was allowed to film a comedy based on a screenplay written in part by Ruth McKenney, author of My Sister Eileen (1938).
LeBorg adroit handling of the material and the actors, including Louise Allbritton, Edward Everett Horton and famous silent film star Buster Keaton, promised to be a success.
[42] After LeBorg's departure from Universal he proceeded to make films with the “low-budget” arm of United Artists, Comet Productions, as well as “Poverty row” studios such as Monogram Pictures and Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC).
LeBorg undertook the Palooka project determined to make the boxing scenes realistic, achieved in part by cinematographer Benjamin H. Kline.
[45] Though the series remained in demand for a number of years, these films are “all but forgotten today.”[46] LeBorg completed a single picture for the poverty row studio PRC: Philo Vance's Secret Mission (1947).
Though perhaps the best of PRC's three adaptions of the character created by S. S. Van Dine, LeBorg left PRC to join Columbia Pictures “B” unit to make a programmer, Port Said (1948), set in Turkey in the early 20th century involving foreign intrigue and starring Gloria Henry[47] Returning to Monogram, LeBorg directed three “routine” entertainments featuring Leo Gorcey and The Bowery Boys: Trouble Makers (1948), Fighting Fools (1949), and Hold That Baby!
[48] In 1950, LeBorg was afforded a single-movie contract with Universal to direct in color a “B” western, Wyoming Mail (1950), starring Alexis Smith with a talented supporting cast.
The production received favorable reviews but few box office receipts[51] LeBorg returned to Lippert to direct a vehicle for rising ‘sex-symbol’ Barbara Payton in Bad Blonde (1953), also released as The Flanagan Boy and This Woman is Trouble.
The “routine” picture suffered from Hammer's “draconian cost-consciousness.”[52] Actress Paulette Goddard, who co-starred in Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 Modern Times, was leading lady in Lippert's Sins of Jezebel (1953).
Despite the color cinematography by Gilbert Warrenton, the picture “lacks any real distinction.” LeBorg completed his work for Lippert with a “routine western,” The Great Jesse James Raid (1953).
He wrote and cast the color feature about an archeologist (William Lundigan), and a news photographer (Peggie Castle), who search for the surviving remnants of an indigenous culture in the jungles of Mexico.
Also titled Dr. Cadman's Secret, the movie featured a who's who of Gothic character actors: Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney, Jr., John Carradine, Tor Johnson, and Bela Lugosi (in one of his final roles).
[54] When the film proved a genuine box office success, Schenck and Koch prepared another project in which LeBorg directed iconic horror actor Boris Karloff.
[56] War Drums, a “patronizing and mechanical” recounting an episode in the life of Apache leader Mangus Coloradas, stars Lex Barker.
Considered an early Feminist western, and starring Mary Anders, Lisa Davis, and Penny Edwards , it concerns the exploits of the daughters of Dalton Gang members following summary executions at the hands of vigilantes.
[57][58] LeBorg did not win another directing contract for several years, until producer Edward Small offered him a science fiction script for The Flight That Disappeared (1961).
[60] Pleased with LeBorg's work, Small offered him a horror film, Diary of a Madman (1963), starring Vincent Price as the demented Simon Cordier.
LeBorg was attracted to the project due to the literary origins of the screenplay, a short story by 19th century French author Guy de Maupassant.
[62] LeBorg's penultimate directoral assignment was limited to shooting night-time, outdoor “atmosphere” sequences for the horror movie House of the Black Death (1965).
Also known as Psycho Sisters and starring Susan Strasberg and Faith Domergue, the film “never received a general theatrical release.” [64] A freelance director since the late 1940s, Leborg was at liberty to accept directorial assignments from the emerging television industry.
[66] In his 1988 interviews with filmmaker and biographer Wheeler Winston Dixon at University of Nebraska–Lincoln Film Studies Program seminar, LeBorg divulged little about his marriage in the published transcriptions.