Howard Lydecker

Howard "Babe" Lydecker and his older brother Theodore Lydecker were the undisputed masters of miniature special effects in Hollywood from 1935-1953. Begining their careers with Nat Levine's Mascot Pictures in the early 1930s, they were swept up in Mascot's 1935 merger with Monogram Pictures and Liberty Pictures to form Republic Pictures, headed by the owner of film processing lab Consolidated Film Industries, the autocratic Herbert J. Yates). The Lydeckers were perhaps the primary beneficiaries of the merger. It allowed their creativity to run wild, giving them unlimited access to CFI's optical effects at a time when most of Republic's product demanded high-caliber special effects. The production pressures put on them by Yates ironically gave them the structure and incentive they needed to excel. Babe became the head of Mascot's old carpenter shop and moved into the back lot of Republic's studio, eventually supervising some 20 technicians. Babe and Ted worked closely (they were nicknamed "the twins," despite there being a three-year difference in their ages) together during the entire production history of Republic Pictures (until its demise in 1956). The Lydeckers' effects were the envy of every studio in Hollywood and their talents can probably be seen to best advantage in Flying Tigers (1942), a WW II action picture about a squadron of American pilots fighting the Japanese in China, with loads of dogfights, plane crashes, etc.--and was shot using only mock-ups and miniatures, with not a single real aircraft being used throughout the entire picture.