Born to a Jewish family in
Hartford, Connecticut, Bischoff graduated from
Boston University, then headed for
Hollywood, where he began his career in 1922 by producing comedy
shorts including
Stan Laurel's
Mixed Nuts (1922). He was the head of Samuel Bischoff Productions, a low-budget production company in the 1930s. He drew the attention of
Columbia Pictures head
Harry Cohn, who hired him to supervise the studio's feature film productions. In 1932, he moved to
Warner Bros. and when
Hal B. Wallis became production chief after
Darryl F. Zanuck left in 1933, Bischoff and
Henry Blanke were the main producers at the studio. He returned to Columbia in 1941. He was also the President of Moroccan Pictures Inc. in 1948, producing the
George Raft film
Outpost in Morocco (1948). In 1950 he became production chief at
RKO replacing
Sid Rogell but did not stay long. His last film was
The Strangler (1964). Bischoff died in 1975, in
Hollywood,
California, from general debilitation at the age of 84. ==Filmography==