Del Tenney

Tenney was born in Mason City, Iowa, in 1930. Moving with his parents at age 12 to Los Angeles while they found work during World War II. As an adult, he studied in theater programs in both Los Angeles City College and Cal State LA, with classmates including James Coburn and Alan Arkin. Later in 1954 he would move to New York and began acting alongside other part-time jobs to make ends meet, including washing dishes and working as a detective.^[3]

Starting out as an actor, he appeared in some Off-Broadway plays and summer stock, and also performed in the Broadway premiere of Terence Rattigan's play Ross.^[4][5][6] He would decide to quit acting in 1962 to focus on filmmaking. After working as an assistant director on several low budget features he would later categorize as soft core pornography,^[7] he then established a legacy in film directing several low-budget horror/exploitation films in the 1960s, including The Horror of Party Beach (1964). Based in Connecticut, Tenney's other films with producing partner Allen Iselin include Psychomania (a.k.a. Violent Midnight), The Curse of the Living Corpse, and I Eat Your Skin.^[8] After the production and trouble finding a distributor for Skin, and seeing the success of horror films with much larger budgets such as from Hammer and star-studded disaster films, Tenney felt the low-budget market had fallen apart and retired from filmmaking. ^[9]

Tenney died on February 21, 2013, at his home in Jupiter, Florida at the age of 82.^[10]

Tenney married stage and film actress Margot Hartman. They remained married until his death.^[1]