A Lee County native had a prodigious if not distinguished career as a film and television director and producer. Arthur Jean Wilker Yarbrough was born in Marianna in 1900 and was working in silent movies in California by 1922.
Yarbrough directed short films in the 1920s and his first feature-length film, Rebellious Daughters, in 1938. Over the next decade or so, he directed fifty-two feature films, mostly B-movies for Hollywood’s Poverty Row. He moved into television in the 1950s, directing episodes of The Addams Family, Gunsmoke, Death Valley Days, McHale’s Navy, The Life of Riley and Petticoat Junction. Yarbrough was married at least twice and his daughter Janice would later work as an actress and producer.
His last feature film was 1967’s Hillbilly’s in a Haunted House, but he also directed The Over-the-Hill Gang for television two years later, which was considered a success. He continued directing television episodes into the 1970s, dying at Los Angeles in 1975.
To learn more, visit encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
You can read the entire Encyclopedia entry at Yarbrough, Arthur Jean Wilker - Encyclopedia of Arkansas.
