Jungle Jim movies for Jungle Manhunt (1951) and Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land (1952), and did California Conquest (1952) with Cornel Wilde. Fred F. Sears, formerly an actor in Columbia features, began directing Columbia's Charles Starrett westerns; when that series lapsed, he started work for Katzman with Last Train from Bombay (1952) starring Hall. Wallace Grissell directed A Yank in Indo-China (1952) and Sidney Salkow directed The Golden Hawk (1952) with Sterling Hayden and The Pathfinder (1952) with George Montgomery. Columbia's president Harry Cohn sometimes used the Sam Katzman unit as a threat, to keep recalcitrant actors in line or terminate an unwanted contract. Columbia owed Lucille Ball one feature assignment and an $85,000 salary, which Cohn tried to sidestep by sending Ball a "tits and sand" script from the Katzman unit. Cohn was confident that Ball would refuse the Katzman assignment, thus breaking her contract. Ball bristled at the script but didn't want to lose the salary, so she told Cohn she loved the script and agreed to the assignment. Cohn was forced to honor the agreement, and to his credit he allowed a higher production budget for The Magic Carpet (1951), which was filmed in Super Cinecolor. Director Spencer Bennet continued to make serials like Blackhawk (1952) and King of the Congo (1952), and branched into features such as Brave Warrior (1952) with Hall and a Jungle Jim film, Voodoo Tiger (1952). (In February 1952 Katzman renewed his options to make more Weissmuller movies.) Paul Henreid returned to Katzman to star in Thief of Damascus (1952), directed by Will Jason. In July 1952 Katzman announced he would make at least 15 films a year for seven years. In November 1952 this contract was amended so Katzman would make twenty films (seventeen features and three serials). William Castle joined the Katzman group as director in 1953, starting with Serpent of the Nile (1953) with Rhonda Fleming and Raymond Burr. Castle later wrote in his memoirs that Katzman "was a smallish man with a round cherubic face and twinkling eyes. Few people in the motion picture industry took him seriously as a producer of quality films, but to me, Sam was a great showman." Castle went on to make a series of films for Katzman including Slaves of Babylon (1953) with Richard Conte, Conquest of Cochise (1953) with John Hodiak, and two Westerns with Montgomery, Fort Ti (1953) and