In 1935, Herbert Yates, the owner of Consolidated
Film Laboratories which was a film processing company, decided to go into
the film production arena. Yates approached (basically foreclosed on) several
film production companies that were heavily in debt to him and created a
merger to form Republic Pictures
The studios were Trem Carr and W. Ray
Johnston's Monogram Pictures , Paul
Malvern's Lone Star Pictures, Nat Levine's Mascot Pictures, M.H. Hoffman's
Liberty Films, and Chesterfield-Invincible
Pictures.
Monogram
was the largest and had a nationwide distribution system while Mascot had
a first class studio (previously the Mack Sennett studio).
Johnston was the first president and Levine was made
the vice-president. However, Yates did not get along with Johnston so after
a very short time, Yates made Levine president.
Within a year, conflicts arose between Johnston and Yates
to the point that Johnston pulled out and left Republic, taking Trem Carr
and Paul Malvern leaving with him.
With Levine as president, the first films looked very
much like a normal Mascot film, cheap and quickly made. They put their first
films out in the third quarter of 1935 and Republic was on it's way.
Republic was considered a B-Movie company but as time
went by the film
quality increased until Republic was good enough to warrant consideration
for Academy Awards.
Republic controlled all of the most popular cowboys and
became known as the king of serials and westerns.
In 1951, Republic realized that television was on the
increase. Republic created a new subsidiary Hollywood Television Service
to market Republic films on television. This went well for a few years but
soon failed due to poor management.
In 1958, Yates ceased all feature film production and
distribution came to a halt in 1959. In the early 1960s, Republic sold its
library of films to National Telefilm Associates (NTA). The Republic Studio
lot was sold to CBS.
Here are the posters for Republic Studios
in the Cinema
Poster Archive.
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1. Republic
Production Logs with production numbers from 1940-1953.
2. Republic
Studio Logo History
