Producers Releasing Corporation
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| Industry | Film studio |
|---|---|
| Fate | Absorbed |
| Predecessor(s) | Producers Distributing Corporation |
| Successor(s) | Eagle-Lion Films (1950) United Artists (1955) |
| Founded | 1939 |
| Defunct | 1946 |
| Headquarters | Poverty Row |
| Key people | Sigmund Neufeld Sam Newfield |
Producers Releasing Corporation was one of the less prestigious Hollywood film studios on Poverty Row from the late '30s to the mid-'40s. PRC, as it was commonly known, made low-budget B-movies for the lower-half of a double bill. A few of its films have gained a respectable reputation over the years, but the majority of its output was routine, to say the least. The company was substantial enough to not only produce but distribute its own product and some imports from the UK, and operated its own studio facility, the complex used by the defunct Grand National Films Inc..
PRC released 179 feature films and never spent over $100,000 on a film.[1]
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[edit] History
The company evolved from the earlier Producers Distributing Corporation begun by exhibitor Ben Judell, which had hired Sigmund Neufeld and his brother Sam Newfield to make its films. After the collapse of PDC, the brothers established PRC. Most of the movies made were westerns or action melodramas, plus a number of horror movies, and each took a week or less to shoot.
PRC had very few star names on its payroll and mainly had to make do with either character actors (Neil Hamilton, Eddie Dean, Wallace Ford, Ralph Morgan), stars who were idle (Lee Tracy, Patsy Kelly, Benny Fields) or celebrities from other fields (burlesque queen Ann Corio, animal hunter Frank Buck, radio singer Frances Langford), however PRC acquired the services of Buster Crabbe following the expiration of his contract with Universal Pictures. PRC gave former Miss America of 1941 Rosemary LaPlanche the lead in two horror films: Strangler of the Swamp and Devil Bat's Daughter.
Typical PRC efforts include The Devil Bat with Bela Lugosi and a sequel Devil Bat's Daughter ; Misbehaving Husbands with silent-comedy star Harry Langdon; and Jungle Man and Nabonga, jungle thrillers with Buster Crabbe and Julie London in the latter. As with other studios of the time, PRC released a wide variety of westerns, including 17 films in the Lone Rider series, a Billy the Kid film series and The Frontier Marshals similar to Republic Pictures and Monogram's cowboy trio series.[2] PRC attempted its own version of The East Side Kids called The Gas House Kids in a series of three films. Mystery series were provided by three Philo Vance films.
Another notable film for the studio was Baby Face Morgan, a tongue-in-cheek gangster epic with Mary Carlisle, Robert Armstrong and Richard Cromwell. According to B Movies by Don Miller[disambiguation needed 
] (Copyright 1973 by Film Fan Monthly under arrangement with Curtis Books. Foreword copyright 1987 by Leonard Maltin, Paperback edition by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, New York. 361 pp.), "Most of the remainder of the 1942 PRC product dealt with gangsters, crime or whodunit puzzles, reliable standbys of the indie companies catering to action and grind theater houses. Baby Face Morgan played it for laughs, with Cromwell as a rube posing as a tough racketeer. Armstrong, [co-star] Chick Chandler and Carlisle lent strong support and while it never scaled any heights it was a passable spoof of the genre." During World War II PRC made several war films such as Corregidor, They Raid By Night, A Yank in Libya and a pair of films set in China, Bombs over Burma and Lady from Chungking, both starring Anna May Wong.
Austrian director Edgar G. Ulmer began working for the studio in 1942 and directed three films noirs there--Bluebeard (1944), Strange Illusion (1945) and Detour (1945). All three have been recognized more recently as minor artistic achievements. The PRC production Hitler's Madman was picked up by MGM for distribution, and one of PRC's music composers, Leo Erdody, was nominated for an Academy Award for his musical score for PRC's Minstrel Man in 1944.
PRC was purchased by Pathe Industries, though the only noticeable change was of the name of the company's production arm to PRC Pictures Inc. The company otherwise continued to flourish within its own element until after WWII with two film series; Hugh Beaumont making six detective films as Michael Shayne and Eddie Dean making a series of singing cowboy Westerns in Cinecolor the first Western series to be filmed in colour.
The distribution arm of the company was absorbed in the formation of Eagle-Lion Films Inc. in 1946, and the production arm (and with it, the entire company) followed shortly thereafter in 1947. Their final production was James Flood's The Big Fix of 1947. Eagle-Lion would distribute the backlog of films from PRC until 1955, when United Artists bought the company.
[edit] Legacy
From 1950 the American CBS network was screening PRC films on television.[3]
Many of PRC's films are in the public domain and appear on budget DVDs.
[edit] References
- ^ p.8 Rhodes, Gary Edgar G. Ulmer: Detour on Poverty Row Rowman & Littlefield, 30/12/2009
- ^ http://www.b-westerns.com/trio5.htm
- ^ p. 162 Dick, Bernard F.Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood University Press of Kentucky, 2001
- Dixon, Wheeler W. Producers Releasing Corporation: A Comprehensive Filmography and History. 1987 McFarland.
- Miller, Don. B Movies. Copyright 1973 by Film Fan Monthly under arrangement with Curtis Books. Foreword copyright 1987 by Leonard Maltin, Paperback edition by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, New York. 361 pp.
[edit] External links
- The History of PRC on (re)Search my Trash
- Producers Releasing Corporation at the Internet Movie Database
