By the mid-1950s, the CinemaScope widescreen process had done what it set out to do — help bring back some of the audiences lost to television. With TV still black and white (and with tinny monaural sound), 20th Century-Fox decreed that all their CinemaScope pictures would be in color and stereo.

Independent B-producer Robert Lippert and Spyros Skouras, the head of 20^th Century-Fox, cooked up Regal Films, Inc. — an independent company that would produce second features for Fox release. Regal was to deliver 20 black and white CinemaScope pictures over the course of a year, an arrangement that would let Fox work around their no-color, no-‘Scope policy; Fox only distributed these films (and put up the money). At the end of the contract, ownership would go to Lippert.

To put aside Fox’s fear that these low-budget films would damage the prestige of the CinemaScope brand, a new name was chosen: Regalscope. Basically black and white CinemaScope, Regalscope often used the Bausch and Lomb CinemaScope lenses. Lippert and his team produced around 50 of these features from 1956 to 1959 — most of them Westerns.

These short (normally around 70 – 75 minutes) Westerns are usually pretty talky — talk’s cheaper than action, according to Lippert — and they seem to have spent 2 and five minutes propping some of the sets. The average budget was just 00,000. But the casts make up a parade of some of ‘50s Westerns’ best: John Agar, Morris Ankrum, Mari Blanchard, Scott Brady, Phyllis Coates, Mara Corday, Kathleen Crowley, Jim Davis, Margia Dean, John Dierkes, Brian Donlevy, Penny Edwards, Paul Fix, Jay C. Flippen, Wallace Ford, Beverly Garland, Coleen Gray, Dabbs Greer, James Griffith, Barton MacLane, Strother Martin, Joyce Meadows, Jeff Morrow, Robert Strauss, Forrest Tucker, Lee Van Cleef and Hank Worden. Ambush at Cimarron Pass gave Clint Eastwood an early role, while Charles Bronson had his first lead in Showdown at Boot Hill (both 1958).

Maury Dexter worked for Lippert during the Regalscope years, making sure they got a feature in the can in just a week. (Dexter received an associate producer credit on 1958’s Frontier Gun, one of the better titles.)

Maury Dexter: “We were shooting as many as 20 films a year… We had … first-rate production men with years of experience in their field. By name: Frank Parmenter, Herb Mendelshon, Clarence Eurist, Ralph Slosser and more. We hired directors of photography such as Floyd Crosby, Daniel Haller, James Wong Howe, Kenneth Peach, Ed Cronjager and Joe Birocletal – all top-flight cameramen, some Academy Award winners.”

The Fly (1958) was one of the larger-budgeted films the Regal team put together, and it was released under the 20^th Century-Fox banner. Its budget was seven times what they were used to working with. Sam Fuller’s China Gate and Forty Guns (both 1957) were Regal’s promoted by Fox once Skouras saw them. They open with the 20th Century-Fox logo.

Fox eventually dropped its color-‘Scope policy, paving the way for terrific black and white CinemaScope films like Sink The Bismarck! (1960) and The Innocents (1961). This made the Regal business model unnecessary. Lippert then entered into another agreement with Fox to make even cheaper ‘Scope films in the early 60s as Associated Producers.

With the rights reverting to him, Lippert quickly sold the Regal library to National Telefilm Associates (NTA) for television – at the time, one of the shortest paths from theater to TV. They ran pan-and-scan, of course, and this aesthetic atrocity hurt these modest films’ reputation over the years. Luckily, DVD and Blu-ray are slowly working to restore that reputation. Kronos (1957), a very good Regalscope science fiction picture, has been available on a letterboxed DVD for quite some time.

The Regal library changed hands from NTA to Republic to Paramount (with possibly another stop or two along the way), and some are among the Republic/Paramount titles licensed by Olive Films. To date, Olive’s brought out some key Regal’s on both DVD and Blu-ray – She Devil, Plunder Road (both 1957) and the Westerns Showdown at Boot Hill and Ambush at Cimarron Pass (both 1958), with The Quiet Gun (1957) promised before the year’s up.

Showdown at Boot Hill (1958)

Directed by Gene Fowler, Jr.
Written by Louis Vittes
Produced by Harold E. Knox
Cinematography: John M. Nickolaus Jr.

Cast: Charles Bronson, Robert Hutton, John Carradine, Carole Mathews, Fintan Meyler, Paul Maxey, Thomas Browne Henry.

In low-budget filmmaking, the quality of the finished film often comes down to the story and the performances. You can’t count on spectacle to pull you through. Showdown at Boot Hill has a simple, interesting premise — a bounty hunter (Charles Bronson) can’t get anyone to identify the outlaw he’s gunned down-a pretty solid script and a cast capable of pulling it off. Bronson would rarely have speeches like he does in this film, and he handles them well.

Director Gene Fowler, Jr. on working on Lippert pictures like Showdown at Boot Hill (from a Filmfax interview): “The Lippert experience was wonderful in a way because we had the run of the Fox lot. Whatever sets happened to be standing, we’d use them. My partner Lou Vittes and I would walk through these sets, ones that had already been shot for much more expensive pictures than we could make, and we would pretty much write our scripts around them!”

Ambush at Cimarron Pass (1958)

Directed by Jodie Copelan
Screenplay by Richard G. Taylor and John K. Butler
Story by Robert A. Reeds and Robert E. Woods
Cinematography: John M. Nickolaus Jr.

Cast: Scott Brady, Margia Dean, Clint Eastwood, Irving Bacon, Frank Gerstle, Dirk London.

Clint Eastwood called this the worst Western ever made. It misses that mark by a mile, but that doesn’t mean Ambush at Cimarron Pass is a good movie.Scott Brady is a cavalry officer (who fought for the Union during the Civil War) leading a prisoner through Indian Territory. His patrol hooks up with a group of former Confederates and together they head toward the fort, with Apaches on the warpath. This is pretty standard stuff, produced on a shoestring — often on a soundstage. Jodie Copelan, an editor, gets his only director credit for this one. In the end, Eastwood’s Regal experience didn’t come close to Bronson’s. But it’s a typical example of a Regalscope Western, worth a 72-minute investment.

The Quiet Gun (1957)

Directed by William F. Claxton
Cast: Forrest Tucker, Lee Van Cleef, Mara Corday, Jim Davis, Hank Worden

This may be the best of the Regalscope Westerns, though a number of them are pretty good. Frontier Gun (1958) with John Agar and Stagecoach To Fury (1957) with Forrest Tucker also stand out.

In The Quiet Gun, Tucker is a sheriff forced to stand between his friend and an entire town on a moral issue — the friend has a young Indian girl living with him. The sheriff begins to suspect that there’s a sinister motive behind the town council’s charge. Director Claxton had a long career in TV Westerns, and worked with Michael Landon on everything from Bonanza to Highway To Heaven. The Quiet Gun plays a bit like a really outstanding episode of a TV Western. And it boasts a terrific cast of our favorite character actors, including Lee Van Cleef, Jim Davis and Hank Worden.

It’s a real shame so few of the Regal’s are available — because once you get into them, you really want to see more.  And with their widescreen cinematography finally intact after decades on TV, the time is right for rediscovery.

Further reading: Talk’s Cheap, Action’s Expensive: The Films Of Robert L. Lippert by Mark Thomas McGee (BearManor Media, 2014).

Toby Roan watches a lot of cowboy movies. His blog, 50 Westerns from the 50’s, proves that point.