Roger Corman: 'My work in low-budget exploitation films would eventually earn me some notoriety as 'The King of the B's', which is ironic ... I never made a B movie in my life. The B movie dated from the Depression and was a phenomenon only up through the early 1950s... Bs had died out by the time I began directing. The term was never used in connection with any of my films within the industry, where the precise meaning of the term was always known.'

You may well be asking, 'Why are we discussing this? Didn't you previously write a massively informative and entertaining article about B movies, Clifford?' Why, yes, thank you, you say the sweetest things. This time, though, we're going to concentrate on the so-called Poverty Row studios who specialized in B pictures yet sometimes (admittedly, rarely) managed to create worthy product that deserves to be better remembered.

Where was Poverty Row and why would I want to visit there?

Great question. Think of Poverty Row as the 'indies' of the 1920s-1950s; whereas if MGM or Paramount needed a costume, they designed and sewed one, and they had soundstages and cameras and microphones aplenty, and edible, fresh food at the commissary, an outfit like Tiffany or Chesterfield would most likely need to rent the costumes, sets, cameras, and props needed for their productions, point you to the nearest coffee shop at lunch time, and hope to make enough money from the current picture to finance their next one. In those days, a theatre would rent the film (usually from a distributor, or film exchange, not from the studio itself) for either a flat rate or for a percentage of the box-office take. For the small companies, that option wasn't usually available; not having the resources to audit the take (nor the drawing power to make a percentage profitable), they were forced to accept a flat rate, from small theatres as little as 0 a feature for a specified period of time. Clearly, there wasn't much of a profit margin, nor room for a flop. Invariably, the flop occurred, or the studio had trouble collecting its accounts receivable, or a bank called in its loan at an inopportune time, and by the following week the studio's assets were available on whatever the 1935 version of eBay was.

'Great news, Mom! I got a job with Chesterfield Pictures! Check for enclosed.”

For actors and actresses, Poverty Row was where you went to avoid an eviction notice, the Payday Loans of its day. Nobody aspired to work for Monogram or Tiffany, but with the Depression raging and the wolf scratching at your door, the second female lead in a Mr. Wong picture looked like a pretty sweet career move for most actresses. Occasionally, you found some young talent on the way up, though; both John Wayne and Gene Autry worked steadily at Mascot in the early 1930s. You could also find good talent on the way down; we're sure Paulette Goddard must've had quite a time late in life discussing her stint working for Lippert Productions.

Some of the Poverty Row outfits aspired to be major production companies and make A films; some saw a need for low-budget product and aimed to fill the hole left by larger studios. Let's take a guided tour through three of the typical Poverty Row distribution/production companies and look for hidden gems, shall we?

Eddie Alperson was a veteran salesman of other people's films who decided to get into distribution and production; in the mid-1930s, he purchased the small studio that had housed Educational Pictures and teamed with Jimmy Cagney, who was feuding over money with his boss, Jack L. Warner. Grand National financed and distributed a series of B pictures in the action, musical and western genres, brought in British imports, and discovered one bona fide star, Tex Ritter. Cagney chose for himself the type of role he'd played so successfully at Warners, and starred in the gangster picture Great Guy, reunited with Mae Clarke from his career-making first hit, The Public Enemy. Cagney plays an honest inspector battling crooked politicians in this crackerjack feature that proved a solid hit.

Everything seemed to be clicking and Grand National looked to be here to stay; they acquired a script called Angels with Dirty Faces as Cagney's tough-guy follow up to Great Guy, but Cagney was itching to do something different: a musical. Victor Schertzinger produced, wrote, and directed a film called Something to Sing About, pairing Cagney with young, untested starlet Evelyn Daw. The budget ballooned and despite good reviews and an Oscar nomination for its score (which lacked a hit song), the public rejected the film (featuring Cagney as a New York dancer anxious to make it big in movies) and it flopped, big time. Alperson had over-reached himself; Cagney went back to Warners (sticking Angels with Dirty Facesin his coat pocket as he left) and Grand National limped on for a couple of years making low-budget Renfrew of the Mounties and Shadow films before the doors were chained shut in 1940 and their facilities were acquired by...

Producers Releasing Corporation

Probably the most notorious of the Poverty Row studios, PRC was where you went if even Monogram wouldn't hire you and the donut shop on the corner didn't need a dish washer. Created in the late 1930s to distribute low-budget westerns, PRC found themselves with a rare opportunity with the outbreak of war in Europe in the fall of 1939 and rushed out a production called Hitler, the Beast of Berlin (written, produced, edited, scored and released to theatres in what seemed like two hours, total).

In the early 1940s, PRC--whose films played exclusively in the theatrical venues far, far off the main drag of cities and towns--augmented their unceasing schedule of western series (including Buster Crabbe as Billy the Kid) with low-budget dramas, comedies, and the occasional horror film, including the popular The Devil Bat starring Bela Lugosi, who'd make a movie for anybody. War films and more spooky tales followed, and director Edgar G. Ulmer contributed a trio of mid-1940s noir classics, Bluebeard, Strange Illusion, and the genuine B-movie masterpiece Detour, the one B movie to see if you're only going to see one (but see more). That same year, PRC added a bit of extra quality to one of its releases: the grisly monster film The Brute Man was actually produced by Universal as one of its 'Creeper' series with Rondo Hatton, and sold to PRC when Hatton passed away suddenly.

The PRC story ends happily, actually; by 1950, they had become part of England's Eagle-Lion International.

Lippert Pictures

These days, most of the Poverty Row output is in the public domain and available in a variety of low-cost editions in various DVD sets, usually in poor quality, third-or-fourth generation masters from old 16mm TV prints. Not so with the output of Robert L. Lippert, whose best work is showcased on a series of excellent DVD releases by VCI Entertainment, Image Entertainment, and the Criterion Collection (yes, Poverty Row on Criterion!) from original materials. Lucky Lippert, they should call him.

Bob Lippert owned a medium-sized chain of theatres in the Pacific Northwest, and decided to get into the low-budget movie business as the studios raised rates for booking their pictures. He specialized in outdoor action pictures, although he did sign Bela Lugosi (did we say he'd work anywhere?) forhis only color offering, Scared to Death. Cinecolor was a cheap (and looked it) alternative to Technicolor, and mainly used on Poverty Row. Lippert distributed films for others, made inexpensive films for himself, and eventually scored a nice deal: in the mid-1950s, Fox needed to produce more CinemaScope films to meet its obligations and didn't want to sully the name with B movies, so contracted with Lippert to produce 'Regalscope' films on a low budget.

Overall, Lippert did well, and is fondly remembered for promoting writer Sam Fuller to director for three excellent films (I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona with Vincent Price, and the first Korean War picture,The Steel Helmet) and producing the first science-fiction film of the post-atomic era, Rocket Ship X-Mwith Lloyd Bridges.

That's a Wrap

Unlike serials or theatrical short subjects, Poverty Row productions continued through the TV era, although the term fell out of favor (not least of all by the independent producers who dwelt there). Today's low-budget exploitation films are closer to Poverty Row productions than they ever could be to genuine B movies.

Classic movie fans recognize only a small portion of vintage films deserve to be called 'classics;' most films of the Golden Age were simply grinded out to keep fresh product on the nation's silver screens. That so many of the films are as fondly remembered as the large-scale A picture productions is a testament to the talent of the producers, directors, technicians and casts who worked hard in what was unquestionably not the road-to-riches area of Hollywood.

Clifford Weimer is a writer and film historian in Sacramento, CA. He can usually be found lurking about the dark corners of a movie theatre at inthebalcony.com.