Monogram Pictures
Monogram Pictures Corporation was an American film studio that produced mostly low-budget films between 1931 and 1953, when the firm completed a transition to the name Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. Monogram was among the minor studios in the golden age of Hollywood, generally referred to collectively as Poverty Row. Of the 11 permanent studios in Hollywood at the time, ranked in order of size, MGM was #1 -- and Monogram was #10.
The Monogram trademark is now owned by Allied Artists International. The original sprawling brick complex which functioned as home to both Monogram and Allied Artists remains at 4376 W Sunset Blvd, as part of the Church of Scientology Media Center.
Early years
Monogram's antecedent was W. Ray Johnston's Rayart Pictures, specializing in silent western and action features. In 1929 Johnston entered the new field of sound pictures, with Rayart releasing the first feature-length talking western Overland Bound, featuring silent stars Leo Maloney and Allene Ray. Johnston renamed his company Raytone, then Continental Pictures, then Syndicate Pictures, and finally Monogram Pictures. Johnston was president, with his Rayart colleague Trem Carr as vice president.Johnston made an honest effort to compete with the larger companies in the early 1930s. When movie programs consisted of a single feature film plus short subjects, Monogram's features could and did compete with major-studio productions on America's screens. Under Johnston, Monogram offered a variety of reasonably priced features for the Depression-era exhibitors, including adaptations of famous books and plays; gangster stories; jungle thrillers; topical comedies; romances; and westerns. During its first few years Monogram could seldom afford big-name movie stars and would employ either former silent-film actors who were idle or young featured players. By 1934 the studio attracted bigger names: Colin Clive, Virginia Bruce, Mary Brian, Robert Armstrong, Mary Carlisle, Marian Marsh, and Frank Craven.
In 1935, Johnston and Carr were wooed by Herbert Yates of Consolidated Film Industries. Yates planned to merge Monogram with several other smaller independent companies to form Republic Pictures. After a brief period under this new venture, Johnston and Carr clashed with Yates and left. Carr moved to Universal Pictures, while Johnston reactivated Monogram in 1937.
New direction
By 1937, double features had become popular and the major studios were supplying their own low-cost fare. Monogram and Johnston now concentrated on producing films for independent theaters and smaller neighborhood moviehouses that couldn't afford big-studio rental rates. Monogram became a reliable "budget brand" for cost-conscious exhibitors. There was a corresponding decrease in prestige, but Johnston had made many friends in the industry and was content to serve his own customer base.Film series
In 1938, Monogram began a long and profitable policy of making series and hiring familiar players to star in them. Frankie Darro, Hollywood's foremost tough-kid actor of the 1930s, joined Monogram and stayed with the company until 1950. Comedian Mantan Moreland co-starred in many of the Darro films and continued to be a valuable asset to Monogram through 1949. Juvenile actors Marcia Mae Jones and Jackie Moran co-starred in series of homespun romances, and then joined the Frankie Darro series.Boris Karloff contributed to the Monogram release schedule with his Mr. Wong mysteries. This prompted producer Sam Katzman to engage Bela Lugosi for a follow-up series of Monogram thrillers.
Katzman's street-gang series The East Side Kids was an imitation of the then-popular Dead End Kids features. The first film cast six juveniles who had no connection with the Dead End series, but Katzman signed Dead End Kids Bobby Jordan and Leo Gorcey, and soon added Huntz Hall and Gabriel Dell from the original gang. The East Side Kids series ran from 1940 to 1945. East Side star Gorcey then took the reins himself and transformed the series into The Bowery Boys, which became the longest-running feature-film comedy series in movie history.
Monogram continued to experiment with film series with mixed results. Definite box-office hits were Charlie Chan, The Cisco Kid, and Joe Palooka, all proven movie properties abandoned by other studios and revived by Monogram. Less successful were the comic-strip exploits of Snuffy Smith and Sam Katzman's comedy series teaming Billy Gilbert, Shemp Howard, and Maxie Rosenbloom.
Many of Monogram's series were westerns. The backbone of the studio's early days was a father-son partnership: writer/director Robert N. Bradbury and cowboy actor Bob Steele. Bradbury wrote almost all of the early Monogram and Lone Star westerns and directed many of them himself. Independent producer Paul Malvern produced 16 Lone Star western productions starring John Wayne, releasing through Monogram. The studio also released sagebrush sagas with Bill Cody, Tom Keene, Tim McCoy, Tex Ritter, and Jack Randall before hitting on the "trio" format teaming veteran saddle pals. Buck Jones, Tim McCoy, and Raymond Hatton became The Rough Riders; Ray (Crash) Corrigan, John "Dusty" King, and Max Terhune were The Range Busters, and Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson, and Bob Steele teamed as The Trail Blazers. When Universal Pictures allowed Johnny Mack Brown's contract to lapse, Monogram grabbed him and kept him busy through 1952.
Monogram's stars
The studio was a launching pad for new stars, Edmund Lowe in Klondike Fury, John Boles in Road to Happiness, Ricardo Cortez in I Killed That Man, Simone Simon in Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Kay Francis and Bruce Cabot in Divorce, Robert Lowery and Marjorie Weaver in Fashion Model, Jane Frazee in Incident.Monogram Pictures was regarded within the industry as a minor-league studio. Former character actor Bill Kennedy recalled, "If you were an actor on the way up, like Robert Mitchum or Alan Ladd, working at Monogram was okay -- no stigma. But -- if you were already a star at a big studio like Fox or Paramount and then went to Monogram, a la Edmund Lowe, it was the kiss of death."
Monogram did create and nurture its own stars. Gale Storm began her career at RKO Radio Pictures in 1940 but found a home at Monogram. Storm had been promoted from Monogram's Frankie Darro series and was showcased in crime dramas and a string of musicals to capitalize on her singing talents. Another of Monogram's finds during this time was British skating star Belita, who conversely starred in musical revues first and then graduated to dramatic roles, including Suspense, an A-budget King Brothers Productions picture released under the Monogram name. Monogram's final leading-lady discovery was Jane Nigh, who starred in several wholesome outdoor stories between 1950 and 1952; she returned to the studio in 1957 for a Bowery Boys comedy.
Monogram was also a useful outlet for ambitious movie stars who wanted to produce their own films. Sidney Toler, Kay Francis, Leo Gorcey, and Arthur Lake all pursued independent production, releasing through Monogram.
Improved productions
Steve Broidy, Monogram's vice president and general sales manager since 1940, had been taking on additional responsibility for the studio's production schedule, and he was named president of the company in 1945. Founder Ray Johnston became chairman of the board, a position he held until 1963.Under Broidy, Monogram very nearly hit the big time with Dillinger, a sensationalized crime drama that was a runaway success in 1945. Filmed by King Brothers Productions, it received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Monogram tried to follow Dillinger with several "exploitation" melodramas cashing in on topical themes, like Black Market Babies and Allotment Wives. The studio did achieve some success -- its slogan in 1946 was "Make Way for Monogram" -- but Monogram never became a respectable "major" studio like former poverty-row denizen Columbia Pictures.
Monogram's fortunes continued to improve. With Hollywood's larger studios curtailing B-picture production in favor of more prestigious and more expensive pictures, there was now a greater need for low-priced pictures that theater owners could afford. Major first-run theater chains that had never played Monogram's budget movies -- as well as small, independent theaters that depended on bargain-rate films to turn a profit -- began using Monogram features on a regular basis. The Charlie Chan pictures were the first Monogram products to be programmed regularly by big-city chains, giving Monogram valuable exposure in the larger market. The casting in Monogram features improved tremendously after the war, because scores of actors found themselves unemployed or underemployed when their home studios now made fewer movies. Major-studio talent began accepting work at Monogram, which gave the studio's films more prestige and boxoffice value.
Monogram continued to launch new series. In 1946 The East Side Kids became The Bowery Boys under a new producer, Jan Grippo. The former producer, Sam Katzman, began a new musical-comedy series called "The Teen Agers" as a vehicle for singer Freddie Stewart. Other series included the Cisco Kid westerns ; the exploits of masked crimefighter The Shadow with Kane Richmond ; the Bringing Up Father comedies based on the George McManus comic strip, featuring Joe Yule and Renie Riano as "Jiggs and Maggie; the "Joe Palooka" prizefight comedies ; the Roddy McDowall series, with the juvenile lead forsaking child roles for dramatic and action vehicles; the "Henry" series of small-town comedies co-starring Raymond Walburn and Walter Catlett; and the "Bomba, the Jungle Boy" adventures starring Johnny Sheffield.
The studio's biggest drawing cards were The Bowery Boys, Charlie Chan, and the Monogram westerns. Monogram filmed some of its later features in Cinecolor, mostly outdoor subjects like County Fair, Blue Grass of Kentucky, and The Rose Bowl Story, as well as the science-fiction film, Flight to Mars.
The only Monogram release to win an Academy Award was Climbing the Matterhorn, a two-reel adventure that won the "Best Short Subject" Oscar in 1947. Other Monogram films to receive Oscar nominations were King of the Zombies for Academy Award for Best Music in 1941 and Flat Top for Best Film Editing in 1952.
Creation of Allied Artists Productions
Producer Walter Mirisch began at Monogram after World War II as assistant to studio head Steve Broidy. He convinced Broidy that the days of low-budget films were ending, and in 1946 Monogram created a new unit, Allied Artists Productions, to make costlier films. The new name was meant to mirror the name of United Artists by evoking images of "creative personnel uniting to produce and distribute quality films".At a time when the average Hollywood picture cost about $800,000, Allied Artists' first release, the Christmas-themed comedy It Happened on 5th Avenue, cost more than $1,200,000. It was rewarded with an estimated $1.8 million boxoffice return. Subsequent Allied Artists releases were more economical. Some were filmed in black-and-white, but others were filmed in Cinecolor and Technicolor.
Monogram continued to be the parent company; the "Allied Artists Productions" all bore Monogram copyright notices, and were released through Monogram's network of film exchanges. The studio's new deluxe division permitted what Mirisch called "B-plus" pictures, which were released along with Monogram's established line of B fare.
"Monogram Week"
Monogram didn't give up on its longstanding policy of inexpensive feature films for prudent exhibitors. In 1951 Monogram revived a promotional campaign that Ray Johnston had used in 1939: "Monogram Week", with the goal of a Monogram subject being seen on every screen in America. It was an ambitious idea in 1939 and was even more audacious in 1951, when Monogram was competing with both major motion pictures and television. Stanley Kane, an outspoken representative of exhibitors' interests, approved of the idea: "This writer studiously tries to keep this bulletin from serving as an advertising medium for any film company, but we do think that Monogram Week, February 11-17, deserves a boost. During this week, Monogram is trying to get a Monogram release on every screen in America. This will be impossible, of course, in many situations with the usual run of Monogram product. However, the good old Our Gang comedies are being reissued under the trade name of Little Rascals. They have played every big and little theatre in the country. If any exhibitor cannot cooperate by playing a feature during Monogram Week, one of the Little Rascals series will help make the week a success.""Monogram Week" of 1951 was highly successful, as Steve Broidy confirmed: "The outstanding results attained during Monogram Week have established new records for the company. The spontaneous outpouring of cooperation and goodwill on the part of all exhibitors, from the smallest independent on up to the biggest circuits, has proven most heartwarming to all of us. The return was limited only by the number of prints in our exchanges." America's showmen booked both new and old Monogram subjects, dating back to 1945's Dillinger, and the one-week promotion actually lasted three weeks.
The end of Monogram
Walter Mirisch's prediction about the end of the low-budget film had come true thanks to television, and in September 1952 Monogram announced that henceforth it would only produce films bearing the Allied Artists name. The Monogram brand name was retired in 1953, and the company was now known as Allied Artists Pictures Corporation.Allied Artists retained a few vestiges of its Monogram identity, continuing its popular Stanley Clements action series, its B-westerns, its Bomba, the Jungle Boy adventures, and especially its breadwinning comedy series with The Bowery Boys. For the most part, Allied Artists was heading in new, ambitious directions under Mirisch.
Monogram enters the field of TV
Monogram was the first substantial theatrical distributor to offer its recent films to network television, in April 1948. Steve Broidy's asking price was $1,000,000 for a package of 200 features, or $5,000 per title. The CBS network declined the offer. Three years later, in August 1951, Broidy turned away from expensive network television and looked toward the promising field of programming for local stations. Broidy offered 199 features to Eliot Hyman of Motion Pictures for Television, a pioneer TV syndicator recently established by film executive Matty Fox. Hyman bought the package for the more attractive price of $1,250 per title.Monogram cautiously entered the field of syndicating its own product in November 1951. Major studios avoided putting their names on their television subsidiaries, fearing adverse reaction and charges of unfair competition from their movie-theater customers. Monogram followed suit, christening its TV arm as Interstate Television Corporation. Ralph Branton, a former exhibitor who became a Monogram executive, was named president. Interstate's biggest success was The Little Rascals series. Interstate further pursued juvenile audiences by distributing Monogram's feature-length westerns with Wild Bill Elliott, and outdoor adventures with Kirby Grant and "Chinook, the Wonder Dog." Interstate used the stock title design it created for the Little Rascals shorts when it filmed new TV titles for the Elliott and Grant features.
In July 1961 Interstate TV became Allied Artists Television Corporation, under the leadership of Edward Morey, who had been a production manager for the studio. Variety commented on the updated company's getting quick results: "Allied Artists Television Corp. took over a fading Interstate TV company and injected some new razzmatazz patterns into syndication, with a resultant setup that now gives AAT the status of a major distribery with techniques that are paying off in handsome dividends. Most of it was accomplished through the marketing of five going packages of feature films, with particular success in bundling the pix as a series" .
Allied Artists' television library was sold to Lorimar's TV production and distribution arms in 1979. Lorimar was acquired by Warner Bros. Television, which now controls the library.
Allied Artists' major productions
For a time in the mid-1950s, the Mirisch family held great influence at Allied Artists, with Walter as executive producer, his brother Harold as head of sales, and brother Marvin as assistant treasurer.The Mirisch brothers pushed the studio into big-budget filmmaking, signing contracts with William Wyler, John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Gary Cooper. Their first big-name productions were Wyler's Friendly Persuasion – nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture – and Wilder's Love in the Afternoon. Despite their prestige, both films were box-office failures. As a result, studio head Broidy reverted Allied Artists to the kinds of pictures Monogram had previously been known for: low-budget action pictures and thrillers such as Don Siegel's science-fiction film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Some of these were biographical, like Pay or Die, dramatizing policeman Joseph Petrosino's pioneering crusade against organized crime; Operation Eichmann, capitalizing on the recent capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann; and The George Raft Story, recapitulating the actor's career in a slick but superficial treatment.
Allied Artists and The Mirisch Company released some, but not all, of their late-1950s films through United Artists, and made their studio space and facilities available to independent producers. Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, handled by United Artists, was filmed using many of Allied Artists' resident technicians. Roger Corman also made several successful films for Allied Artists.
The studio had renewed success with the release of Al Capone in 1959. This prompted Allied to invest in a series of bigger budgeted films once more including El Cid, Billy Budd, and Hitler. There were still cutbacks in overall production – the studio had released 35 films in 1958, but this dropped to 12 in 1960, mainly because the studio stopped making westerns.
Post-Broidy
Studio chief Steve Broidy retired in 1965. Allied Artists ceased production in 1966 and became a distributor of foreign films. The studio resumed production in 1972 with the release of Cabaret, followed by Papillon in 1973. Both were critical and commercial successes, but high production and financing costs meant they were not big moneymakers for the company. Allied Artists raised financing for its adaptation of The Man Who Would Be King by selling the European distribution rights to Columbia Pictures, and the rest of the backing came from Canadian tax shelters. King was released in 1975, to disappointing returns. That same year, the company distributed the French import Story of O, but spent much of its earnings defending itself from obscenity charges.In 1976, Allied Artists attempted to diversify when it merged with consumer producers Kalvex and PSP, Inc. The new Allied Artists Industries, Inc. manufactured pharmaceuticals, mobile homes, and activewear in addition to films.
Demise
Monogram/Allied Artists continued until 1979, when runaway inflation and high production costs pushed it into bankruptcy.Film library fate
The post-August 1946 Monogram/Allied Artists library was bought by television production company Lorimar in 1980 for $4.75 million; today a majority of this library belongs to Warner Bros. Pictures. The pre-August 1946 Monogram library was sold in 1954 to Associated Artists Productions, which itself was sold to United Artists in 1958. The pre-1946 Monogram library was not part of the deal with Ted Turner. A selection of post-1938 Monogram films acquired by M&A Alexander Productions and Astor Pictures were later incorporated into Melange Pictures' library, today a part of Paramount Skydance-owned Paramount Pictures. Most Monogram Pictures films released before 1942 are in the public domain.Jean-Luc Godard dedicated his film Breathless to Monogram.
Studios
Sunset Boulevard
Allied Artists had its studio at 4401 W. Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, on a 4.5-acre lot. The longtime home of former PBS television station KCET, the station sold the studios to the Church of Scientology in April 2011.Monogram Ranch
Monogram Pictures operated the Monogram Ranch, its movie ranch in Placerita Canyon near Newhall, California, in the northern San Gabriel Mountains foothills. Tom Mix had used the Placeritos Ranch for location shooting for his silent western films. Ernie Hickson became the owner in 1936 and reconstructed all the "frontier western town" sets, moved from the nearby Republic Pictures Movie Ranch, onto his ranch. A year later Monogram Pictures signed a long-term lease with Hickson for Placeritos Ranch, with terms that stipulated that the ranch be renamed Monogram Ranch. Actor/cowboy singer/producer Gene Autry purchased the Monogram Ranch property from the Hickson heirs in 1953, renaming it after his film Melody Ranch. As of 2010, it was operated as the Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio and Melody Ranch Studios.After fire damage, the sets were replaced; as of 2012, the studio had 74 buildings and two sound stages. The owners in 2019 were Renaud and Andre Veluzat. The owners indicate that other recent movies were also partly filmed here, including Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The site includes a movie memorabilia museum that is open to visitors.