Herbert John Yates (August 24, 1880 - February 3, 1966) was the founder and president of Republic Pictures, famous for being the home of John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. Under Yates' leadership between 1935 and 1959, Republic made 956 feature films and 849 serial chapters, many of which are classics enjoyed today on television and DVD by a whole new generation of appreciative fans.
Yates was born in Brooklyn in 1880. His was a Horatio Alger story. He started his business career at an early age, building a newspaper sales business on the streets of Brooklyn. Later, he ascended rapidly through the ranks of the American Tobacco Company, retiring from that business with a sizable fortune before the age of 30. Focusing on the movie and recording business, he built a small empire, acquiring record companies and film laboratories. In the twenties, he provided financing for Mack Sennett and Fatty Arbuckle.
In October 1929, his Consolidated Film Industries took control of ARC (American Record Corporation, a company created as a result of a merger between a number of dime store labels). In the following years, the company was very involved in a depressed market, buying failing labels at bargain prices to exploit their catalogue. (In December 1931 Warner Bros. leased Brunswick Records, Vocalion Records and associated companies to ARC.) In 1932, ARC was king of the 3 records for a dollar market, selling 6 million units, twice as much as RCA Victor. In an effort to get back on top, RCA created its Bluebird label. ARC bought out the Columbia Records catalogue in 1934. In the 1930s ARC produced Brunswick at 75c and Oriole, Romeo, Melotone, Vocalion, Banner and Perfect at 35c.
In December 1938, the entire ARC complex was purchased from Consolidated Film for $700,000 by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). This allowed the rights to the Brunswick and Vocalion labels to return to Warner Bros., which assigned the rights to those labels to Decca Records.
Yates formed Republic in 1935 by arranging for the merger of several smaller production companies with his Consolidated Film Industries, which was providing film processing and financing for many studios in Hollywood. Among the merged companies were Mascot Pictures, which brought the serial to Republic, and Monogram Pictures, which brought the Mack Sennett lot in Studio City. Under Yates' leadership, Republic first leased and then purchased the lot, expanding it from six stages to nineteen and adding state-of-the-art production facilities.
In 1934, Gene Autry had his first movie role in the Mascot production of In Old Santa Fe. Autry had been a recording artist under contract to Yates' American Record Corporation: he would go on to star in 56 movies for Republic between 1935 and 1947. In 1938, Yates created a second American icon by giving Roy Rogers his first starring role in Under Western Stars. Rogers filled in for Autry during the war and ended up making more than 80 movies under the Republic banner.
Republic's most acclaimed movie was The Quiet Man (1952), directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. Ford had tried to make the Irish love story for years, but none of the studio heads would take a chance on it. Yates risked a budget of over a million dollars, making possible such extravagances as Technicolor and location filming in Ireland. It earned triple its cost, and earned Republic its only Academy Award nomination for Best Picture.
In 1948, Yates left his wife, Petra, for the Czech figure skater Vera Hruba Ralston. He and Ralston were married in 1949. He retired from Republic and the movie business in 1959, the same year Republic's board decided to switch emphasis from production to distribution. He died at his residence in Sherman Oaks in 1966.
The Republic lot survives today as CBS Studio Center. Notable among Yates' contributions to the lot are the Mabel Normand sound stage, built during the war and later home to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and an award-winning music scoring auditorium that has hosted such famous names as Aaron Copland and Artur Rubinstein.