| Industry | Film studio |
|---|---|
| Fate | Absorbed |
| Predecessor | Producers Distributing Corporation |
| Successor | 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 more lower-end 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 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 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).
Typical PRC efforts include The Devil Bat with Bela Lugosi; Misbehaving Husbands with silent-comedy star Harry Langdon; and Nabonga, a jungle thriller with Buster Crabbe and Julie London. As with other studios of the time, PRC released a wide variety of westerns including 17 films in the Lone Rider series and a series featuring Billy the Kid and The Frontier Marshals.[1] 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 and several Michael Shayne 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 (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 noir 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. The distribution arm of the company was absorbed in the formation of Eagle-Lion Films Inc. in 1946, and the production arm (and, therewith, 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.
From 1950 the American CBS network was screening PRC films on television.[2]