Producers Releasing Corporation

Producers Releasing Corporation was one of the less prestigious Hollywood film studios that comprised what became known as Poverty Row, and lasted from 1939-47. PRC, as it was commonly known, made low-budget B-movies for the lower half of a double bill or the upper half of a neighborhood cinema showing second-run films. 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, first at 1440 N. Gower Street (on the lot that eventually became Columbia Pictures) from 1936-43, then the complex used by the defunct Grand National Films Inc. from 1943-46. The studio was located at 7324 Santa Monica Blvd. The address is now a shopping plaza.

PRC produced 179 feature films and never spent over $100,000 on any of them. Most of its films actually cost considerably less than that.

History

The company evolved from the earlier Producers Distributing Corporation begun in 1939 by exhibitor Ben Judell, who had hired producer Sigmund Neufeld and his brother, director Sam Newfield, to make its films. After the collapse of PDC the brothers established PRC. Most of the movies made imitated the genres of other studios of the 1940s, but at a much lower budget, and each generally took a week or less to shoot. They included westerns or action melodramas, plus a number of horror movies. In 1943 Robert R. Young, a railroad magnate who also owned the American Pathé film processing laboratory, acquired the studio.

Producer

Producer or producers may refer to:

Occupations

Corporation

A corporation is a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity (legally a person) and recognized as such in law. Early incorporated entities were established by charter (i.e. by an ad hoc act granted by a monarch or passed by a parliament or legislature). Most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration.

Corporations come in many different types but are usually divided by the law of the jurisdiction where they are chartered into two kinds: by whether or not they can issue stock, or by whether or not they are for profit.

Where local law distinguishes corporations by ability to issue stock, corporations allowed to do so are referred to as "stock corporations", ownership of the corporation is through stock, and owners of stock are referred to as "stockholders." Corporations not allowed to issue stock are referred to as "non-stock" corporations, those who are considered the owners of the corporation are those who have obtained membership in the corporation, and are referred to as a "member" of the corporation.