Lippert Productions

Robert Lenard Lippert (March 31, 1909 – November 16, 1976) was an American film producer and cinema chain owner. He was president and chief operating officer of Lippert Theatres, Affiliated Theatres and Transcontinental Theatres, all based in San Francisco, and at his height, he owned a chain of 139 movie theaters.

He helped finance more than 300 films, including the directorial debuts of Sam Fuller, James Clavell, and Burt Kennedy. His films include '' I Shot Jesse James'' (1949) and '' The Fly'' (1958) and was known as "King of the Bs".

In 1962, Lippert said, "the word around Hollywood is: Lippert makes a lot of cheap pictures but he's never made a stinker".

Biography

Born in Alameda, California and adopted by the owner of a hardware store, Robert Lippert became fascinated by the cinema at an early age. As a youngster, he worked a variety of jobs in local theaters, including projectionist and assistant manager. As a manager of a cinema during the Depression, Lippert encouraged regular attendance with promotions such as "Dish Night" and "Book Night."

Lippert went from cinema manager to owning a chain of cinemas in Alameda in 1942, during the peak years of theater attendance. Lippert's theaters in Los Angeles adopted a "grindhouse" policy, screening older and cheaper films for a continuous 24 hours with an admission price of 25 cents. Not only did his theaters attract shift workers and late-night revelers, but also servicemen on leave who could not find cheap accommodations and would sleep in the chairs.

In May 1948, he merged his theater chain with George Mann's, the founder of the Redwood Theatres. He also owned a number of drive-ins. The 139 theaters he eventually owned were mostly in Northern California and southern Oregon, as well as some in Southern California and Arizona.

Screen Guild Productions

"Every theater owner thinks he can make pictures better than the ones they sent him," Lippert later said. "So back in 1943 icI tried it" (the year was actually 1945). Dissatisfied with what he believed to be exorbitant rental fees charged by major studios, Lippert formed Screen Guild Productions in 1945, its first release being a Bob Steele western called ''Wildfire'', filmed in then-unusual Cinecolor. Veteran producer Edward Finney partnered with Lippert in 1946.

For the next few years Screen Guild entered into agreements with independent producers Finney, William Berke, William David, Jack Schwarz, Walter Colmes, and Ron Ormond to guarantee a steady supply of releases. One of the most controversial Screen Guild releases was '' The Burning Cross'' (1947), which concerned the Ku Klux Klan. In the main, however, Lippert concentrated on simple entertainments for small-town and neighborhood theaters: musicals, comedies, detective stories, action-adventure stories, and westerns.

Lippert Pictures

Screen Guild became Lippert Pictures in 1948, using rental stages and the Corriganville Movie Ranch for the production of its films. Between 1948 and 1955, 130 Lippert features were made and released.

Lippert's fortunes and reputation improved when he sponsored screenwriter and former newspaper reporter Samuel Fuller. Fuller wanted to become a director, so he agreed to direct the three films he had been contracted to write for Lippert: '' I Shot Jesse James'', '' The Baron of Arizona'' and '' The Steel Helmet'', all for no extra money, accepting just the directing credit. The Fuller films received excellent reviews.

A 1949 ''New York Times'' profile said Lippert owned 61 theaters. It also reported (erroneously) that he had directed most of the Westerns his company had made.

Lippert tried to add luster to his productions, but only if it could be done economically. His studio became a haven for actors whose careers were interrupted when their studios, no longer making lower-budget pictures, released them from their contracts. Robert Lippert was able to sign major-studio talent for a fraction of the usual rate, giving his productions more marquee value. Among the established names who worked for Lippert were George Raft, Veronica Lake, Zachary Scott, Robert Hutton, Joan Leslie, Cesar Romero, George Reeves, Ralph Byrd, Richard Arlen, Don "Red" Barry, Robert Alda, Gloria Jean, Sabu, Jon Hall, Ellen Drew, Preston Foster, Jean Porter, Anne Gwynne, Jack Holt, Dick Foran, Hugh Beaumont, Tom Neal, Robert Lowery, John Howard, and Julie Bishop.

Lippert maintained a small stock company of supporting actors, including Margia Dean, Mara Lynn, Don Castle, and Reed Hadley. Lippert's most ubiquitous actor was probably the diminutive Sid Melton. He appeared as a supporting comedian in many of Lippert's productions and starred in three hour-long comedies.

Lippert also contracted with independent producers. In 1950 Ron Ormond hired two former members of the Hopalong Cassidy franchise, Russell Hayden and James Ellison, to co-star in a new series of six western features, with ingenue Betty Adams (later established as Julie Adams) and a stock company of actors familiar from westerns. With typical economy, Ormond arranged for all six scripts to be filmed simultaneously, to take advantage of the sets, locations, and actors on hand. The six features were filmed within one month.

The "name" cast ensembles were only part of Lippert's successful formula. Other selling angles were achieved when certain of Lippert's features could be marketed in a process more elaborate than ordinary black-and-white. Lippert used Cinecolor and sepiatone to dress up his more ambitious features, and embellished others by using tinted film stock for special effects (mint green for '' Lost Continent'', pinkish red-sepia for the Mars sequences in ''Rocketship X-M''). He even anticipated the 3-D film craze by publicizing a special, deep-focus photographic lens developed by Stephen E. Garutso, which Lippert promoted as giving a stereoscopic effect without special projection equipment.

In addition to his original productions, Lippert reissued older films to theaters under his own brand name, including several Hopalong Cassidy westerns and the Laurel and Hardy feature '' Babes in Toyland'' (reissued by Lippert as ''March of the Wooden Soldiers'').

Lippert read a 1949 ''Life'' magazine article about a proposed rocket landing on the Moon. He rushed into production his version called ''Rocketship X-M'', released a year later in 1950; he changed the film's destination to Mars to avoid copying exactly the same idea being utilized by producer George Pal in his large-budget, high-profile '' Destination Moon''. ''Rocketship X-M'' succeeded in becoming the first post-war science fiction outer space drama to appear in theaters, but only by 20 days, while capitalizing on all the publicity surrounding the Pal film. More importantly, it became the first feature film drama to warn of the dangers and folly of full-scale atomic war.

Television and trade unions

Lippert was anxious to enter the new and profitable field of commercial television. In 1950 he filmed a new detective series intended for sale to television -- but appearing in movie theaters first. Six half-hour episodes were filmed with co-stars Hugh Beaumont and Edward Brophy, which were then combined into three theatrical features: '' Pier 23'', '' Danger Zone'', and '' Roaring City''. Trade reviewers noticed the paste-ups: "Having similar situations and dialogue, these episodes would be better if shown separately. Any dramatic effect achieved in the first loses its punch when so closely duplicated by a second story following immediately afterwards." Lippert later acquired episodes of the TV series '' Ramar of the Jungle'' and combined them into action features.

In 1951 Lippert announced plans to sell his films to television, at a time when major studios withheld their film libraries from TV to protect their theatrical interests. The American Federation of Musicians stepped in, and Lippert had to rescore some of the films and pay an amount to the musicians' music fund.

Lippert went ahead with the sale but clashed with the Screen Actors Guild and was blackballed by the Guild as a result. He was going to make films for television with Hal Roach, Jr., but problems with the Screen Actors Guild led to their cancellation. He ended up making only two, ''Tales of Robin Hood'' and ''Present Arms'' (released as ''As You Were''). , In October 1951, Lippert signed a three-picture deal with the recently blacklisted Carl Foreman. He also signed a two-picture deal with blacklisted Paul Henreid but no films appear to have resulted; Henreid signed instead with Columbia Pictures. In 1951, Lippert entered into an arrangement with Famous Artist Corporation to make features with their talent. By January 1952, however, the SAG dispute had not been resolved and Lippert announced he was leaving film production.

Hammer Films

In 1951, Lippert signed a four-year production and distribution contract with the British company Hammer Films by which Lippert would distribute Hammer movies in America, and Hammer would distribute Lippert's films in the UK. To ensure familiarity with American audiences, Lippert insisted on an American star supplied by him in the Hammer films he was to distribute. The first film produced under the contract was ''The Last Page'', which starred George Brent.

20th Century-Fox

Regal Films

When Darryl F. Zanuck announced his CinemaScope process, he faced hostility from many theater owners who had gone to great expense to convert their theaters to show 3-D films that Hollywood had stopped making. Zanuck assured them that they could have a large supply of CinemaScope product because Fox would make CinemaScope lenses available to other film companies and start a production unit, led by Lippert, called Regal Films in 1956 to produce B pictures in that process.

Lippert's company was contracted to make 20 pictures a year for seven years, each to be shot in seven days for no more than $100,000. Due to Lippert's problems with the film unions over not paying residuals to actors and writers of his films when they were sold to television, Fox chose not to publicize Lippert's participation. Ed Baumgarten was officially appointed the head of Regal, but Lippert had overall control. Regal Films filmed its movies with CinemaScope lenses, but due to 20th Century-Fox insisting that only its "A" films would carry the CInemaScope label, Regal's product used the term "Regalscope" in its films' credits.

Beginning with '' Stagecoach to Fury'' (1956), Regal produced 25 pictures in its first year.

Maury Dexter, who worked at Regal, later recalled the outfit's productions were all shot at independent sound stages because they could not afford to shoot at 20th Century Fox, due to the high cost of rental and overhead they charged. The films were entirely financed and released by Fox, but Regal was independent. Dexter says "the only stipulation production-wise was that we had to give Bausch and Lomb screen credit on each film for CinemaScope camera lenses, as well as being charged back to Fox, $3,000 of each budget.

Impressed by the unit's profits, Fox extended Regal's contract by a further 16 films with an "exploitation angle" that would be approved by Fox.

In November 1957, Regal announced that they would make ten films in three months.

Regal made a deal with actors and directors to play them a percentage of any money from the sale of films to television. It did not make a deal with writers, and the Screen Writers Guild forbade its writers to work for Lippert. Regal stopped making films.

In 1960, Lippert sold 30 Regal films to television for $1 million.

Associated Producers Incorporated

In October 1958, a new company was formed by Lippert, called Associated Producers Incorporated (API), to make low-budget films for Fox at the rate of one per month, starting with ''Alaska Highway