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 only one smaller was PRC).Motion Picture Daily, "No Change in Raw Stock for New Quarter", July 20, 1943, p. 15.
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 (formerly KCET's television facilities).Variety, August 10, 1945.
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 (in March 1931) Monogram Pictures.Movie Age, "Monogram Completes New Organization", Mar. 31, 1931, p. 4. 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.Mann, Hobart (Dec. 15, 1934). The Philadelphia Exhibitor, "Independent Production Reaching New Peak", p. 33. 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 (Clara Kimball Young, William Farnum, Herbert Rawlinson, William Collier, Sr.) or young featured players (Ray Walker, Wallace Ford, William Cagney, Charles Starrett). By 1934 the studio attracted bigger names:Hollywood Filmograph, "Independents Are Hot After Big Names", May 26, 1934, p. 1. 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 merged Monogram with several other smaller independent companies to form Republic Pictures. Johnston and Carr remained with the new venture only briefly before clashing with Yates and leaving the company. Carr moved to Universal Pictures, while Johnston reactivated Monogram in 1937.Miller, Don (1973). B Movies, Curtis Books, p. 118.
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 (48 titles over 12 years).
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 (born Robert A. Bradbury). 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.Okuda, Ted. The Monogram Checklist: The Films of Monogram Pictures Corporation, 1931–1952, McFarland, 1999, p. 50. . 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 (Preston Foster in Sensation Hunters, Randolph Scott in Broken Dreams, Ginger Rogers in The Thirteenth Guest, Lionel Atwill in The Sphinx, Alan Ladd in Her First Romance, Robert Mitchum in When Strangers Marry. The studio was also a haven for established stars whose careers had stalled: Jackie Cooper in Boy of the Streets (Cooper would work for Monogram off and on through 1948), Edith Fellows and Jacqueline Wells in Her First Romance, Harry Langdon in Double Trouble, Grace Hayes in Zis Boom Bah, James Dunn in The Living Ghost, Edmund Lowe in Klondike Fury, John Boles in Road to Happiness, Ricardo Cortez in I Killed That Man, Frank Fay in Spotlight Scandals, 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, and Roddy McDowall in Kidnapped.
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 (like The Crime Smasher (1943) opposite Richard Cromwell and radio's Frank Graham in the title role) and a string of musicals to capitalize on her singing talents (like Campus Rhythm and Nearly Eighteen (both 1943), as well as Swing Parade of 1946 featuring The Three Stooges). 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 (1946), 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.
Personal projects at Monogram
Monogram was also a useful outlet for ambitious movie stars who wanted to produce their own films. Buck Jones, Sidney Toler, Kay Francis, The Three Stooges, Leo Gorcey, and Arthur Lake all pursued independent production, releasing through Monogram.MacGillivray, p. 194.
So did Lou Costello,MacGillivray, p. 194. who produced Monogram's musical comedy A WAVE, a WAC, and a Marine (released 1944), and was set to direct the East Side Kids comedy Block Busters (1944) under the pseudonym "Lucas Tello".Showmen's Trade Review, Dec. 18, 1943, p. 39. Costello was off the screen at the time (late 1943), idle with rheumatic fever,Furmanek, Bob and Palumbo, Ron. Abbott and Costello in Hollywood, Perigee, 1991, p. 104. . and his behind-the-scenes activity at Monogram may have been his way of keeping busy without exposing himself to the demands of physical comedy. When his Monogram sideline came to light, he shrugged it off as a joke. A Variety report headlined "Costello's Director Gag (Lucas Tello) Upsets Three Studios" explained: "It started as a gag at Monogram and wound up in a case of jitters at Universal, where the execs went into an apoplectic huddle and declared it wasn't true.... Story originated in a kidding way among the East Siders, who are friends of the chubby comic. Add to that, Trem Carr, Monogram producer, is one of Costello's neighbors. The gag grew until it reached the ears of Universal"Variety, "Costello's Director Gag (Lucas Tello) Upsets Three Studios", Dec. 15, 1943, p. 2. and MGM, both being Costello's principal employers. So ended Lou Costello's brief tenure at Monogram.
Trademarks For most of its existence, Monogram's emblem was a simple circular logo, with the outside of the circle ornamented by stars and the inner circle containing the initials M P C (Monogram Pictures Corporation). During its early years Monogram used an animated logo of a streamlined train passing through a modern metropolis, with "Monogram Pictures" trailing behind the train. During the mid-1940s Monogram sometimes used an animated end title: instead of "The End", the film closed with "A Monogram Picture", with the word "Monogram" being "signed" in longhand across the screen.
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.Film Bulletin, "Busy Week for AA", Mar. 18, 1963, p. 15.
Under Broidy, Monogram very nearly hit the big time with Dillinger, a sensationalized crime drama that was a runaway success in 1945, making more than $1 million ($18 million in 2026) at the box office. Filmed by King Brothers Productions, it received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. (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 Best Music (Music Score of a Dramatic Picture) in 1941 and Flat Top for Best Film Editing in 1952.)