Robert L. Lippert (1909–1976) was a successful exhibitor, owning a chain of movie theaters in California and Oregon. He was frustrated that the Hollywood studios concentrated on making big, expensive pictures that commanded premium rental fees. He felt there was a market for smaller, cheaper feature films intended for neighborhood theaters in smaller situations. He called his new production company Action Pictures, and his first film,
Wildfire: The Story of a Horse (1945) was an outdoor adventure filmed in then-novel
Cinecolor. Reception was encouraging enough for the ambitious Lippert to expand his operations. In 1946 he joined forces with independent producer
Edward Finney to create
Screen Guild Productions. Lippert's timing was excellent. By 1946 most of the Hollywood studios had abandoned low-budget productions and were making fewer films, leaving scores of actors and technicians underemployed. Lippert came to their rescue, offering them jobs at comparatively low salaries. Thus many of Lippert's features boasted familiar, famous-name casts:
Veronica Lake,
Zachary Scott,
Buster Keaton,
George Reeves,
Ralph Byrd,
Adele Jergens,
Jean Parker,
Vincent Price,
Stuart Erwin,
Don "Red" Barry,
Robert Alda,
Wally Vernon,
Anne Gwynne,
Jean Porter,
Tom Neal,
Russell Hayden, and other "star" names with marquee value. Lippert also called upon certain character actors to play incidental roles in his films:
Reed Hadley,
Margia Dean, Mara Lynn, Jack Reitzen,
Michael Whalen, and
Phil Arnold among them. The most prolific was
Sid Melton, almost always playing wisecracking cab drivers, sad-sack soldiers, or streetwise characters. Melton was even given a leading role, in the comedy feature
Stop That Cab (1951). In February 1949 Lippert reorganized Screen Guild and renamed it Lippert Pictures. The studio received surprisingly good notices for a series of dramatic features written by
Samuel Fuller; the western
I Shot Jesse James, the historical tale
The Baron of Arizona, and the military drama
The Steel Helmet won special praise. Producers
Boris Morros and
William LeBaron teamed to produce a new version of
Victor Herbert's
Babes in Toyland, planning to release it through Screen Guild. Along with the screen rights, they inherited the
1934 movie version starring
Laurel and Hardy. The remake was never filmed, so Lippert took over the Laurel and Hardy version (retitling it
March of the Wooden Soldiers) and reissued it in 1950. In the early 1950s, Lippert struck an American distribution deal for
Exclusive Films of Britain. The success of this company, subsequently renamed Hammer Films, boosted Lippert's fortunes until the British outfit left him to begin signing deals with American
major studios. In 1956 Lippert signed a deal with
20th Century-Fox to produce films under the name
Regal Films, often
westerns or
horror pictures, for Fox to distribute. ==See also==