The cowboy studio behind Roy Rogers and a young John Wayne

Republic Pictures was a Poverty Row studio founded in 1935, and its Westerns starred the singing cowboys Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and the actor John Wayne. Poverty Row was the nickname for Hollywood's cheapest studios, which turned out fast, low-budget pictures. Republic's specialty was Westerns, serials (adventure stories released in weekly chapters) and other B-films.

Relay has at least 6 Republic films, made between 1935 and 1950. Most are below.

How did a film lab start a studio?

Herbert J. Yates owned Consolidated Film Industries, a lab that processed film for other companies. Several Poverty Row studios, among them Mascot and Monogram, did not pay their lab bills. In 1935 Yates merged them into one company and named it Republic, which gave him a working studio in one move.

Republic kept making films until 1958, when it announced the end of film production.

How did Republic make cowboy stars?

Gene Autry, Republic's singing cowboy star, went on strike. The studio gave his next picture to Roy Rogers, and the AFI Catalog calls Under Western Stars Rogers's first starring film. Rogers went on to be billed as the King of the Cowboys.

John Wayne was working for Republic in its first year, 1935. TCM describes him then as stuck in a contract with a Poverty Row start-up, making cheap Western after cheap Western, before the director John Ford's Stagecoach in 1939 gave his career a boost.

Which Republic films are on Relay?

Undersea Kingdom (1936)

Republic's serials ran in weekly chapters. This 12-chapter one sends adventurers in an experimental submarine to Atlantis, and critics describe it as the studio's answer to Universal's Flash Gordon.

Fantasy

---

Billy The Kid Returns (1938)

Rogers plays a lookalike of the outlaw Billy the Kid who restores peace to Lincoln County. It was released in September 1938, not long after Rogers took over from Autry. His horse Trigger also appears.

Western

---

Lawless Range (1935)

Wayne stars as a man investigating cattle rustling, in a film shot at Lone Pine, California. It was released in Republic's first year and began life as Vanishing Rider.

Western

---

Cowboy and the Senorita (1944)

This was the first film Rogers made with Dale Evans, a singer turned actress. Yates, Republic's head, was certain her Texas background made her right for the lead. They married in 1947.

Western

---

Stagecoach to Denver (1946)

Republic also adapted comics. This is a Red Ryder picture, based on the comic strip by the cartoonist Fred Harman, with the Western actor Allan "Rocky" Lane as the cowboy hero. Bobby Blake plays Little Beaver, Red Ryder's young sidekick, and later became known as Robert Blake, the star of the detective series Baretta.

Western