Poverty Row is a slang term for small Hollywood studios that produced B movies from the 1920s[1] to the 1950s, typically with much smaller budgets[2] and lower production values[3] than those of the major studios. Although many of these studios were based in the vicinity of Gower Street in Hollywood,[4] the term does not necessarily relate to any specific physical location.
Many of the films produced by Poverty Row studios were those of series in the Western, comedy, adventure and crime genres.
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While some Poverty Row studios had a brief existence, releasing only a few films,[5] others operated in a manner similar to that of major film studios such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, but on a much smaller scale.
The most successful and enduring Poverty Row studios maintained permanent lots and recognizable standing sets, had cast and crew under contract and produced a more varied output than did the smaller firms.
The primary Poverty Row studios included:
The smallest studios, including Tiffany Pictures, Victory Pictures, Mascot Pictures, and Chesterfield Pictures, often packaged and released films from independent producers, British "quota quickie" films or exploitation films such as Hitler, Beast of Berlin[14] to supplement their own limited production capacity. Producers would sometimes create a new studio when their former ones failed, such as Harry S. Webb and Bernard B. Ray's Reliable Pictures and Metropolitan Pictures.
Some organizations such as Astor Pictures[15] and Realart Pictures[16] began by obtaining the rights to rerelease older films from other studios before producing their own films.
The breakup of the studio system (and its block-booking practice, which left independent theaters eager for content from the Poverty Row studios) following 1948's United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. decision and the advent of television were among the factors that led to the decline and ultimate disappearance of the traditional Poverty Row studios, although small and independent studios continued to exist through the present day.[17]
Thesis, Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Art History and Communication Studies; Film scholarship has generally assumed that the low-budget independent film studios, commonly known as Poverty Row, originated in the early sound-era to take advantage of the growing popularity of double feature exhibition programs.
