Poverty Row is a slang term used in Hollywood from the late silent period through the mid-fifties to refer to a variety of mostly short-lived small studios, many clustered in the area of Los Angeles, USA known as "Gower Gulch", near the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. ... This article is about the largest city in California. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ... Gower Street is a street in Hollywood, California, which marks the start of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which runs east to west on Hollywood Boulevard. ...

The films of Poverty Row, many of them Westerns or series such as those featuring the Bowery Boys and the parade of Caucasian actors portraying Charlie Chan, are generally characterized by low budgets, casts made up of unknowns or stars distinctly on the way down, and overall production values that emphasize the haste and economy with which they were made. The Western is an American genre in literature and film. ... The Dead End Kids were six young actors from New York who appeared in Sidney Kingsleys play Dead End in 1935 on Broadway. ...

While some Poverty Row studios came and quickly went after a few releases, others operated on more or less the same terms -- if vastly different scales -- from larger studios such as MGM, Warner Brothers, and Paramount Pictures. MGM logo Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or MGM, is a large media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of cinema and television programs. ... Warner Bros. ... The Paramount Pictures logo used since 2003. ...

Among the most successful and longest-lived of such lower-tier companies -- which like larger studios, maintained permanent lots (and many standing sets that dedicated moviegoers could frequently recognize from movie to movie), had both cast and crew on long-term contract, and had a more varied output than smaller firms -- were Republic Studios (home of countless Westerns and the disconcerting oeuvre of Vera Hruba Ralston, wife of studio head Herbert J. Yates, as well, eventually of more ambitious projects as Johnny Guitar, which helped solidify Joan Crawford's screen reputation as a hard-boiled termagent) and Monogram Pictures, which over several decades produced everything from college/teen musicals starring popular swing bands and half (or more) forgotten names like Gale Storm to cut-rate versions of classics like Oliver Twist to the final films of fallen diva Kay Francis, who eked out a three-picture production deal with the studio in movies that were the palest possible echoes of her earlier successes. Republic Pictures Corporation (aka Republic Entertainment) is an independent film, television, and video distribution company that was originally a movie production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, best known for its specialization in quality B pictures, westerns and movie serials. ... Herbert John Yates (1880-1966) was the founder and president of Republic Pictures, famous for being the home of John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. ... Joan Crawford, photographed by Yousuf Karsh, 1948 Joan Crawford (March 23, 1906 – May 10, 1977) was an Academy Award winning American actress. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Josephine Owaissa Cottle (born April 5, 1922), better known as Gale Storm, is an American actress/singer. ... Oliver Twist is an 1838 novel by Charles Dickens, probably one of the best-known of all his works, along with A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations. ... Kay Francis was an American actress who, after a brief beginning on Broadway in the 1920s, moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936. ...

The smallest studios, many of which have names -- Tiffany, Victory, Mascot, Chesterfield -- both evocative and obscure, were more likely to package and release films from independent producers, British "quota quickie" films, or borderline exploitation films (titles such as Hitler, Beast of Berlin come to mind). One that regularly skirted the line between sensation and exploitation was the notorious PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation), which released Hitler and was home to specialty star Rondo Hatton, whose brief career tried to do for acromegaly what Esther Williams did for swimming. Exploitation is the name given to genre of films, extant since the earliest days of moviemaking, but popularized in the 1970s. ... PRCs logo 1945 Part of the 1930s and 1940s Hollywood studios Poverty Row (along with Republic Pictures and Monogram Pictures), PRC made only small-budget B-movies. ... Rondo Hattons acromegalic features have made him a Hollywood Horror icon Rondo Hatton (April 22, 1894 - February 2, 1946) had a brief, but prolific career playing thuggish bit parts in a slew of Hollywood, California B-movies. ... Rondo Hatton, a famous sufferer of acromegaly whose face was distorted by the disorder. ... Esther Jane Williams (born August 8, 1921) is a United States swimmer and movie star famous for her musical films that featured elaborate performances with swimming and diving. ...

The breakup of the studio system (and its tight distribution network, which left independent movie houses eager for seat-filling product from the Poverty Row studios) and the advent of television are among the factors that led to the disappearance of "Poverty Row" as a concrete phenomenon. The kinds of films produced by Poverty Row studios only grew in popularity, but were increasingly available both from major production companies and from independent producers who no longer needed to rely on a studio's ability to package and release their work.

Today, major films from Star Wars to the Indiana Jones films to the endless stream of action-adventure blockbusters recall the glory days of Poverty Row, albeit often without the awkward and usually unconscious charm that is at the heart of the continuing appeal of Hollywood's poor relatives. The cover of the 2004 DVD widescreen release of the modified original Star Wars Trilogy. ... Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones Indiana Jones is a fictional bullwhip-toting, fedora-wearing archaeologist with an overdeveloped ophidiophobia (fear of snakes). ...

Reference

Fernett, Gene, Hollywood's Poverty Row, 1930-1950, Coral Reef Publications, Inc., Satellite Beach, FL, 1973.