The longest-lived independent film production company in the U.S. was founded in 1930 as Monogram Pictures Corporation. In 1935, Monogram was merged into Republic Pictures, but soon later was spun off as its own company again. In The Golden Age of Hollywood, Monogram would produce over thirty movies a year, which were distributed to theaters at B-Movie flat rates.
The Monogram name became synonymous with quick, unpolished, low-budget film-making (being one of the many companies in Hollywood's so-called "Poverty Row
"). Some of the most well-known actors associated with the studio, including Bela Lugosi and Sidney Toler (aka Charlie Chan), were obviously past their prime during their Monogram years.
When Steve Broidy, who had been Monogram's sales manager since 1937, became president in 1945, he set out to change the studio's dubious reputation. Allied Artists Productions was founded as a subsidiary of Monogram in 1946; by 1953, the Monogram name had been phased out and the company was officially renamed the Allied Artists Pictures Corporation. The studio had not cut back on its B-Movie production, which remained as intensive as ever, but its annual output now contained a substantial share of bigger-budget pictures, some even filmed in color. In the 1950s, Allied Artists came to depend more on independent producers such as Roger Corman and William Castle.
Broidy stepped down in 1965; Allied Artists sold its studio facilities shortly after, subsisting for a while as a distribution company only. The company attempted to return to film production in the 1970s, but with little success. Allied Artists finally went bankrupt in 1979, and was sold to Lorimar a year later. Today, much of the Allied Artists library resides with Warner Bros., which acquired Lorimar in 1988. Another package of Monogram films had been sold to Associated Artists Productions in the 1950s, these ended up with United Artists, and are now owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (in contrast, the rest of the former a.a.p. library, which included most of what Warner Bros. released prior to 1950, as well as the Paramount Popeye cartoons, is now owned by another WB subsidiary, Turner Entertainment).
Monogram Pictures and Allied Artists productions include:
- 55 Days at Peking (1963)
- Alice, Sweet Alice (1977)
- Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
- Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
- The Babe Ruth Story (1948)
- Billy Budd (1962)
- Black Zoo (1963)
- Bowery At Midnight (1942)
- Cabaret (1972; co-produced with ABC Pictures)
- The Cyclops (1957; U.S. distributor)
- El Cid (1961)
- The Corpse Vanishes (1942)
- The Day of the Triffids (1963; U.S. distributor)
- Dillinger (1945)
- Frankenstein 1970 (1958)
- Friendly Persuasion (1956)
- The Giant Behemoth (1959)
- House on Haunted Hill (1959)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956)
- The Internecine Project (1974; U.S. distributor)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
- It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947)
- Last Summer (1969)
- Love in the Afternoon (1957)
- A Man and a Woman (1966; U.S. distributor)
- The Man Who Would be King (1975; co-produced with Columbia Pictures)
- Mitchell (1975)
- Papillon (1973)
- The Phenix City Story (1955)
- Queen of Outer Space (1958)
- The Rebel Set (1959)
- Seven Angry Men (1955)
- Shotgun (1955)
- The Story Of O (1975)
- Swing Parade of 1946 (1946)
- Three the Hard Way (1974)
- Tormented (1960)
- Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)
- Where Are Your Children? (1943)
- The Wild Geese (1978)
