More Trivia Getting Ready for the Republic Studio Countdown

Republic Pictures may be most know for Westerns and B movies during its 1934 to 1959 run, but here are a few other trivia tidbits about the studio.

The six studios that suffered during the Depression that collaborated to form Republic in the 1930s had bold names like: Invincible, Majestic, Monogram, Mascot, Liberty and Chesterfield.

MORE  TRIVIA . . .

* The studio did a Shakespeare movie, Macbeth (1949) indulging Orson Welles who had a hard time getting anything financed even a decade after Citizen Kane.

* Although most of the Republic Pictures were in black and white, the posters were vibrant and colorful and considered works of art in its own right.

* Two high-budget Technicolor films were The Red Pony (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952).

* In striving to cut costs, the studio came up with Cinecolor, which was its own kind of process, much like Trucolor and used in films such as Johnny Guitar (1954), The Last Command, and Magic Fire (1956). The process gave bright reds, oranges, blues, browns and flesh tones, but other colors came across as muted, particularly bright greens became dark and purples showed as a dark magenta.

* The first film using the studio's Naturama widescreen film process was in 1956 with The Maverick Queen.

* Hillbilly pictures at the studio featured country folk with an attitude, bold and proud.

* John Wayne did 33 films here,  and it's the studio that invented the singing cowboy, particularly Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

* More than 1,000 films were shot at Republic during that time.

* Stars who worked on Republic films include:

Duke Ellington, Robert Mitchum, Barbara Stanwyck, Louis Armstrong, Fred MacMurray,  Mickey Rooney, Claude Raines, Enest Borgnine, Vincet Price, Errol Flynn, Anne Sheridan, Ethel Barrymore, Raymond Navarro, Lon Chaney Jrl. and many more.