Producers Releasing Corporation

Chesterfield Motion Picture Corporation, generally shortened to Chesterfield Pictures, was an American film production company of the 1920s and 1930s. The company head was George R. Batcheller, and the company worked in tandem with its sister studio, Invincible, which was led by Maury Cohen. The production company never owned its own studio and rented space at other studios, primarily Universal Pictures and RKO.

Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, known professionally as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian and American actor best remembered for portraying Count Dracula in the 1931 horror classic Dracula, Ygor in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and his roles in many other horror films from 1931 through 1956.

Clarence Linden Crabbe II, known professionally as Buster Crabbe, was an American two-time Olympic swimmer and film and television actor. He won the 1932 Olympic gold medal for 400-meter freestyle swimming event, which launched his career on the silver screen and later television. He starred in a variety of popular feature films and movie serials released between 1933 and the 1950s, portraying the top three syndicated comic-strip heroes of the 1930s: Tarzan, Flash Gordon, and Buck Rogers.

Bob Steele was an American actor. He also was billed as Bob Bradbury Jr..

Julia Frances Newbern-Langford was an American singer and actress who was popular during the Golden Age of Radio and made film and television appearances for over two decades.

Edward Everett Horton Jr. was an American character actor. He had a long career in film, theater, radio, television, and voice work for animated cartoons.

Joseph Edward Bromberg was a Hungarian-born American character actor in motion picture and stage productions dating mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. Knowledge of his past as a member of the Communist Party led to a defiant appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, shortly before his death.

George Zucco was an English character actor who appeared in plays and 96 films, mostly American-made, during a career spanning over two decades, from the 1920s to 1951. In his films, he often played a suave villain, a member of nobility, or a mad doctor.

Lyle Florenz Talbot was an American stage, screen and television actor. His career in films spanned three decades, from 1931 to 1960, and he performed on a wide variety of television series from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. Among his notable roles on television was his portrayal of Ozzie Nelson's friend and neighbor Joe Randolph, a character he played for ten years on the ABC sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

Gladys George was an American actress of stage and screen. Though nominated for an Academy Award for her leading role in Valiant Is the Word for Carrie (1936), she spent most of her career in supporting roles in films such as Marie Antoinette (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Flamingo Road (1949).

Mary Carlisle was an American actress, singer, and dancer, best known for her roles as a wholesome ingénue in numerous 1930s musical-comedy films.

Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé, known as Ferde Grofé was an American composer, arranger, pianist and instrumentalist. He is best known for his 1931 five-movement tone poem, Grand Canyon Suite, and for having orchestrated George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue prior to its 1924 premiere.

Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and Alan M. Gundelfinger, and its various formats were in use from 1932 to 1955.

Edgar Georg Ulmer was a Jewish-Moravian, Austrian-American film director who mainly worked on Hollywood B movies and other low-budget productions, eventually earning the epithet 'The King of PRC', due to his extremely prolific output for the Poverty Row studio. His stylish and eccentric works came to be appreciated by auteur theory-espousing film critics in the years following his retirement. Ulmer's most famous productions include the horror film The Black Cat (1934) and the film noir Detour (1945).

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression.

Bluebeard is a 1944 film noir directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, starring John Carradine in the title role. The film also stars Jean Parker. The film is based on the famous French tale Barbe bleue that tells the story of a violent nobleman in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of one wife to avoid the fate of her predecessors. The film is registered in the public domain.

Detour is a 1945 American independent film noir directed by Edgar G. Ulmer starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. The screenplay was adapted by Martin Goldsmith and Martin Mooney (uncredited) from Goldsmith's 1939 novel of the same title, and released by the Producers Releasing Corporation, one of the so-called Poverty Row film studios in mid-20th-century Hollywood.

Eugene Hugh Beaumont was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of Ward Cleaver on the television series Leave It to Beaver, originally broadcast from 1957 to 1963; and as private detective Michael Shayne in a series of low-budget crime films in 1946 and 1947.

Alan Curtis was an American film actor who appeared in over 50 films.

Gas House Kids is a 1946 American comedy-drama film directed by Sam Newfield and starring Robert Lowery, Billy Halop and Teala Loring. It was followed by two sequels, Gas House Kids Go West and Gas House Kids in Hollywood, both released in 1947. In the film, a group of unruly New York City children from the Gas House District battle a criminal gang. Along with several other series made at the time, it was inspired by the Dead End Kids.

An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become historically important, and even gain a cult following.

United Artists Corporation (UA), doing business as United Artists Digital Studios, was an American production and distribution company. Founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, the studio was premised on allowing actors to control their own interests, rather than being dependent upon commercial studios. UA was repeatedly bought, sold, and restructured over the ensuing century. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) acquired the studio in 1981 for a reported $350 million.

The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission.

Strange Holiday is a 1945 American movie directed by Arch Oboler. Claude Rains features as a man who returns from a fishing vacation to find America controlled by fascists.

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global. It is the fifth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States, and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.