Herbert J. Yates

Educated at Columbia University. Founder of Republic Pictures. Retired in 1959.

When he was deposed as head of production at Republic Pictures in the 1950s, it was largely due his penchant for casting Czechoslovakian skating star Vera Hruba Ralston (who was his mistress and later his wife) in lavishly budgeted projects which, even when co-starring the studio's biggest box office attraction John Wayne, almost always lost money.

Republic would, for a time, dominate the B-movie industry and often defy expectations by producing several notable A-pictures (Lewis Milestone's The Red Pony (1949), Orson Welles' Macbeth (1948), John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952), among others), along with a number of excellent programmers that temporarily blurred Republic's image as a Poverty Row studio.

His Republic Pictures boasted the best special effects (then called "miniatures") department in the entire film industry, courtesy of brothers Howard Lydecker and Theodore Lydecker. Republic was mostly a "Poverty Row" studio but its miniature work far outclassed anything done by the majors; in fact, Republic was often contracted by the major studios to provide special effects and miniature work for them. The proficiency of this department can best be seen in Flying Tigers (1942); although the film is chock full of very realistic dogfights, bombing and strafing runs and other action aerial shots, other than a few full-scale mock-ups for close-up shots, every aircraft in it is a miniature.

Chafing under Yates' autocratic business style, Carr and Johnston finally departed Republic in 1937 to reform Monogram Pictures.

When Mascot and Monogram (along with Liberty Pictures, Chesterfield Pictures and Invincible Pictures, three small production companies that Yates basically foreclosed on) merged into Republic, Mascot was killed off and the Monogram name was (temporarily) shelved when production began at Republic in 1935 (beginning with a John Wayne oater, Westward Ho (1935), released that August. This "marriage," however, was not one of equals. Carr and Johnston, nominally the studio's chieftains, constantly clashed with Yates, who they felt was a tyrannical Hollywood interloper. One thing became clear, however--Yates was, as Republic's chief stockholder, the financial force of the studio. Levine managed to largely remain out of the fray (he was later bought out by Yates and blew his money on the ponies), and by using many of the same production techniques he had used at Mascot, the new studio's output came to resemble the best of Levine's Mascot product. Republic could also boast of having the best special effects/miniatures department (headed by former Mascot employees Howard Lydecker and his brother Theodore Lydecker) in the industry, a factor that greatly contributed to the quality level of Republic's output.

The 1933 bankruptcy of slapstick producer Mack Sennett presented a unique opportunity for a handful of enterprising (though some would call them cheapskate) producers along Gower Gulch (a section of Gower Street in Hollywood, also called "Poverty Row," where many small, independent producers and production companies had their offices). Sennett, who had fallen on hard times due to a combination of circumstances he was both unable and unwilling to confront, had his own well-equipped studio production facility. Nat Levine, the head of serial specialist Mascot Pictures, had his headquarters in a cramped building above a building contractor's office on Santa Monica Boulevard. He immediately saw an opportunity to go big time and approached Monogram Pictures chiefs Trem Carr and W. Ray Johnston about a joint venture to buy the studio, an offer they declined. Rebuffed but not discouraged, Levine obtained an option for the shuttered facility. At the same time, Yates was entering into film production with his fledgling Republic Pictures, and since both Monogram and Mascot were customers of his film lab (to which they owed a considerable amount of money), he held more influence than Levine in convincing the Monogram executives to join under the wings of the Republic eagle. Neither Monogram nor Mascot had owned much in the way of any real production facilities, instead renting studio space whenever it was needed.

Bought the Biograph Studios production facilities and film laboratory in the Bronx, NY, in the early 1930s, since Biograph had to liquidate the studio property to satisfy its debts to the Empire Trust Co.

His Consolidated Film Industries bought the American Record Corp. in 1929. The company was formed from a merger of three record companies, all of which produced 35-cent "dime store" records. ARC took over Brunswick Records (and its subsidiary labels) in December 1931 from Warner Bros as a lease agreement. In late 1934 ARC bought Columbia Records for a mere $75,000. During the Depression ARC dominated the "dime store" market, as well as having the prestige 75-cent Brunswick (and what was left of the Columbia and OKeh labels). The entire ARC company was purchased by CBS in 1938 for $700,000.

Herbert J. Yates, the cigar-chomping force behind Republic Pictures, spent his early adulthood as a salesman for the American Tobacco Co. (and later, at age 23, for Liggett & Meyers as an account executive). At the beginning of World War I, Yates saw an opportunity to apply his hard-nosed business skills in the burgeoning film processing business, which led him to create Consolidated Film Industries (CFI) in 1922 (a company that is still in existence today, although Republic Pictures ceased operations in 1959).

For years leased the penthouse at 1776 Broadway in New York City.