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Poverty Row is a slang term used to refer to Hollywood films produced from the 1920s[1] to the 1950s by small (and mostly short-lived) B movie studios. Although many of them were based on (or near) today's Gower Street in Hollywood,[2] the term did not necessarily refer to any specific physical location, but was rather a figurative catch-all for low-budget films produced by these lower-tier studios.
Many of the films of Poverty Row were Westerns, including series such as Billy the Kid, starring Buster Crabbe, from Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC), comedy/adventure series[3] such as those featuring the Bowery Boys (Monogram Pictures)[4] and detectives such as The Shadow. The films were characterized by low budgets,[5] casts made up of minor stars or unknowns, and overall production values betraying the haste and economy with which they were made.[6]
- ^ Film History of the 1920s - Filmsite.org
- ^ An Archive Restores and Resurrects Hollywood's Earliest Indie Films - Hyperallergic
- ^ Down and Dirty in Gower Gulch|UCLA Film & Television Archive
- ^ Cheap thrills|Film|The Guardian
- ^ Reel Life: the peculiar virtues of poverty row
- ^ POVERTY ROW FROM UCLA|Cinematheque