Mascot Pictures

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Mascot Pictures Corporation
Industry
Studio City, Los Angeles, California, United States
Key people
Nat Levine
ProductsThe King of the Kongo (1929)
The Shadow of the Eagle (1932)
In Old Santa Fe (1934)
The Phantom Empire (1935)

Mascot Pictures Corporation was an American film company of the 1920s and 1930s, best known for producing and distributing

film serials and B-westerns. Mascot was formed in 1927 by film producer Nat Levine. In 1935, it merged with several other companies to form Republic Pictures
.

Mascot's serial

Universal Studios
by several months.

The company's logo featured a roaring tiger resting on top of a model of the planet Earth.

Early years

Mascot was created in 1927 by Nat Levine, a former personal secretary to Marcus Loew, after the success of his independent serial The Silent Flyer (1926).

In the beginning the company operated out of the upstairs offices of a contractor's business on Santa Monica Boulevard. It rented all of its equipment and facilities.

In 1929 the studio made serial history with the production of The King of the Kongo. This was the first serial, from any production company, to be made with sound. Mascot's first all-talking production was The Phantom of the West (1931)

Sennett Studios

film noirs, including the independently produced Gun Crazy
(1949), would become renowned.

By 1933 Mascot was successful enough to rent, and later buy, Sennett Studios, after the original owner, silent-film comedy producer-director

CBS Studio Center
.

Mascot was responsible for the popularity of the concept of the "singing cowboy" and the "musical western". In 1935 the studio produced The Phantom Empire with the then untried Gene Autry as the lead.

Republic Pictures

Main article: Republic Pictures

Mascot's film laboratory was

Herbert Yates, Mascot was merged by CFI with Monogram Pictures, Liberty Pictures, Chesterfield Pictures and Invincible Pictures to form Republic Pictures
, a production-distribution company designed by Yates. Levine was designated head of the serial and B-Western arm of the company, and the Mascot studio facilities and contract personnel became Republic assets as part of the merger. Within two years, however, along with most of his colleagues at Republic who had owned other companies, Levine found himself in a disagreeable situation and left Republic. With only the Mascot name and film library remaining in his possession, Levine found employment elsewhere in the motion picture industry and Mascot Pictures survived only through reissues of its sound serials and a single, new feature film edited from the "Phantom Empire" serial, released in 1940.

Legacy

Several careers began at Mascot Pictures.

Actors

Production crew

Filmography

Additionally,

  • The Silent Flyer (1926) was created by Nat Levine but was not in the strict sense of the word a Mascot production.

See also

Further reading

  • The Vanishing Legion: A History of Mascot Pictures 1927–1935; Tuska, Jon; 1999 (McFarland Classics);
    ISBN 978-0-7864-0749-1

External links
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