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The films of Poverty Row, many of them Westerns or series such as those featuring the Bowery Boys and detectives such as Mr. Wong and Charlie Chan , are generally characterized by low budgets, casts made up of unknowns or stars distinctly on the way down, and overall production values that emphasize the haste and economy with which they were made. While some Poverty Row studios came and quickly went after a few releases, others operated on more or less the same terms as— if vastly different scales from — larger studios such as MGM , Warner Brothers , and Paramount Pictures . The most successful and longest-lived of such lower-tier companies operated much like the Major Film Studio s; they maintained permanent lots (and many standing sets that dedicated moviegoers could frequently recognize from movie to movie), had both cast and crew on long-term contract, and had a more varied output than smaller firms. Leading studios on Poverty Row included Republic (home of countless Westerns and the disconcerting oeuvre of Vera Hruba Ralston , wife of studio head Herbert J. Yates , as well, eventually of more ambitious projects as '' Johnny Guitar '', which helped solidify Joan Crawford 's screen reputation as a hard-boiled termagant) and Monogram Pictures , which over several decades produced everything from college/teen musicals starring popular swing bands and half (or more) forgotten names like Gale Storm to cut-rate versions of classics like '' Oliver Twist '' to the final films of fallen diva Kay Francis , who eked out a three-picture production deal with the studio in movies that were the palest possible echoes of her earlier successes. The smallest studios, many of which have names -- Tiffany, Victory, Mascot , Chesterfield -- both evocative and obscure, were more likely to package and release films from independent producers, British " Quota Quickie " films, or borderline Exploitation Films (titles such as ''Hitler, Beast of Berlin'' come to mind). One that regularly skirted the line between sensation and exploitation was the notorious PRC ( Producers Releasing Corporation ), which released ''Hitler'' and was home to specialty star Rondo Hatton , whose brief career tried to do for Acromegaly what Esther Williams did for swimming. The breakup of the Studio System (and its tight distribution network, which left independent movie houses eager for seat-filling product from the Poverty Row studios) and the advent of Television are among the factors that led to the disappearance of "Poverty Row" as a concrete phenomenon. The kinds of films produced by Poverty Row studios only grew in popularity, but were increasingly available both from major production companies and from independent producers who no longer needed to rely on a studio's ability to package and release their work. COMPARISON WITH OTHER STUDIOS REFERENCE
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