Matinee Memories

At first blush, the pairing of filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer with Hollywood B-movie studio Producers Releasing Corp. made for an odd combination when they came together in the early 1940s. There was Ulmer (1904-1972), Czech-born and trained at the famde German studio UFA prior to coming to America in the early 1930s. He was an artistically-minded triple threat as a writer, producer and director also proficient in set design and construction who valued his independence as much as his desire to demonstrate his particular talent; he later claimed turning down an offer from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer boss Louis B. Mayer was something of a professional highlight for him. As Ulmer put it, "I did not want to get ground up in the Hollywood hash machine."* PRC, as the company was more commonly known, was on the bottom rung of indy moviemakers specializing in second features for the nation's theaters, behind rivals Monogram and Republic, reviled for the ragtag look of its movies and th...

As Edgar G. Ulmer settled in with steady work at Producers Releasing Corp. in 1943, the studio was purchased by railroad man Robert R. Young, who also owned the American version of Pathe Laboratories. Seemingly little changed at PRC with the switch in ownership, the third since the company's founding as it continued to fill the need of small-town and neighborhood theaters across the country. But in doing so, PRC also looked to shake the reputation it had earned for issuing quickies devoid of any production niceties. Its product fit the bottom half of the double feature bill efficiently if not attractively, and ever attentive to the comments from exhibitors and theater owners, began to look at improvement by cutting back on the number of pictures in production and using the savings to offer audiences something better than what became expected from PRC. "With a heavy backlog of 80 pictures backed up in the exchanges, PRC would be able ... to concentrate on better quality p...

THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF RICARDO CORTEZ, by Dan Van Neste. Albany, Ga.: Bear Media Manor, 2017, 584 pages. $40 (hardcover), $30 (paperback). Meticulously researched and entertainingly written, THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL: THE LIFE AND FILMS OF RICARDO CORTEZ sheds light on one of the forgotten stars of the silent film period and early talkie era who made a successful transition to character roles and even directing for a brief time. Author Dan Van Neste reveals how Ricardo Cortez (1900-1977) was a busy if under-appreciated leading man who shook off his initial screen identification as a Latin lover in the Rudolph Valentino mode to become a smooth villain in numerous crime films of the 1930s. THE MAGNIFICENT HEEL truly does justice to an actor whose screen persona stood apart from other stars and supporting players in his and Hollywood's heyday. "Personally, Cortez was an enigma, a complex, insecure, self-conscious, extremely cautious, very private human being...