Herbert John Yates

Background

Yates was born on August 24, 1880 in Brooklyn, New York City, the son of Charles Henry Yates, an English-born accountant and seller of religious literature, and Emma Worthing.

Education

After completing his secondary education in the local public schools, Yates attended Columbia University's night school briefly in the late 1890's but soon abandoned his pursuit of a higher education for a career in business.

Career

Yates began as an office boy for the American Tobacco Company, rose rapidly in that firm, and became sales manager for the eastern region by the age of thirty. In 1914, three years after the Supreme Court decision dissolving the tobacco trust, he became a sales executive in the newly formed company of Liggett and Myers.

In the early 1910's, Yates invested in the motion-picture production company organized by silent-screen star Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle. Within three years he reportedly made a profit of 200 percent on his initial capital outlay. His early investments, however, primarily involved the manufacture and processing of motion-picture film. In 1916 he resigned his position with Liggett and Myers, and a year later, with his brother George, organized Republic Film Laboratories.

In 1922 he established, and became chairman of, Consolidated Film Industries, which brought together several rival firms. By the early 1930's, Consolidated, with its main plant at Fort Lee, New Jersey, served many Hollywood studios and had become one of the nation's largest producers and developers of motion-picture film. During the 1930's, Yates gradually shifted his main interest from film laboratory services to moviemaking. A number of minor film studios had become indebted to Consolidated Film Industries, and in 1935, Yates acquired the assets of the Monogram, Mascot, and Liberty studios to establish Republic Productions, with headquarters in the old Mack Sennett studios in North Hollywood, California. Yates served as chairman and, after 1938, also as president of the new firm, which was reorganized in 1945 as Republic Pictures Corporation and included as subsidiaries Consolidated Film Industries and other Yates enterprises. Under Yates's leadership, Republic quickly became a major producer of movie serials and, more significantly, of B-films - features that filled the lower half of the double bills then offered by most of the nation's theaters.

After World War II, Republic encountered growing financial difficulties. Though its gross revenues increased fourfold during the 1940's, profits declined because of soaring production costs. Yates sought to change the studio's image by producing more-expensive A-films, the best of which are three John Wayne films, The Wake of the Red Witch (1948), The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952), nominated for an Academy Award as best film; yet these efforts generally garnered little prestige or profit.

The rapid growth of television in the 1950's posed insurmountable difficulties for Republic. The new medium lured America's youth away from the Saturday double-feature matinee, thus lessening the demand for the studio's B-features. Yates was the first Hollywood studio executive to make his old movies available for television, but his arrangements for that purpose led to an acrimonious boycott against Republic by the Screen Actors Guild over residual payments to performers whose films appeared on television. The studio posted net losses in excess of $1 million in both 1957 and 1958. Before Yates sold out his interests in the firm and resigned the chairmanship in July 1959, Republic had indeed ceased its moviemaking activities. Although millions of Americans annually attended Republic's pictures during Yates's twenty-four-year tenure as its chairman, his name was hardly a household word. He ruled the studio with an iron hand. In his early years he took pride in the fact that he was a businessman primarily interested in a healthy balance sheet. He died in Sherman Oaks, California on February 3, 1966.

Achievements

• Yates was the founder and president of Republic Pictures, who had John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers in their pictures. Under Yates' leadership between 1935 and 1959, Republic made 956 feature films and 849 serial chapters, some of which are classics screened on television and released on DVD.

Membership

Yates served as Chairman and President of Republic Pictures Corporation.

Connections

On November 14, 1910, Yates married Petra Antonsen; they had four children. In 1948, Yates had left his wife for the Czech figure skater Vera Hruba Ralston; the couple married in 1949.

Father:

Charles Henry Yates

Mother:

Emma Worthing

Spouse:

Petra Antonsen

Spouse:

Věra Helena Hrubá

She was a Czech figure skater and actress.

References

• Republic Studios: Between Poverty Row and the Majors
• Kings of the Bs: Working within the Hollywood system : an anthology of film history and criticism