Series Films and Success
Monogram continued to experiment with series; some hit and some missed. Definite hits were Charlie Chan (which Monogram picked up after the series had been dropped by Twentieth Century Fox), The Cisco Kid, and Joe Palooka, all proven movie properties abandoned by other studios and revived by Monogram. Less successful were the comic-strip exploits of Snuffy Smith, the mysterious adventures of The Shadow, and Sam Katzman's comedy series co-starring Billy Gilbert, Shemp Howard, and Maxie Rosenbloom.
Later Monogram very nearly hit the big time with King Brothers Productions' Dillinger, a sensationalized crime drama that was a runaway success in 1945, and received Monogram's only major Academy Award nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. The King Brothers released their later films through United Artists. Monogram tried to follow it up immediately (with several "exploitation" melodramas cashing in on topical themes), and did achieve some success, but Monogram never became a respectable "major" studio like former poverty-row denizen Columbia Pictures.
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Famous quotes containing the words series, films and/or success:
“The woman’s world ... is shown as a series of limited spaces, with the woman struggling to get free of them. The struggle is what the film is about; what is struggled against is the limited space itself. Consequently, to make its point, the film has to deny itself and suggest it was the struggle that was wrong, not the space.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)
“Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they’re doing and saying in films right now just shouldn’t be allowed. There’s no dignity anymore and I think that’s very important.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“I am from time to time congratulating myself on my general want of success as a lecturer; apparent want of success, but is it not a real triumph? I do my work clean as I go along, and they will not be likely to want me anywhere again. So there is no danger of my repeating myself, and getting to a barrel of sermons, which you must upset, and begin again with.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)