Robert L. Lippert - Screen Guild Productions and Lippert Pictures

Screen Guild Productions and Lippert Pictures

Dissatisfied with what he believed to be exorbitant rental fees charged by major studios, Lippert formed Screen Guild Productions in 1945, its first release being a Bob Steele western called Wildfire, made in Cinecolor. Screen Guild also re-released many older B picture westerns and made 22 pictures under its own name.

Screen Guild became Lippert Pictures, Inc. in 1948, utilizing rental stages and the movie ranch known as Corriganville for its films; 130 features were released between 1948 and 1955.

• Lippert read a 1949 Life magazine article about a proposed trip to and landing on the Moon. He rushed into production his film version called Rocketship X-M, released a year later in 1950; he changed the destination to Mars to avoid copying exactly the same idea being utilized by producer George Pal in his large budget, high-profile Destination Moon. Rocketship X-M succeeded in becoming the first science fiction outer space drama to appear in movie theaters, but just barely. More importantly, it became the first film drama to warn of the dangers and folly of full-scale Atomic War.

• Ron Ormond produced and directed several films for Lippert, including many westerns with Lash LaRue.

• Lippert had a reciprocal agreement with the British company Hammer Films to distribute each other's films in their own countries.

• Screenwriter Samuel Fuller wanted to become a director, so he agreed to direct the three films he had been contracted to write for Lippert--I Shot Jesse James, The Baron of Arizona and The Steel Helmet, all for no extra money and just the directing credit.

• Sid Melton was a contract actor for Lippert Pictures. He starred in the science fiction film The Lost Continent; both the final reels of that film were tinted green to provide an unusual mood and ambiance for the film's prehistoric jungle setting. The year before, Lippert had used a sepia-red tint for the Mars sequences in Rocketship X-M.