Apropos of yesterday’s post showing the evolution of RKO studio’s logos, here’s a reel of logos from some of the most obscure in-the-gutter strictly-from -hunger low-rent low-budget low-self-esteem studios the movie business ever created. Names like ‘Invincible Pictures’, ‘Mascot Studios’, ‘Chesterfield Pictures’ sound like companies invented by a novelist for a pulpy show-biz-set murder mystery. Apparently all of the companies shown in the first ten minutes of this long-ish reel were merged to found Republic Pictures, the king of the low-budget studios from the mid-30s through the late 50s. Much of the latter part of this reel is devoted to Republic’s astonishing number of changing logos. The reel also opens with a one-minute history of Republic which you should skip unless you’ve been yearning for a history of the studio. Around four minutes in are a few samples of Monogram’s mid-1930s logo, a Deco confection featuring all the exciting forms of transport of the day–a plane, a train and a dirigible all swarm around a very moderne skyscraper. I assume that what followed this lovely piece of logo-art was a lousy movie now best forgotten.