Chesterfield Pictures


Chesterfield Motion Pictures Corporation, generally shortened to Chesterfield Pictures, was an American film production company of the 1920s and 1930s. Its low-budget films were intended as second features, which played on the lower-half of a double bill. The company was headed by George R. Batcheller, and worked in tandem with its sister studio, Invincible, which was led by Maury Cohen. The production company never owned its own studio and so rented space at a variety of other studios, primarily Universal Pictures and RKO.
It was one of a number of Poverty Row studios taken over by Herbert Yates in 1935 and merged into his newly formed Republic Pictures in an attempt to create a dominant low-budget producer with enough power to take on the major studios. Republic was more or less successful in achieving this over the next twenty years.