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In the Balcony's MONOGRAM PICTURES Site... Where cheesy, low-budget movies meet a cheesy, low-budget movie theatre on a cheesy, low-budget website. The perfect marriage of form and content!

Welcome to MONOGRAM WEEK 2010 - the 60th Annual Celebration of the Greatest of all Movie Studios. Well, greatest except for MGM, of course. Oh, and Paramount. Well, and then there's Columbia, Universal, and a couple dozen others - but heck, none of THEM churned out a B-movies with such panache!

HOW IT ALL BEGAN...

At let, you see Leo "Slip Mahoney" Gorcey and his agent, Jan Grippo; Mr. Grippo represented some of the most legendary acts in show business, including Shlomo O'Brien and his Jewish-Irish Tenors and Flexo the Wonder Tortoise. Way back in 1951, these two funsters were promoting the first annual Monogram Week, when - as shown on this banner - every theatre screen in the nation presented fine Monogram Studios films. (Please, don't ask WHICH nation - film historians argue vehemently over that to this day.)

Now, here we are, sixty years of entertainment later, Leo & Jan are long gone, but the nation still salutes the unique artistry that went into each and every Monogram picture (where the director, in addition to hollering, "Action!" and "Cut!", could frequently be heard yelling, "We're ten minutes over schedule - lose pages 92 through 101!")

Here in the Balcony, we are proud to carry on the proud tradition of Monogram Week (proud being a relative term); this year's gala event takes place in Howell, Michigan, affectionately known as "The Keystone City" for its handy location, centrally located right between Fowlerville and Wixom. The 60th Annual Monogram Pictures Grand Banquet - at which we'll crown Miss Monogram 2010 - will be held in the beautiful, recently renovated (1986) Quality Inn. Well, actually, in the PARKING lot of the Quality Inn - the Inn was booked for some sort of a professional harmonica-polisher's convention and we couldn't get a room. Of course our house band, Fred "Disco Hands" Martini and his Fat-Ass Twisters will be back again to regale us with fine songs from a wealth of Monogram pictures, and the soiree is catered by the finest gourmet restaurant in Howell, Mr. B's Rustic Tavern.

So join us each day this week for all the festivities, including the colossal Monogram Parade; this year's Grand Marshall is Jefferson Davis Peabody III, whose grandfather, improbably also named Jefferson Davis Peabody III, was the stand-in for Monogram Pictures' great Mantan Moreland. That's Mr. Peabody on the right in this picture. Or maybe the left.

Remember, the festivities are climaxed at week's end with the zirconium crown being placed on the impossibly adorable head of MS. MONOGRAM 2010!

MONOGRAM WEEK 2010...

DAY TWO

Welcome back to picturesque Howell, Michigan, "Showplace of the Tri-State Area", where we’re preparing for the colossal Monogram Week Parade, nearly a block and a half’s worth of balloons, floats, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. This year’s floats are spectacular; the girls on the Blonde Dynamite float are naturally garnering much of the attention from the gathering male fans, while the ladies are swooning over the handsome, swarthy men of The Marines are Here and Sky Patrol. Look, here is this year's spectacular Bowery Boys float, and it is… oh, no, wait, there’s a black guy on it – must be the East Side Kids.

Many festivities still to come, including the big Monogram Grand Banquet, catered by the great folks at Mr. B’s Rustic Tavern, where, if you mention Monogram Week you’ll receive one complimentary order of onion rings with each and every purchase of at least $150.00. And don’t forget, at the end of the week, we’ll be crowning Ms. Monogram 2010!

A Little Monogram History: Part Two

Yesterday, we left off our Monogram history at a cliffhanger; in 1935, the studio was absorbed by Consolidated Film Laboratories and became part of Republic Pictures. Ousted Monogram head and founder W. Ray Johnston spent more than a year reforming his studio, though, in partnership with Pathé in England, and set up a robust distribution network and release schedule. By mid-1937, Monogram Pictures was back in business, providing B movies to play around the country and in England.

And this is as good a time as ever to remind folks that “B movies” were not necessarily “bad” or schlocky, something many of today’s younger fans don’t understand. Theatres often showed double features in those days, an “A” picture with bigger budgets and better-known stars, longer running times, and more established directors, and a “B” picture with up and coming stars (or once-popular players on their way down the ladder), shorter running times, and often formulaic plots. Series pictures, such as the Charlie Chan and Sherlock Holmes mysteries or East Side Kids films, made good B movies because their fans returned to them every 3 months to catch the latest installments. Here In the Balcony, we aver that the "B" in "B-Movie could well've stood for "Butts in the Seats".

And now, let's return once again to the Mighty Monogram Movie Emporium, where we've got all-American anti-Nazi action on the Spy Train! Click on the picture and ALL ABOAAAAAARD for excitement!

DAY ONE

Although Monogram Pictures was officially born in 1931, it actually got its start many years earlier as Rayart, named for its founder, W. Ray Johnston, (imagine if he'd have called his studio "Johnston Pictures"; the motto "If it's a BIG PICTURE, it's a JOHNSTON" comes to mind) and at one point the outfit was called Continental Talking Pictures. Most of their early releases were cheap westerns, although the studio tried to do a few “prestige” pictures, including early sound adaptations of Jane Eyre, Black Beauty, and Oliver Twist. That whole "prestige" thing was never going to work out for THIS studio though. During the early days of the Great Depression, things were tough for the big studios, let alone the small independents, and Monogram found itself heavily in debt to Consolidated Film Laboratories. Consolidated foreclosed on Monogram in 1935 and joined several small studios (Mascot, Majestic, Liberty) together as Republic. Monogram seemed poised to be forever forgotten, but in 1937… well, we’ll save that part of the story for later, because it’s time to duck into the Mighty Monogram Movie Emporium, where the legendary Bomba, the Jungle Boy is learning how to read. Click the silver screen (it's kind of silver, anyway) for jungle fun 'n' excitement, and tune in each and every day this week for more Monogram movie mirth!

More Exciting Information About Monogram Week:

PAST MS. MONOGRAM WINNERS...

Altara Michelle, Ms. Monogram 2009

Jennifer Rouse, Ms. Monogram 2008

Brenna Barry, Ms. Monogram 2007

Jennifer Blaire, Ms. Monogram 2006

Our previous BELA-BRATION Tribute to the films of Mr. Lugosi:

The Invisible Ghost/Bowery at Midnight

The Ape Man/Return of the Ape Man

The Corpse Vanishes

Spooks Run Wild

Ghosts on the Loose