Trivia

On 9/26/39 the following item appeared in "The Film Daily": "Hollywood - Robert J. Horner, general manager of American Pictures, announces that his company will produce four top-budget Spanish pictures for the Latin-America market. The first, 'Sabotaje', with Jorge Negrete and Julian Rivero, goes before the camera on October 15, 1939. Horner is negotiating for the services of Amanda Varela, top femme star from the Argentine".

Horner was born with no legs, and developed an early version of the now-common four-wheeled electric cart to enable him to get around.

Horner was arrested on several occasions for violations of labor laws by Los Angeles authorities during crackdowns on what were called "fly-by-night" producers who either failed or refused to pay their employees. Among others, Horner was ordered to pay actor Jack Perrin several thousand dollars for a series of westerns Perrin made for him, but for which he had never been paid. Horner was also ordered by the courts to return money to several aspiring actresses to whom he had promised parts in his films if they invested money with him. They gave him the money, but never got parts in any of his films.

That Horner was able to survive as a producer is indicative of how even the worst of the independent producers could succeed under the film exchange system of the 1920s and '30s, which serviced thousands of theaters throughout the U.S. and Canada. The trick was to sign up enough exchanges, typically willing to print and distribute product (films such as Horner's would be shown for one to three days on the lower part of a double bill) within a defined territory for as little as $5 per day. The exchange would negotiate advertising expenses (posters), normally only paying for these items on a first run (some would attempt to sell or lease them in advertising packages to the theaters to varying degrees of success). A single print of even the worst Horner effort might be shown three times in 400 unaffiliated theaters on the first run. These mostly rural theaters had an insatiable demand for product since they were unable to obtain A-list first-run features from major Hollywood studios. The film would be shelved for six to nine months and continue to recirculate on an irregular basis until the print was worn out. Money, at least in theory, could trickle back to the producer for years, and mastering the art of negotiating with these exchange owners was the real key to successful low-budget independent production. The cleverest producers (which did not include Horner) with glib tongues and a track record could even get the exchanges to advance money on future productions. Ironically, today the rare surviving one-sheet posters of Horner's films are highly collectible, with prices that approach and even surpass the original cost of the productions themselves.