Herbert John Yates (August 24, 1880 – February 3, 1966), a Hollywood mini-mogul, was the founder and President of Republic Pictures.

With his contract, he had launched the film careers of such Western stars as Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne.

Between 1935 and 1959, under the supervising leadership of Yates, Republic has produced 956 feature films and 66 multi-chapter cliffhanger serials, some of which are today considered classics, later broadcast on television and then released on home video.

In the following years, the company was heavily involved in a depressed market for phonograph records, buying up failing labels at bargain prices to exploit their catalogues.

Under Yates' leadership, Republic first leased, and then purchased the lot, expanding it from six stages to nineteen and adding state-of-the-art production facilities.

Yates risked a budget of more than a million dollars, making possible the use of Technicolor (in lieu of Republic's own Trucolor process) and location filming in Ireland.

In 1948 Yates left his wife Petra for the Czech figure skater Vera Hruba Ralston, the couple marrying in 1952.

Notable among Yates' contributions to the lot are the Mabel Normand sound stage, built during World War II and later home to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and an award-winning music scoring auditorium that has hosted such famous names as Aaron Copland and Artur Rubinstein.