[1] It was considered a prime example of what was called "Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower Street in Hollywood where shoestring film producers based their operations.

PRC was an actual Hollywood studio – albeit the smallest – with its own production facilities and distribution network, and it even accepted imports from the UK.

Only the 1944 musical Minstrel Man had enhanced production values; it showed such excellent progress during filming that its planned $80,000 budget was nearly tripled.

Chesterfield had catered to small-town owners of neighborhood theaters, who couldn't afford the big studios' first-run movies.

Chesterfield product was made on low budgets with actors who had been dropped from the rosters of larger studios, but still had name value.

PRC cast its starring roles with featured players (J. Edward Bromberg, George Zucco, Neil Hamilton, Lyle Talbot, Gladys George, Mary Carlisle, Noel Madison, Douglas Fowley, Iris Adrian, Patsy Kelly, Virginia Vale, Frank Albertson, Wallace Ford, Ralph Morgan, Henry Armetta, Chick Chandler, Pauline Moore, Bruce Bennett, John Carradine, Frank Jenks, Eddie Dean); stars who were idle (Harry Langdon, Lee Tracy, Anna May Wong, Mary Brian, Glenda Farrell, Freddie Bartholomew, Fifi D'Orsay, El Brendel, Slim Summerville, Armida); or celebrities from other fields (burlesque queen Ann Corio, Broadway headliner Benny Fields, animal hunter Frank Buck, radio announcer Harry Von Zell, radio comedian Bert Gordon, Miss America (of 1941) Rosemary LaPlanche).

During World War II, PRC made several war films such as Corregidor, They Raid by Night, A Yank in Libya, a pair of films set in China — Bombs over Burma and Lady from Chungking, both starring Anna May Wong — and a patriotic musical, The Yanks Are Coming.

Robert Armstrong, Chick Chandler, and Mary Carlisle lent strong support, and while it never scaled any heights it was a passable spoof of the genre.

[8] Austrian director Edgar G. Ulmer directed three film noir classics for PRC: Bluebeard (1944), Strange Illusion (1945), and Detour (1945).

[9] Universal, preferring not to publicize a deceased star and no longer bothering with low-budget films, sold The Brute Man to PRC.

Although the studio's feature films would now bear the Eagle-Lion trademark, the low-budget westerns continued to be marketed with the PRC logo into 1948.