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. A few then-current stars worked for PRC (Bela Lugosi, Buster Crabbe, Bob Steele, Frances Langford, Ralph Byrd, Edward Everett Horton) but generally the company couldn't afford star salaries and had to make do with less expensive "name" talent. 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). Some of PRC's hits were The Devil Bat with Bela Lugosi and a sequel, Devil Bat's Daughter; Misbehaving Husbands with silent-comedy star Harry Langdon; and Jungle Man and Nabonga, Buster Crabbe jungle thrillers with Julie London in the latter. 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. A notable film for the studio was Baby Face Morgan, a tongue-in-cheek gangster epic with Mary Carlisle, Robert Armstrong and Richard Cromwell, directed by German émigré Arthur Dreifuss. According to B Movies by Don Miller, "Most of the remainder of the 1942 PRC product dealt with gangsters, crime or whodunit puzzles, reliable standbys of the indie companies catering to action and grind theater houses. Baby Face Morgan played it for laughs, with Cromwell as a rube posing as a tough racketeer. Armstrong, [co-star] Chick Chandler and Carlisle lent strong support, and while it never scaled any heights it was a passable spoof of the genre." Growth and recognition In 1943, Robert R. Young, a railroad magnate who also owned American Pathé's film processing laboratory, acquired the