President of Republic Pictures : Nathan Levine; Pioneer in Movies

Nathan (Nat) Levine, who parlayed a career as a distributor of early films that were rejected by most of the major studios into the presidency of Republic Pictures, is dead at age 89.

A spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Hospital said Friday that he died Sunday at the Woodland Hills facility.

Levine began in the industry in 1920 when he launched an independent distributorship. Seven years later, still in his 20s, Levine formed his own production company, Mascot.

First Sound Adventure Short

There he produced the first of what would be 500 reels of serials, including what is believed to be the first sound adventure short, “King of the Congo.”

Meanwhile, Herbert J. Yates, who owned Republic Film Laboratories and later Consolidated Film Industries, was processing film for Mascot, Monogram, Liberty and other small picture companies and knew that Mascot was one of the few independent firms making money.

Levine was operating out of the old Mack Sennett studio in North Hollywood, which he purchased when Sennett went bankrupt.

An additional attraction for Yates, who wanted his own studio, was that Mascot held contracts for such young cowboy stars as Gene Autry and Smiley Burnette and had used a former USC football player named John Wayne in three short films.

In 1935, Yates formed Republic Pictures and Levine melded Mascot Pictures into the Republic organization. Yates added modern recording equipment and the latest in sound stages to Levine’s holdings.

Levine also brought to Republic the sound recording engineers, writers, cinematographers and special effects team that had made Mascot successful.

Head of Firm

After some disputes with Yates’ original management team, Levine became head of the firm, bringing to the new studio his expertise in low-budget, commercially successful “B” features and long-running adventure serials. That twin package remained the backbone of Republic until it gradually quit production in the late 1940s, the victim of expensive, color spectacular movies from competing studios and the brash infant of television.

Ironically, CBS purchased the North Hollywood property in 1952 and renamed it Television City.

By then Levine had been gone for years, retiring from the film industry in 1937. His survivors include a son.