But not as a hands-on producer. In mid-1937, the Stan Laurel Corporation was formed to make two Laurel & Hardy features directly for M-G-M and also two under the Hal Roach banner.
The organization, with Laurel as the president and L.A. French as the vice-president, on November 11,1937, also signed a five-year contract with Fred Scott to star in a series of musical westerns. The prior Fred Scott westerns were produced by Jed Buell (as Spectrum Pictures Corporation)with financing gathered by Buell. The next four were all still produced by Jed Buell but the Stan Laurel Corporation provided the financing, consequently the above-the-title presenter was still Sperctrum Pictures Corp. presents Fred Scott in "The Rangers' Roundup,", with the production company credits shown as A Stan Laurel Production produced by Jed Buell. There were four "Stan Laurel Productions" filmed before Stan Laurel Corporation, Spectrum Pictures Corporation and Jed Buell gave up the ship. Spectrum was basically a production/distribution company with no film exchanges (nor major exchange tie-ups) other than various state-right distributors that handled the distribution of the films in designated areas of the U.S. So, unlike the B-westerns made by Republic, Paramount, Columbia, Universal, RKO and Monogram, that had guaranteed bookings through their own exchanges, the Spectrum/Laurel/Buell films had to be hand-peddled, at lower rates, and usually played only those theatres that were available after Republic, Universal, Columbia, Paramount, RKO and Paramount (with the Hopalong Cassidys) had cherry-picked the majority of available playing-dates for their product.
Too much competition to beat in the better situations, tied with cut-rate rentals in the boonies was more than the short-lived Stan Laurel Corporation could overcome. And Fred (the Silvery-Voiced Baritone) Scott's singing style ( a la George Houston and Dick Foran) was not the type that generated much interest among musical-western fans who preferred the sounds of Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers.
