United Artists
Encyclopedia
United Artists Corporation (UA) is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin
, Mary Pickford
and Douglas Fairbanks
.
The current United Artists formed in November 2006 under a partnership between producer/actor Tom Cruise
and his production partner, Paula Wagner
, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Studios Inc., an MGM company. Paula Wagner left the studio on August 14, 2008. Cruise owns a small stake in the studio, a subsidiary of MGM Studios. MGM is owned by MGM Holdings
.
UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5, 1919, by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood: Mary Pickford
, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks
, and D. W. Griffith
. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo
. The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bond
s to help the World War I effort. Already veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures.
They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors who were tightening their control over actor salaries and creative decisions, a process that evolved into the rigid studio system
. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before things had formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland
, head of Metro Pictures
, is said to have observed, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of then-President Woodrow Wilson
), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams
as its first managing director.
The original terms called for Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith and Chaplin to independently produce five pictures each year. But by the time the company got under way in 1920–1921, feature films were becoming more expensive and more polished, and running times had settled at around ninety minutes (or eight reels). It was believed that no one, no matter how popular, could produce and star in five quality feature films a year. By 1924, by which time Griffith had dropped out, the company was facing a crisis: either bring in others to help support a costly distribution system or concede defeat. The veteran producer Joseph Schenck
was hired as president. Not only had he been producing pictures for a decade, but he brought along commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge
, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge
, and his brother-in-law, Buster Keaton
. Contracts were signed with a number of independent producers, most notably Samuel Goldwyn
, Alexander Korda
and Howard Hughes
. Schenck also formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name. They also began international operations, first in Canada, then in Mexico, and by the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries.
Still, even with a broadening of the company, UA struggled. The coming of sound ended the careers of Pickford and Fairbanks. Chaplin, rich enough to do what he pleased, worked only occasionally. Schenck resigned in 1933 to organize a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century Pictures, which soon provided four pictures a year to UA's schedule. He was replaced as president by sales manager Al Lichtman
who himself resigned after only a few months. Pickford produced a few films, and at various times Goldwyn, Korda, Walt Disney
, Walter Wanger
, and David O. Selznick were made "producing partners" (i.e., sharing in the profits), but ownership still rested with the founders. As the years passed and the dynamics of the business changed, these "producing partners" drifted away, Goldwyn and Disney to RKO, Wanger to Universal Pictures
, Selznick to retirement. By the late 1940s, United Artists had virtually ceased to exist as either a producer or distributor. It sold off its Mexican releasing division to Crédito Cinematográfico Mexicano, a local company.
, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda
, and Walter Wanger – many of the same people who were members of United Artists. Later members included Hunt Stromberg
, William Cagney, Sol Lesser, and Hal Roach
.
The Society aimed to advance the interests of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by the studio system
. SIMPP also fought to end ostensibly anti-competitive practices by the seven major film studios – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, Columbia Pictures
, Paramount Pictures
, Universal Studios
, RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox
, and Warner Bros.
– that controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of films.
In 1942, the SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. The complaint accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-run and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. It was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors alleging monopoly and restraint of trade.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered the major Hollywood movie studio
s – Loews Theaters/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and RKO Radio Pictures – to sell their theater chains and to eliminate certain anti-competitive practices. This effectively brought an end to the studio system.
By 1958, many of the objectives that led to the creation of the SIMPP had been obtained and SIMPP closed its offices.
) and Robert Benjamin
approached Pickford and Chaplin with a wild idea: let them take over United Artists for five years. If, at the end of those five years, UA was profitable, they would be given an option to buy the company. Since UA was barely alive, Pickford saw nothing to lose and agreed. Chaplin was against the deal, but changed his mind in late 1952 when the US government revoked his re-entry visa while he was in London for the UK premiere of Limelight. He sold his remaining shares of UA several years later.
In taking over UA, Krim and Benjamin created the first studio without an actual "studio". Primarily acting as bankers, they offered money to independent producers. UA leased space at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studio, but did not own a studio lot as such. Thus UA did not have the overhead, the maintenance, or the expensive production staff that ran up costs at other studios.
Among their first clients were Sam Spiegel
and John Huston
, whose "Horizon Productions" gave UA one major hit, The African Queen (1951) and one slightly less successful one, Moulin Rouge
(1952), based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. Others followed, among them Stanley Kramer
, Otto Preminger
, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions, and a number of actors, newly freed from studio contracts and anxious to produce or direct their own films.
UA production-head Arnold Picker
selected the properties the company would back. With UA's new success, Pickford saw a chance to exit gracefully, though she still held out for top dollar, walking away with $1.5 million in 1955. That same year, UA won its first Best Picture Oscar, for the film Marty
. It starred Ernest Borgnine
, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
UA went public the following year, and as the other mainstream studios fell into decline, UA prospered, adding relationships with the Mirisch brothers
, Billy Wilder
, Joseph E. Levine and others. In 1961, United Artists released West Side Story
, an adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein
-Stephen Sondheim
stage musical, which won a record ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture
).
In 1958 United Artists Records
was created, initially to release soundtracks from UA films, but it later diversified into many types of music. In 1968, UA Records was merged with Liberty Records
, along with their many subsidiary labels such as Imperial Records
and Dolton Records
. In 1972 the group was consolidated into one entity as United Artists Records. It was later taken over by EMI
.
Also in 1958 UA acquired Ilya Lopert
's Lopert Pictures Corporation a company that released foreign films in the United States to release foreign films that may have attracted criticism or cause censorship problems. In 1964 UA released the controversial Billy Wilder American made film Kiss Me, Stupid
under the Lopert name. Lopert later became vice-president of United Artists in Paris.
In 1959, United Artists offered its first ever television series, The Troubleshooters
(after failing to sell several pilots in the previous few years), an adventure
/drama on NBC
, starring Keenan Wynn
and Bob Mathias
, as employees of an international construction company. In 1960, United Artists purchased Ziv Television Programs
and, using the idea of financial backing for television, UA's television division
was responsible for shows such as CBS's Gilligan's Island
and three ABC
programs, The Fugitive
with David Janssen
, Outer Limits
, a science fiction series, and The Patty Duke Show
with Patty Duke
and William Schallert
. The television unit also had begun to build up a substantial – and profitable – rental library, having purchased Associated Artists Productions
, owners of Warner Bros.
pre-1950 features, shorts and cartoons, as well as the Popeye
cartoons, purchased from Paramount Pictures
a few years earlier. (See note below at Film archives for more on this).
In 1963 United Artists released two Stanley Kramer films, the epic comedy It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
and the drama A Child is Waiting. In 1964, UA introduced U.S. film audiences to The Beatles
by releasing producer Walter Shenson
's A Hard Day's Night
(1964) and Help!
(1965). (The group had already made wildly successful television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show
).
At the same time it backed two expatriate North Americans in Britain, who had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming
's James Bond
novels. For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman
and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No
(which was a sensation in 1962) and launched the James Bond series
. The franchise has outlived UA's time as a major studio, still running half a century later. Other successful projects backed in this period included Blake Edwards
's Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and Sergio Leone
's Spaghetti Western
s, which made a star of Clint Eastwood
.
In 1964, the French subsidiary Les Productions Artistes Associés released its first production, That Man From Rio. On the basis of its fantastic string of film and television hits in the 1960s, the company was an attractive property, and in 1967 Krim and Benjamin sold control of UA to the San Francisco-based insurance giant, Transamerica
Corp.
UA released another Best Picture Oscar winner in 1967, In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier
and Rod Steiger
, and a nominee for Best Picture, The Graduate
, an Embassy
production that UA distributed overseas.
For a time the flow of successful pictures continued, including the 1971 screen version of Fiddler on the Roof
. New talent was encouraged, including Woody Allen
, Robert Altman
, Sylvester Stallone
, Saul Zaentz
, Miloš Forman
, and Brian De Palma
. In 1973, UA took over the sales and distribution of MGM
's films in Anglo-America
, while Cinema International Corporation
took over international distribution rights.
In 1975, Harry Saltzman
sold UA his 50% stake in Danjaq, LLC, the holding-company for the Bond films. UA was to remain a silent partner, putting up money, while Albert Broccoli took producer credit. Danjaq and UA have remained the public co-copyright holders for the Bond series ever since, and the 2006 Casino Royale
release shares the copyright with Columbia Pictures
, part of the consortium that now owns MGM/UA.
However, Transamerica was not pleased with UA's frequent releases of films rated X by the Motion Picture Association of America, such as Midnight Cowboy
and Last Tango in Paris
; in these instances, Transamerica demanded the byline "A Transamerica Company" be removed from the UA logo on the prints and in all advertising. At one point, the parent company expressed their desire to phase out the UA name and replace it with Transamerica Films. Finally in 1978, following a dispute over administrative expenses, UA's top executives, including Arthur B. Krim, chairman, Eric Pleskow
, president and chief executive officer, Robert S. Benjamin, chairman of the finance committee, walked out. Within days they announced the formation of Orion Pictures
, with backing from Warner
(Orion would eventually be a part of MGM along with United Artists, while Warner retained the rights to the pre-1981 Orion library along with acquiring the rights to a few post-1981 Orion films.) The departures of Krim, Pleskow and Benjamin concerned several Hollywood figures enough that they took out an ad in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting them go.
, the pet project of director Michael Cimino
, who had won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for his 1978 film The Deer Hunter
. A western
starring Kris Kristofferson
and Christopher Walken
, Heaven's Gate
had an unusually protracted shooting schedule (Cimino reportedly wanted 50 takes for a single scene, for instance) which generated adverse publicity about runaway costs and Cimino's autocratic style. The almost four-hour film opened to scathing reviews and alienated audiences. Cimino pulled it in favor of a 149-minute version, but the damage was done. It turned out to be a colossal box office bomb
, netting only $3 million in earnings compared to a budget of $44 million. United Artists recorded a major loss for the year due almost entirely to the Heaven's Gate fiasco. To Transamerica, it was only a blip on a multi-billion dollar balance sheet, but it soured the relationship forever. To the greater Hollywood community, it also signaled that UA was a company that could no longer produce bankable pictures. The Heaven's Gate fiasco may have saved the United Artists brand as UA's final head before the sale, Steven Bach
, wrote in his book Final Cut that there was talk about renaming United Artists to Transamerica Pictures. Despite the financial ruin, UA's blockbuster franchise films (Pink Panther, James Bond
, and eventually Rocky
) were emphasized more heavily than the financially unsuccessful films.
In 1981, United Artists Classics, a speciality film division for UA, was created by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, who would later go on to form Orion Classics
and Sony Pictures Classics
. The label mostly released foreign and independent films such as Ticket to Heaven
and The Grey Fox, and occasional first-run reissues from the UA library, such as director's cuts of Joan Micklin Silver
's Head Over Heels
and Ivan Passer
's Cutter's Way
. When the three founders left to form Orion Classics
, the label was briefly rechristened MGM/UA Classics before it was finally shut down in the late 1980s.
, Taft Broadcasting
and Viacom
. MGM
, led by Kirk Kerkorian
, made a last-minute bid for UA by estimating that MGM would pay UA $350 million in distribution fees if the expiring distribution deal was renewed and used the estimated amount to offer the $350 million to Transamerica to buy United Artists. Transamerica said yes and MGM absorbed UA. The studio, which was essentially bankrupt following the disaster of Heaven's Gate, cut its production schedule sharply. MGM and UA were merged into MGM/UA Entertainment Co. from 1981 to 1986. Because MGM was not able to leave Cinema International Corporation
(which distributed MGM's films outside Anglo-America
) which joined in 1973, UA's international operations were merged with CIC, eventually becoming United International Pictures
. MGM/UA would drop out from the venture in 2000, as its films were released internationally by 20th Century Fox. UA was essentially dormant after 1990, releasing no films for several years. In part this was due to the continuing turmoil at MGM/UA; bought by Ted Turner
in 1986, he could not get financial backing to complete the deal and, seventy-four days later, re-sold UA and the MGM trademark to Kerkorian, sold the MGM studio lot to Lorimar (now the location of Sony Pictures Studios
) while keeping the MGM/UA library for himself (with the exception of those MGM/UA releases by United Artists). (See below for a note on the film library.)
As a result of the MGM split from Turner, United Artists was subsequently reorganized, and changed its name to MGM/UA Communications Co. after Kerkorian bought back the MGM trademark. As a result, both MGM and UA became merely brands of MGM/UA Communications Co. In 1988, a planned $400-million split between MGM and UA was announced by Kerkorian. He hoped to end up with at least 57% of the new MGM and retain its share of UA (at the time called United Artists Pictures, Inc.). 25% of MGM would go to a company controlled by Burt Sugarman
and producers Jon Peters
and Peter Guber
, and 18% would be offered for sale to public holders of MGM/UA stock, but the plan fell through. Around this time, Viacom, Gannett
, Disney
, Republic Pictures
, General Electric
, CBS
, Time Inc.
, Hearst
, News Corporation
, Tele-Communications, Inc., Globo
of Brazil
, Aaron Spelling
's Spelling Entertainment and Sony all tried to purchase MGM/UA. Nevertheless, the studio was able to manage box-office hits such as Rain Man
(winner of the 1988 Oscar
for Best Picture), Baby Boom
, and The Living Daylights
. However, during this period, the company's fortunes languished greatly, losing money while its market share declined to 8% by the end of the 1980s. The sale of MGM/UA to an Australian company Qintex
/Australian Television Network
(owners of the Hal Roach
library both MGM and UA distributed in the 1930s) in 1989 also fell through, due to the company's bankruptcy later that year. Eventually, in 1990, came the sale to Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti
who purchased Pathé
the previous year and merged MGM/UA with the former company, resulting into MGM/Pathé Communications Co. Having bought MGM/UA by overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais
, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992, also resulting in the sale orclosure of MGM/UA's string of US theaters. On July 2, 1992, MGM/Pathé Communications Co. was renamed to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Inc. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, reviving two long-running franchises, the Pink Panther and James Bond films. MGM was sold in 1997, again to Kirk Kerkorian.
, which had been a leading distributor of arthouse films, and after that name was retired, UA assumed SGC's purpose. The distributorship, branding, and copyrights for UA's main franchises (James Bond, Pink Panther, and Rocky) were moved to MGM, although select MGM releases (notably the James Bond franchise co-held with Danjaq, LLC
and the Amityville Horror
remake) carry a United Artists copyright.
UA (re-christened United Artists Films) distributed a few "art-house" films, among them Michael Moore
's Bowling for Columbine
; 2002's Nicholas Nickleby
and the winner of that year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
, No Man's Land
; and 2004's Hotel Rwanda
, a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Entertainment
.
On April 8, 2005, a partnership of Comcast
, Sony
and several merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for a total of $4.8 billion.
In March 2006, MGM announced that it would return once again as a distribution company domestically. Striking distribution deals with The Weinstein Company
, Lakeshore Entertainment
, Bauer Martinez Entertainment and other independent studios, MGM distributes films from these companies. MGM continues funding and co-producing projects that are released in conjunction with Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group on a limited basis and is producing "tentpoles" for their own distribution company MGM Distribution.
Sony has a minority stake in MGM but otherwise MGM and UA will operate under the direction of Stephen Cooper (CEO of MGM and a minority owner himself).
and his long-time production partner Paula Wagner
were resurrecting UA (this announcement came after the duo were released from a fourteen-year production relationship at Viacom
-owned Paramount Pictures
earlier that year). Cruise, Wagner and MGM Studios created United Artists Entertainment LLC and, today, the producer/actor and his partner own a small stake in the studio, with the approval by MGM's consortium of owners.
The deal gave them control over production and development of films. Wagner was named CEO of United Artists, which was allotted an annual slate of four films with different budget ranges, while Cruise serves as a producer for the revamped studio as well as serving as the occasional star.
UA became the first motion picture studio granted a WGA waiver in January 2008 during the Writers' Strike.
On August 14, 2008, MGM announced Paula Wagner will leave United Artists to produce films independently. Her output as head of UA was two films, both starring Cruise, Lions for Lambs
and Valkyrie
, which despite mixed reviews was successful at the box office. Wagner's departure led to speculation that an overhaul at United Artists was imminent.
Since then, United Artists has merely served as a co-producer with MGM for two releases: the 2009 remake of Fame
and Hot Tub Time Machine
. Throughout 2010, continued debt and credit issues for MGM Holdings, Inc., United Artists' parent company had left the future of MGM and UA in doubt until it was resolved near the end of the year. While MGM was taken over by Spyglass Entertainment
, it is not currently known what will become of United Artists in the near future.
United Artists, through various strategic purchases, built up a substantial film and television library. Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the RKO and pre-1950 Warner Bros. libraries. Having passed through numerous hands, these catalogs now belong to Time Warner's Turner Entertainment
unit. However, one post-1950 WB film, the 1956 version of Moby Dick
, is still owned by UA (via MGM).
Since UA produced very few of the pictures it released, ownership of UA's output often rests with the individual or company producing. Some UA films of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s fell into the public domain, to be picked up by Republic Pictures
(today part of Paramount Pictures
) or studios like Castle Hill Productions
(with distribution by Warner Brothers). A small fraction of UA's silent output is now owned by Kino International.
A number of United Artists' films from the 1920s through the 1940s that are in the public domain are seldom shown. Of the hundreds of films UA distributed over eighty years, those it still owns outright are most of its own productions from 1951 forward, plus a few pre-1951 films such as 1933's Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
and Howard Hawks' Red River (1948) with parent company MGM handling distribution.
classics they owned at the time) to Magnetic Video
, the first home video company. Magnetic was purchased by 20th Century Fox
in 1981 and was renamed 20th Century-Fox Video
that year. In 1982, 20th Century-Fox Video merged with CBS Video Enterprises
(which had demerged with MGM/CBS Home Video
after MGM merged with UA) giving birth to CBS/Fox Video
but UA was not allowed to leave the deal at the time. In 1986, the pre-1950 WB and the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television libraries were purchased by Ted Turner after its short-lived ownership of MGM/UA, and as a result CBS/Fox lost home video rights to the pre-1950 WB films to MGM/UA Home Video
. When the deal with CBS/Fox (inherited from Magnetic Video) expired in 1989, the UA films began to be issued through MGM/UA Home Video.
United Artists owned and operated two television stations between the years of 1968 and 1977. Legal ID's for the company would typically say "United Artists Broadcasting: an entertainment service of Transamerica Corporation," along with the Transamerica "T" logo.
Additionally, United Artists Broadcasting also held the permit to KUAB-TV in Houston, Texas, which would have possibly launched sometime around 1969 on channel 20; the station would eventually launch in 1982 under different ownership
as KTXH
. United Artists also owned one radio station, WWSH
in Philadelphia, from 1970 to 1977.
UAB/Transamerica left the broadcasting business in 1977 by selling WUAB to the Gaylord Broadcasting Company
and WWSH to Cox Communications
but in 1982, WUAB and WMGM were sold to MGM/UA Television Stations Group.
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
and Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
.
The current United Artists formed in November 2006 under a partnership between producer/actor Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards....
and his production partner, Paula Wagner
Paula Wagner
Paula Wagner is an American film producer and film executive.-Early career:Wagner began her career at Creative Artists Agency. In 1993 she launched Cruise/Wagner Productions with her former CAA client Tom Cruise. C/W's first film, Mission: Impossible, was an international hit that brought the...
, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
Studios Inc., an MGM company. Paula Wagner left the studio on August 14, 2008. Cruise owns a small stake in the studio, a subsidiary of MGM Studios. MGM is owned by MGM Holdings
MGM Holdings
MGM Holdings Inc. is a Delaware-registered pure holding company and the parent company of the American media company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Through this holding company, the entertainment & investment consortium owned the Hollywood studio. Its headquarters are in the MGM Tower in Century City, Los...
.
The early years
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....
, and D. W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...
. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo
William Gibbs McAdoo
William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. was an American lawyer and political leader who served as a U.S. Senator, United States Secretary of the Treasury and director of the United States Railroad Administration...
. The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bond
Liberty bond
A Liberty Bond was a war bond that was sold in the United States to support the allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financial securities to many citizens for the first time. The Act of Congress which...
s to help the World War I effort. Already veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures.
They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors who were tightening their control over actor salaries and creative decisions, a process that evolved into the rigid studio system
Studio system
The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...
. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before things had formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland
Richard A. Rowland
Richard A. Rowland was an American studio executive and film producer.-Career:Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Rowland was the head of Metro Pictures Corporation from 1915 to 1920, a studio he founded in 1915 along with Louis B. Mayer. Mayer left in 1918 to form his own studio...
, head of Metro Pictures
Metro Pictures
Metro Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company founded in late 1915 by Richard A. Rowland . Louis B. Mayer who worked for Metro Pictures Corporation early on. It is not to be confused with MGM which is a much later franchise concerning itself, Goldwyn and Louis B....
, is said to have observed, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of then-President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams
Hiram Abrams
Hiram Abrams was an early American movie mogul and one of the first presidents of Paramount Pictures and the first managing director of United Artists.- Biography :...
as its first managing director.
Joseph Schenck
Joseph Michael Schenck was a pioneer executive who played a key role in the development of the United States film industry.Born in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia to a Jewish household, he and his family-including younger brother Nicholas- emigrated to New York City in 1893, he and Nicholas...
was hired as president. Not only had he been producing pictures for a decade, but he brought along commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.Her most famous film was Smilin’ Through , but she also...
, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge
Constance Talmadge
Constance Talmadge was a silent movie star born in Brooklyn, New York, USA, and was the sister of fellow actresses Norma Talmadge and Natalie Talmadge.-Early life:...
, and his brother-in-law, Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
. Contracts were signed with a number of independent producers, most notably Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.-Biography:...
, Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
and Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
. Schenck also formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name. They also began international operations, first in Canada, then in Mexico, and by the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries.
Still, even with a broadening of the company, UA struggled. The coming of sound ended the careers of Pickford and Fairbanks. Chaplin, rich enough to do what he pleased, worked only occasionally. Schenck resigned in 1933 to organize a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century Pictures, which soon provided four pictures a year to UA's schedule. He was replaced as president by sales manager Al Lichtman
Al Lichtman
Alexander "Al" Lichtman was a businessman working in the motion picture industry. He also occasionally worked as a film producer. Born in Monok, Hungary. His parents were Joseph Lichtman and Pepe Zuckermandel. Lichtman has a "Star" on the Hollywood Walk of Fame...
who himself resigned after only a few months. Pickford produced a few films, and at various times Goldwyn, Korda, Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
, Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger
Walter Wanger was an American film producer. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger's career began at Paramount Pictures in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a...
, and David O. Selznick were made "producing partners" (i.e., sharing in the profits), but ownership still rested with the founders. As the years passed and the dynamics of the business changed, these "producing partners" drifted away, Goldwyn and Disney to RKO, Wanger to Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
, Selznick to retirement. By the late 1940s, United Artists had virtually ceased to exist as either a producer or distributor. It sold off its Mexican releasing division to Crédito Cinematográfico Mexicano, a local company.
Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (1940s and 1950s)
The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers was founded in 1941 by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Orson WellesOrson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
, and Walter Wanger – many of the same people who were members of United Artists. Later members included Hunt Stromberg
Hunt Stromberg
Hunt Stromberg was a film producer during Hollywood's Golden Age. In a prolific 30-year career beginning in 1921, Stromberg produced, wrote, and directed some of Hollywood's most profitable and enduring films, including The Thin Man series, the Nelson Eddy/Jeanette MacDonald operettas, The Women,...
, William Cagney, Sol Lesser, and Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
.
The Society aimed to advance the interests of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by the studio system
Studio system
The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...
. SIMPP also fought to end ostensibly anti-competitive practices by the seven major film studios – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
, Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
, and Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
– that controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of films.
In 1942, the SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. The complaint accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-run and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. It was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors alleging monopoly and restraint of trade.
In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered the major Hollywood movie studio
Movie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
s – Loews Theaters/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and RKO Radio Pictures – to sell their theater chains and to eliminate certain anti-competitive practices. This effectively brought an end to the studio system.
By 1958, many of the objectives that led to the creation of the SIMPP had been obtained and SIMPP closed its offices.
The 1950s and 1960s
On February 16, 1951, two lawyers-turned-producers Arthur Krim (of Eagle-Lion FilmsEagle-Lion Films
Eagle-Lion Films was a British film production company owned by J. Arthur Rank intended to release British productions in the United States. In 1947 it acquired PRC Pictures, a small American production company, to produce B Pictures to accompany the British releases...
) and Robert Benjamin
Robert Benjamin
Robert Saul Benjamin . Robert Benjamin was a founding partner of the movie-litigation firm Phillips, Nizer, Benjamin, Krim & Ballon. With his longtime friend and partner, Arthur Krim, he took over United Artists in 1951...
approached Pickford and Chaplin with a wild idea: let them take over United Artists for five years. If, at the end of those five years, UA was profitable, they would be given an option to buy the company. Since UA was barely alive, Pickford saw nothing to lose and agreed. Chaplin was against the deal, but changed his mind in late 1952 when the US government revoked his re-entry visa while he was in London for the UK premiere of Limelight. He sold his remaining shares of UA several years later.
Among their first clients were Sam Spiegel
Sam Spiegel
Sam Spiegel was an Austrian-born American independent film producer.-Life and career:Spiegel was born in Jarosław, Galicia, Austria-Hungary as Samuel P. Spiegel to a German-Jewish father and Polish mother and educated at the University of Vienna. His brother was Shalom Spiegel, a professor of...
and John Huston
John Huston
John Marcellus Huston was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The Asphalt Jungle , The African Queen , Moulin Rouge...
, whose "Horizon Productions" gave UA one major hit, The African Queen (1951) and one slightly less successful one, Moulin Rouge
Moulin Rouge (1952 film)
Moulin Rouge is a 1952 film directed by John Huston, produced by Sir John Woolf and James Woolf of Romulus Films and released by United Artists. The film is set in Paris in the late 19th century, following artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the city's bohemian sub-culture in and around the...
(1952), based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. Others followed, among them Stanley Kramer
Stanley Kramer
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...
, Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions, and a number of actors, newly freed from studio contracts and anxious to produce or direct their own films.
UA production-head Arnold Picker
Arnold Picker
Arnold M. Picker was a United States film industry executive, mayor of Golden Beach, Florida and the number one enemy on Richard Nixon's list of targets.Picker began his career by following in his father's footsteps...
selected the properties the company would back. With UA's new success, Pickford saw a chance to exit gracefully, though she still held out for top dollar, walking away with $1.5 million in 1955. That same year, UA won its first Best Picture Oscar, for the film Marty
Marty (film)
Marty is a 1955 American film directed by Delbert Mann. The screenplay was written by Paddy Chayefsky, expanding upon his 1953 teleplay of the same name. The film stars Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair. The film enjoyed international success, winning the 1955 Academy Award for Best Picture and...
. It starred Ernest Borgnine
Ernest Borgnine
Ernest Borgnine is an American actor of television and film. His career has spanned more than six decades. He was an unconventional lead in many films of the 1950s, including his Academy Award-winning turn in the 1955 film Marty...
, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
UA went public the following year, and as the other mainstream studios fell into decline, UA prospered, adding relationships with the Mirisch brothers
Mirisch Company
The Mirisch Company was a film production company owned by Walter Mirisch and his brothers, Marvin and Harold Mirisch. The company was also known at various times as Mirisch Production Company, Mirisch Pictures, Inc., and The Mirisch Corporation.Walter Mirisch began producing at Monogram Pictures...
, Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
, Joseph E. Levine and others. In 1961, United Artists released West Side Story
West Side Story (film)
West Side Story is a 1961 musical film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. The film is an adaptation of the 1957 Broadway musical of the same name, which in turn was adapted from William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It stars Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno,...
, an adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
-Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
stage musical, which won a record ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
).
In 1958 United Artists Records
United Artists Records
United Artists Records was a record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 initially to distribute records of its movie soundtracks, though it soon branched out into recording music of a number of different genres.-History:...
was created, initially to release soundtracks from UA films, but it later diversified into many types of music. In 1968, UA Records was merged with Liberty Records
Liberty Records
Liberty Records was a United States-based record label. It was started by chairman Simon Waronker in 1955 with Al Bennett as president and Theodore Keep as chief engineer. It was reactivated in 2001 in the United Kingdom and had two previous revivals.-1950s:...
, along with their many subsidiary labels such as Imperial Records
Imperial Records
Imperial Records is a United States based label started in 1947 by Lew Chudd and reactivated in 2006 by label owner EMI.- The independent and Liberty Records years :...
and Dolton Records
Dolton Records
Dolton Records was a record label based in Seattle that was originally known as Dolphin Records. It was owned by Bob Reisdorf and Bonnie Guitar. Success for the label came early with "Come Softly to Me" by The Fleetwoods, the first single to be released on that label...
. In 1972 the group was consolidated into one entity as United Artists Records. It was later taken over by EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
.
Also in 1958 UA acquired Ilya Lopert
Ilya Lopert
Ilya Lopert born May 1, 1905 died February 27, 1971 was a Lithuanian born film producer and distributor. He was renowned for distributing foreign films for both arthouse and mainstream release in the United States...
's Lopert Pictures Corporation a company that released foreign films in the United States to release foreign films that may have attracted criticism or cause censorship problems. In 1964 UA released the controversial Billy Wilder American made film Kiss Me, Stupid
Kiss Me, Stupid
Kiss Me, Stupid is a 1964 American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston.The screenplay by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is based on Wife For a Night , an Italian film starring Gina Lollobrigida -- which was itself taken from a play by Anna Bonacci...
under the Lopert name. Lopert later became vice-president of United Artists in Paris.
In 1959, United Artists offered its first ever television series, The Troubleshooters
The Troubleshooters (1959 TV series)
The Troubleshooters is a 26-segment half-hour adventure series starring Keenan Wynn as Kodiak and Bob Mathias as Frank Dugan, which aired new episodes on NBC Television from September 11, 1959, to April 10, 1960. Based on unusual events at international construction sites, the program was...
(after failing to sell several pilots in the previous few years), an adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
/drama on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, starring Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his film and TV parts....
and Bob Mathias
Bob Mathias
Robert Bruce "Bob" Mathias was an American decathlete, two-time Olympic gold medalist, actor and United States Congressman representing the state of California.-Early life and athletic career:...
, as employees of an international construction company. In 1960, United Artists purchased Ziv Television Programs
Ziv Television Programs
Ziv Television Programs, Inc. was an American television syndication and production company, producer of popular syndicated TV programs in the 1950s.- History :...
and, using the idea of financial backing for television, UA's television division
United Artists Television
-Background:UA purchased Associated Artists Productions in 1958, giving UA access to the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library and the Popeye cartoons made by Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios between 1933 and 1957....
was responsible for shows such as CBS's Gilligan's Island
Gilligan's Island
Gilligan's Island is an American television series created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz and originally produced by United Artists Television. The situation comedy series featured Bob Denver; Alan Hale, Jr.; Jim Backus; Natalie Schafer; Tina Louise; Russell Johnson; and Dawn Wells. It aired for...
and three ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
programs, The Fugitive
The Fugitive (TV series)
The Fugitive is an American drama series produced by QM Productions and United Artists Television that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1967. David Janssen stars as Richard Kimble, a doctor from the fictional town of Stafford, Indiana, who is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death...
with David Janssen
David Janssen
David Janssen was an American film and television actor who is best known for his starring role as Dr. Richard Kimble in the television series The Fugitive , the starring role in the 1950s hit detective series Richard Diamond, Private Detective , and as Harry Orwell on Harry O.In 1996 TV Guide...
, Outer Limits
The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)
The Outer Limits is an American television series that aired on ABC from 1963 to 1965. The series is similar in style to the earlier The Twilight Zone, but with a greater emphasis on science fiction, rather than fantasy stories...
, a science fiction series, and The Patty Duke Show
The Patty Duke Show
The Patty Duke Show is an American sitcom which ran on ABC from September 18, 1963, until May 4, 1966, with reruns airing through August 31, 1966. The show was created as a vehicle for rising star Patty Duke...
with Patty Duke
Patty Duke
Anna Marie "Patty" Duke is an American actress of stage, film, and television. First becoming famous as a child star, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16, and later starring in her eponymous sitcom for three years, she progressed to more mature roles upon playing Neely...
and William Schallert
William Schallert
William Joseph Schallert is an American actor who has appeared in many films and in such television series as The Smurfs, The Rat Patrol, Gunsmoke, The Patty Duke Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Waltons, Bonanza, Leave It to Beaver, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Love, American Style, Get...
. The television unit also had begun to build up a substantial – and profitable – rental library, having purchased Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions was a distributor of theatrical feature films and short subjects for television. It existed from 1953 to 1958. It was later folded into United Artists. The former a.a.p. library was later owned by MGM/UA Entertainment and then Turner Entertainment. Turner continues...
, owners of Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
pre-1950 features, shorts and cartoons, as well as the Popeye
Popeye
Popeye the Sailor is a cartoon fictional character created by Elzie Crisler Segar, who has appeared in comic strips and animated cartoons in the cinema as well as on television. He first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929...
cartoons, purchased from Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
a few years earlier. (See note below at Film archives for more on this).
In 1963 United Artists released two Stanley Kramer films, the epic comedy It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a 1963 American comedy film produced and directed by Stanley Kramer about the madcap pursuit of $350,000 in stolen cash by a diverse and colorful group of strangers...
and the drama A Child is Waiting. In 1964, UA introduced U.S. film audiences to The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
by releasing producer Walter Shenson
Walter Shenson
Walter Shenson was a film producer, director and writer, best known for producing the Beatles' films A Hard Day's Night and Help! ....
's A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day's Night (film)
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
(1964) and Help!
Help! (film)
Help! is a 1965 film directed by Richard Lester, starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—and featuring Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, John Bluthal, Roy Kinnear and Patrick Cargill. Help! was the second feature film made by the Beatles and is a...
(1965). (The group had already made wildly successful television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....
).
At the same time it backed two expatriate North Americans in Britain, who had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
's James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
novels. For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman was a Canadian theatre and film producer best known for his mega-gamble which resulted in his co-producing the James Bond film series with Albert R...
and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No
Dr. No (film)
Dr. No is a 1962 spy film, starring Sean Connery; it is the first James Bond film. Based on the 1958 Ian Fleming novel of the same name, it was adapted by Richard Maibaum, Johanna Harwood, and Berkely Mather and was directed by Terence Young. The film was produced by Harry Saltzman and Albert R...
(which was a sensation in 1962) and launched the James Bond series
James Bond (film series)
The James Bond film series is a British series of motion pictures based on the fictional character of MI6 agent James Bond , who originally appeared in a series of books by Ian Fleming. Earlier films were based on Fleming's novels and short stories, followed later by films with original storylines...
. The franchise has outlived UA's time as a major studio, still running half a century later. Other successful projects backed in this period included Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures...
's Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone
Sergio Leone was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter most associated with the "Spaghetti Western" genre.Leone's film-making style includes juxtaposing extreme close-up shots with lengthy long shots...
's Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western
Spaghetti Western, also known as Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western films that emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's unique and much copied film-making style and international box-office success, so named by American critics because most were produced and...
s, which made a star of Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
.
In 1964, the French subsidiary Les Productions Artistes Associés released its first production, That Man From Rio. On the basis of its fantastic string of film and television hits in the 1960s, the company was an attractive property, and in 1967 Krim and Benjamin sold control of UA to the San Francisco-based insurance giant, Transamerica
Transamerica Corporation
Transamerica Corporation is a holding company for various life insurance companies and investment firms doing business primarily in the United States. It was acquired by the Dutch financial services conglomerate AEGON in 1999.-History:...
Corp.
UA released another Best Picture Oscar winner in 1967, In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier
Sidney Poitier
Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field...
and Rod Steiger
Rod Steiger
Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...
, and a nominee for Best Picture, The Graduate
The Graduate
The Graduate is a 1967 American comedy-drama motion picture directed by Mike Nichols. It is based on the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The screenplay was by Buck Henry, who makes a cameo appearance as a hotel clerk, and Calder...
, an Embassy
Embassy Pictures
Embassy Pictures Corporation was an independent studio and distributor responsible for such films as The Graduate, The Lion in Winter, This Is Spinal Tap and Escape from New York.-Founding:The company was founded in 1942 by producer Joseph E...
production that UA distributed overseas.
The 1970s
Fiddler on the Roof
Fiddler on the Roof is a musical with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein, set in Tsarist Russia in 1905. It is based on Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem...
. New talent was encouraged, including Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
, Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone
Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed...
, Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz
Saul Zaentz is an American film producer and former record company executive. He has won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and in 1996 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award....
, Miloš Forman
Miloš Forman
Jan Tomáš Forman , better known as Miloš Forman , is a Czech-American director, screenwriter, professor, and an emigrant from Czechoslovakia. Two of his films, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, are among the most celebrated in the history of film, both gaining him the Academy Award for...
, and Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...
. In 1973, UA took over the sales and distribution of MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
's films in Anglo-America
Anglo-America
Anglo-America is a region in the Americas in which English is a main language, or one which has significant British historical, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural links...
, while Cinema International Corporation
Cinema International Corporation
Cinema International Corporation was a film distribution company started by Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios in the early 1970s to distribute the 2 studios' films outside the United States – it even operated in Canada before it was...
took over international distribution rights.
In 1975, Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman
Harry Saltzman was a Canadian theatre and film producer best known for his mega-gamble which resulted in his co-producing the James Bond film series with Albert R...
sold UA his 50% stake in Danjaq, LLC, the holding-company for the Bond films. UA was to remain a silent partner, putting up money, while Albert Broccoli took producer credit. Danjaq and UA have remained the public co-copyright holders for the Bond series ever since, and the 2006 Casino Royale
Casino Royale (2006 film)
Casino Royale is the twenty-first film in the James Bond film series and the first to star Daniel Craig as fictional MI6 agent James Bond...
release shares the copyright with Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
, part of the consortium that now owns MGM/UA.
However, Transamerica was not pleased with UA's frequent releases of films rated X by the Motion Picture Association of America, such as Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy
Midnight Cowboy is a 1969 American drama film based on the 1965 novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. It was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars Dustin Hoffman and newcomer Jon Voight in the title role. Notable smaller roles are filled by Sylvia Miles, John...
and Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who takes up an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, soon-to-be-married Parisian woman...
; in these instances, Transamerica demanded the byline "A Transamerica Company" be removed from the UA logo on the prints and in all advertising. At one point, the parent company expressed their desire to phase out the UA name and replace it with Transamerica Films. Finally in 1978, following a dispute over administrative expenses, UA's top executives, including Arthur B. Krim, chairman, Eric Pleskow
Eric Pleskow
Eric Pleskow is an Austrian film producer and was the former president of the movie studios United Artists and Orion Pictures.- Biography :...
, president and chief executive officer, Robert S. Benjamin, chairman of the finance committee, walked out. Within days they announced the formation of Orion Pictures
Orion Pictures
Orion Pictures Corporation was an American independent production company that produced movies from 1978 until 1998. It was formed in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and three former top-level executives of United Artists. Although it was never a large motion picture producer, Orion...
, with backing from Warner
Warner Communications
Warner Communications or Warner Communications, Inc. was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name....
(Orion would eventually be a part of MGM along with United Artists, while Warner retained the rights to the pre-1981 Orion library along with acquiring the rights to a few post-1981 Orion films.) The departures of Krim, Pleskow and Benjamin concerned several Hollywood figures enough that they took out an ad in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting them go.
The Heaven's Gate fiasco
The new leadership of UA agreed to back Heaven's GateHeaven's Gate (film)
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s...
, the pet project of director Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino
Michael Cimino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and author. He is best known for writing and directing Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter and the infamous Heaven's Gate. His films are characterized by their striking visual style and controversial subject...
, who had won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for his 1978 film The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Russian American steel worker friends and their infantry service in the Vietnam War. The film stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Savage, John Cazale, and George Dzundza...
. A western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
starring Kris Kristofferson
Kris Kristofferson
Kristoffer "Kris" Kristofferson is an American musician, actor, and writer. He is known for hits such as "Me and Bobby McGee", "For the Good Times", "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", and "Help Me Make It Through the Night"...
and Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...
, Heaven's Gate
Heaven's Gate (film)
Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film based on the Johnson County War, a dispute between land barons and European immigrants in Wyoming in the 1890s...
had an unusually protracted shooting schedule (Cimino reportedly wanted 50 takes for a single scene, for instance) which generated adverse publicity about runaway costs and Cimino's autocratic style. The almost four-hour film opened to scathing reviews and alienated audiences. Cimino pulled it in favor of a 149-minute version, but the damage was done. It turned out to be a colossal box office bomb
Box office bomb
The phrase box office bomb refers to a film for which the production and marketing costs greatly exceeded the revenue regained by the movie studio. This should not be confused with Hollywood accounting when official figures show large losses, yet the movie is a financial success.A film's financial...
, netting only $3 million in earnings compared to a budget of $44 million. United Artists recorded a major loss for the year due almost entirely to the Heaven's Gate fiasco. To Transamerica, it was only a blip on a multi-billion dollar balance sheet, but it soured the relationship forever. To the greater Hollywood community, it also signaled that UA was a company that could no longer produce bankable pictures. The Heaven's Gate fiasco may have saved the United Artists brand as UA's final head before the sale, Steven Bach
Steven Bach
Steven Bach was senior vice-president and head of worldwide productions for United Artists studios.In 1990, he was a member of the jury at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival....
, wrote in his book Final Cut that there was talk about renaming United Artists to Transamerica Pictures. Despite the financial ruin, UA's blockbuster franchise films (Pink Panther, James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
, and eventually Rocky
Rocky
Rocky is a 1976 American sports drama film directed by John G. Avildsen and both written by and starring Sylvester Stallone. It tells the rags to riches American Dream story of Rocky Balboa, an uneducated but kind-hearted debt collector for a loan shark in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
) were emphasized more heavily than the financially unsuccessful films.
In 1981, United Artists Classics, a speciality film division for UA, was created by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, who would later go on to form Orion Classics
Orion Classics
Orion Classics was the division of Orion Pictures, headed by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, that acquired independent and foreign films for North American distribution, in addition to producing some arthouse films of its own...
and Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics
Sony Pictures Classics is an art-house film division of Sony Pictures Entertainment founded in December 1991 that distributes, produces and acquires specialty films from the United States and around the world. Its co-presidents are Michael Barker and Tom Bernard...
. The label mostly released foreign and independent films such as Ticket to Heaven
Ticket to Heaven
Ticket to Heaven is a 1981 Canadian film about the recruiting of a man into a group portrayed to be a cult, and his life in the group until forcibly extracted by his family and friends. The film was directed by Ralph L. Thomas...
and The Grey Fox, and occasional first-run reissues from the UA library, such as director's cuts of Joan Micklin Silver
Joan Micklin Silver
Joan Micklin Silver is an American director.She was born in Omaha, Nebraska and received her B.A. From Sarah Lawrence College....
's Head Over Heels
Head Over Heels (1979 film)
Chilly Scenes of Winter is a 1979 romantic comedy film, written and directed by Joan Micklin Silver.The film is an adaptation of the 1976 novel Chilly Scenes of Winter by Ann Beattie.-Name change:...
and Ivan Passer
Ivan Passer
Ivan Passer is a Czech-born film director and screenwriter.A significant figure in the Czech New Wave of the mid-1960s, Passer worked closely with Miloš Forman on many of his films, and directed his first feature in 1965...
's Cutter's Way
Cutter's Way
Cutter's Way is a 1981 thriller directed by Ivan Passer. The film stars Jeff Bridges, John Heard, and Lisa Eichhorn. The screenplay was by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, based on the novel Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg....
. When the three founders left to form Orion Classics
Orion Classics
Orion Classics was the division of Orion Pictures, headed by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, that acquired independent and foreign films for North American distribution, in addition to producing some arthouse films of its own...
, the label was briefly rechristened MGM/UA Classics before it was finally shut down in the late 1980s.
The 1980s and 1990s: MGM/UA
Around 1980, Transamerica was giving up from the filmmaking business, and United Artists was put up for sale. Bidders included Warner CommunicationsWarner Communications
Warner Communications or Warner Communications, Inc. was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name....
, Taft Broadcasting
Taft Broadcasting
The Taft Broadcasting Company, also known as Taft Television and Radio Company, Incorporated, was an American media conglomerate based in Cincinnati, Ohio....
and Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
. MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, led by Kirk Kerkorian
Kirk Kerkorian
Kerkor "Kirk" Kerkorian is an American businessman who is the president/CEO of Tracinda Corporation, his private holding company based in Beverly Hills, California. Kerkorian is known as one of the important figures in shaping Las Vegas and, with architect Martin Stern, Jr...
, made a last-minute bid for UA by estimating that MGM would pay UA $350 million in distribution fees if the expiring distribution deal was renewed and used the estimated amount to offer the $350 million to Transamerica to buy United Artists. Transamerica said yes and MGM absorbed UA. The studio, which was essentially bankrupt following the disaster of Heaven's Gate, cut its production schedule sharply. MGM and UA were merged into MGM/UA Entertainment Co. from 1981 to 1986. Because MGM was not able to leave Cinema International Corporation
Cinema International Corporation
Cinema International Corporation was a film distribution company started by Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios in the early 1970s to distribute the 2 studios' films outside the United States – it even operated in Canada before it was...
(which distributed MGM's films outside Anglo-America
Anglo-America
Anglo-America is a region in the Americas in which English is a main language, or one which has significant British historical, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural links...
) which joined in 1973, UA's international operations were merged with CIC, eventually becoming United International Pictures
United International Pictures
United International Pictures is a joint venture of Paramount Pictures and Universal Studios , to distribute some of the two studios' films theatrically outside the United States , Canada, and the Anglophone...
. MGM/UA would drop out from the venture in 2000, as its films were released internationally by 20th Century Fox. UA was essentially dormant after 1990, releasing no films for several years. In part this was due to the continuing turmoil at MGM/UA; bought by Ted Turner
Ted Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
in 1986, he could not get financial backing to complete the deal and, seventy-four days later, re-sold UA and the MGM trademark to Kerkorian, sold the MGM studio lot to Lorimar (now the location of Sony Pictures Studios
Sony Pictures Studios
The Sony Pictures Studios are a television and film studio complex located in Culver City, California at 10202 West Washington Boulevard and bounded by Culver Boulevard , Washington Boulevard , Overland Avenue and Madison Avenue...
) while keeping the MGM/UA library for himself (with the exception of those MGM/UA releases by United Artists). (See below for a note on the film library.)
As a result of the MGM split from Turner, United Artists was subsequently reorganized, and changed its name to MGM/UA Communications Co. after Kerkorian bought back the MGM trademark. As a result, both MGM and UA became merely brands of MGM/UA Communications Co. In 1988, a planned $400-million split between MGM and UA was announced by Kerkorian. He hoped to end up with at least 57% of the new MGM and retain its share of UA (at the time called United Artists Pictures, Inc.). 25% of MGM would go to a company controlled by Burt Sugarman
Burt Sugarman
Burt Sugarman is an American television producer best known for producing the 1970s game show Celebrity Sweepstakes, and The Richard Pryor Show.He also produced The Midnight Special and The Wizard of Odds in the 1970s....
and producers Jon Peters
Jon Peters
Jon Peters is an American movie producer.-Early life:Peters was born John H. Peters in Van Nuys, California, the son of Helen , a receptionist, and Jack Peters, a cook...
and Peter Guber
Peter Guber
Howard Peter Guber is an American film producer and executive and Chairman and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment...
, and 18% would be offered for sale to public holders of MGM/UA stock, but the plan fell through. Around this time, Viacom, Gannett
Gannett Company
Gannett Company, Inc. is a publicly-traded media holding company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, near McLean. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include the national newspaper USA Today and the weekly USA Weekend...
, Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
, Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959, and was best known for specializing in westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action....
, General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
, CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, Time Inc.
Time Inc.
Time Inc. is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner, the company formed by the 1990 merger of the original Time Inc. and Warner Communications. It publishes 130 magazines, most notably its namesake, Time...
, Hearst
Hearst Corporation
The Hearst Corporation is an American media conglomerate based in the Hearst Tower, Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. Founded by William Randolph Hearst as an owner of newspapers, the company's holdings now include a wide variety of media...
, News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
, Tele-Communications, Inc., Globo
Organizações Globo
Organizações Globo is the largest media conglomerate of South America, founded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1925 by Irineu Marinho. It also owns companies on the food industry and the real estate and financial markets....
of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling
Aaron Spelling was an American film and television producer. As of 2009, Spelling's eponymous production company Spelling Television holds the record as the most prolific television writer, with 218 producer and executive producer credits...
's Spelling Entertainment and Sony all tried to purchase MGM/UA. Nevertheless, the studio was able to manage box-office hits such as Rain Man
Rain Man
Rain Man is a 1988 drama film written by Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass and directed by Barry Levinson. It tells the story of an abrasive and selfish yuppie, Charlie Babbitt, who discovers that his estranged father has died and bequeathed all of his multimillion-dollar estate to his other son,...
(winner of the 1988 Oscar
61st Academy Awards
The 61st Academy Awards were presented on March 29, 1989 at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. The date had been moved from its usual Monday telecast due to Easter, which was on March 26. For this show, there was no "official" host as the show opened with a stage-show featuring Merv Griffin, Snow...
for Best Picture), Baby Boom
Baby Boom (film)
Baby Boom is a 1987 comedy film starring Diane Keaton. The film also launched a subsequent television show starring Kate Jackson, running from 1988 to 1989. The original music score was composed by Bill Conti and the cinematography was by William A. Fraker....
, and The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond series and the first to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent 007. The film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story, "The Living Daylights"...
. However, during this period, the company's fortunes languished greatly, losing money while its market share declined to 8% by the end of the 1980s. The sale of MGM/UA to an Australian company Qintex
Qintex
Qintex Ltd. was an Australian company that came to prominence during the 1980s, until its collapse in 1989. Its main shareholder and Managing Director was Christopher Skase....
/Australian Television Network
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
(owners of the Hal Roach
Hal Roach
Harold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
library both MGM and UA distributed in the 1930s) in 1989 also fell through, due to the company's bankruptcy later that year. Eventually, in 1990, came the sale to Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti
Giancarlo Parretti
Giancarlo Parretti is an Italian financier.In 1989, he took over Cannon Film Group Inc. from Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Almost immediately, he made plans to take over the storied French studio Pathé, and changed Cannon's name to Pathé Communications...
who purchased Pathé
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...
the previous year and merged MGM/UA with the former company, resulting into MGM/Pathé Communications Co. Having bought MGM/UA by overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais
Crédit Lyonnais
Crédit Lyonnais is a historic French bank. In the early 1990s it was the largest French bank, majority state-owned at that point. Crédit Lyonnais was the subject of poor management during that period which almost led to its bankruptcy in 1993...
, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992, also resulting in the sale orclosure of MGM/UA's string of US theaters. On July 2, 1992, MGM/Pathé Communications Co. was renamed to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Inc. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, reviving two long-running franchises, the Pink Panther and James Bond films. MGM was sold in 1997, again to Kirk Kerkorian.
The 2000s
During the 2000s, UA was repositioned as a specialty studio. MGM had just acquired The Samuel Goldwyn CompanyThe Samuel Goldwyn Company
The Samuel Goldwyn Company was an independent film company founded by Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., the son of the famous Hollywood mogul, Samuel Goldwyn, in 1979.-Background:...
, which had been a leading distributor of arthouse films, and after that name was retired, UA assumed SGC's purpose. The distributorship, branding, and copyrights for UA's main franchises (James Bond, Pink Panther, and Rocky) were moved to MGM, although select MGM releases (notably the James Bond franchise co-held with Danjaq, LLC
Danjaq
Danjaq, LLC is the holding company responsible for the copyright and trademarks to the characters, elements, and other material related to James Bond on screen. It is currently owned and managed by the family of Albert R. Broccoli, the co-initiator of the popular film franchise...
and the Amityville Horror
The Amityville Horror (2005 film)
The Amityville Horror is a 2005 horror film directed by Andrew Douglas. It is a remake of the 1979 film of the same name which itself was based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Jay Anson, which documents the alleged experiences of the Lutz family after they moved into a house in Long Island...
remake) carry a United Artists copyright.
UA (re-christened United Artists Films) distributed a few "art-house" films, among them Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
's Bowling for Columbine
Bowling for Columbine
Bowling for Columbine is a 2002 documentary film written, directed, produced, and narrated by Michael Moore. The film explores what Michael Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre and other acts of violence with guns...
; 2002's Nicholas Nickleby
Nicholas Nickleby (2002 film)
Nicholas Nickleby is a 2002 comedy-drama film written and directed by Douglas McGrath. The screenplay is based on The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, which originally was published in serial form between March 1838 and September 1839.-Plot:In a prologue we are...
and the winner of that year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
, No Man's Land
No Man's Land (2001 film)
No Man's Land is a 2001 tragic war drama that is set in the midst of the Bosnian war. The film is a parable and marked the debut of Bosnian writer and director Danis Tanović...
; and 2004's Hotel Rwanda
Hotel Rwanda
Hotel Rwanda is a 2004 American drama film directed by Terry George. It was adapted from a screenplay written by both George and Keir Pearson. Based on real life events which took place in Rwanda during the spring of 1994, the film stars Don Cheadle as hotelier Paul Rusesabagina, who attempts to...
, a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Entertainment
Lions Gate Entertainment
Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1997, and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California...
.
On April 8, 2005, a partnership of Comcast
Comcast
Comcast Corporation is the largest cable operator, home Internet service provider, and fourth largest home telephone service provider in the United States, providing cable television, broadband Internet, and telephone service to both residential and commercial customers in 39 states and the...
, Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
and several merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for a total of $4.8 billion.
In March 2006, MGM announced that it would return once again as a distribution company domestically. Striking distribution deals with The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
, Lakeshore Entertainment
Lakeshore Entertainment
Lakeshore Entertainment Group is an American independent film production company founded in 1994 by Tom Rosenberg and Ted Tannebaum . Lakeshore Entertainment is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California...
, Bauer Martinez Entertainment and other independent studios, MGM distributes films from these companies. MGM continues funding and co-producing projects that are released in conjunction with Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group on a limited basis and is producing "tentpoles" for their own distribution company MGM Distribution.
Sony has a minority stake in MGM but otherwise MGM and UA will operate under the direction of Stephen Cooper (CEO of MGM and a minority owner himself).
The Tom Cruise era
On November 2, 2006, MGM announced that actor Tom CruiseTom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV , better known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards....
and his long-time production partner Paula Wagner
Paula Wagner
Paula Wagner is an American film producer and film executive.-Early career:Wagner began her career at Creative Artists Agency. In 1993 she launched Cruise/Wagner Productions with her former CAA client Tom Cruise. C/W's first film, Mission: Impossible, was an international hit that brought the...
were resurrecting UA (this announcement came after the duo were released from a fourteen-year production relationship at Viacom
Viacom
Viacom Inc. , short for "Video & Audio Communications", is an American media conglomerate with interests primarily in, but not limited to, cinema and cable television...
-owned Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
earlier that year). Cruise, Wagner and MGM Studios created United Artists Entertainment LLC and, today, the producer/actor and his partner own a small stake in the studio, with the approval by MGM's consortium of owners.
The deal gave them control over production and development of films. Wagner was named CEO of United Artists, which was allotted an annual slate of four films with different budget ranges, while Cruise serves as a producer for the revamped studio as well as serving as the occasional star.
UA became the first motion picture studio granted a WGA waiver in January 2008 during the Writers' Strike.
On August 14, 2008, MGM announced Paula Wagner will leave United Artists to produce films independently. Her output as head of UA was two films, both starring Cruise, Lions for Lambs
Lions for Lambs
Lions for Lambs is a 2007 American drama film about the connection between a platoon of United States soldiers in Afghanistan, a U.S. senator, a reporter, and a California college professor. It stars Tom Cruise, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep...
and Valkyrie
Valkyrie (film)
Valkyrie is a 2008 American historical thriller film set in Nazi Germany during World War II. The film depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country...
, which despite mixed reviews was successful at the box office. Wagner's departure led to speculation that an overhaul at United Artists was imminent.
Since then, United Artists has merely served as a co-producer with MGM for two releases: the 2009 remake of Fame
Fame (2009 film)
Fame is a 2009 musical film and a loose remake of the 1980 film of the same title. It was directed by Kevin Tancharoen and written by Allison Burnett. It was released on September 25, 2009 in the USA, Canada, Ireland, and the UK.-Freshman year:...
and Hot Tub Time Machine
Hot Tub Time Machine
Hot Tub Time Machine is a 2010 American science fiction adult comedy film directed by Steve Pink. Four men, all of them bored with their adult lives, travel back to their 1980s teen-hood, courtesy of a time-shifting hot tub. It stars John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Kellee Stewart, Rob...
. Throughout 2010, continued debt and credit issues for MGM Holdings, Inc., United Artists' parent company had left the future of MGM and UA in doubt until it was resolved near the end of the year. While MGM was taken over by Spyglass Entertainment
Spyglass Entertainment
Spyglass Entertainment is an American film production company, co-founded by Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum in 1998. The studio was founded with an investment from European media conglomerates Kirch Group and Mediaset, and a five-year distribution deal with The Walt Disney Company...
, it is not currently known what will become of United Artists in the near future.
Film archives
The value of film libraries has increased exponentially in recent years, even as ownership gets more fractured. Few studios had the foresight or ability to maintain control over every picture they produced or released.United Artists, through various strategic purchases, built up a substantial film and television library. Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the RKO and pre-1950 Warner Bros. libraries. Having passed through numerous hands, these catalogs now belong to Time Warner's Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment
Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
unit. However, one post-1950 WB film, the 1956 version of Moby Dick
Moby Dick (1956 film)
Moby Dick is a 1956 film adaptation of Herman Melville's novel Moby-Dick. It was directed by John Huston with a screenplay by Ray Bradbury and the director. The film starred Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, and Leo Genn...
, is still owned by UA (via MGM).
Since UA produced very few of the pictures it released, ownership of UA's output often rests with the individual or company producing. Some UA films of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s fell into the public domain, to be picked up by Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures
Republic Pictures was an independent film production-distribution corporation with studio facilities, operating from 1934 through 1959, and was best known for specializing in westerns, movie serials and B films emphasizing mystery and action....
(today part of Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
) or studios like Castle Hill Productions
Castle Hill Productions
Castle Hill Productions is an independent television and film distribution company handling classic and independent films whose library spans eight decades.-Background:...
(with distribution by Warner Brothers). A small fraction of UA's silent output is now owned by Kino International.
A number of United Artists' films from the 1920s through the 1940s that are in the public domain are seldom shown. Of the hundreds of films UA distributed over eighty years, those it still owns outright are most of its own productions from 1951 forward, plus a few pre-1951 films such as 1933's Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (film)
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is a 1933 American musical comedy film directed by Lewis Milestone in the Depression.The film stars Al Jolson as Bumper, a popular New York tramp, and both romanticizes and satirizes the hobo lifestyle that many people were forced into by the economic conditions of the time....
and Howard Hawks' Red River (1948) with parent company MGM handling distribution.
The Big Four (Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith)
- Charlie Chaplin's films, features and shorts are controlled by his estate, with most rights handled by French distributor MK2 and Janus FilmsJanus FilmsJanus Films is a film distribution company. It was one of the first distributors to bring what are now regarded as masterpieces of world cinema to the United States...
.
- Most of the films Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith made at United Artists now rest with film restoration company Film Preservation AssociatesBlackhawk FilmsBlackhawk Films, from the 1950s through the early 1980s, marketed motion pictures on 16mm, 8mm and Super 8 film. Most were vintage one- or two-reel short subjects, usually comedies starring Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and other famous comedy series of the past....
.
- In 1931, Mary PickfordMary PickfordMary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
considered destroying her films, afraid they might seem ridiculous to future generations of viewers; however, her friend Lillian GishLillian GishLillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
managed to persuade her otherwise. The rights to all of her films are now held by the Mary Pickford Foundation.
Disney, Lantz, and Twentieth Century Pictures' productions
- All of the Disney shorts released through United Artists from June 1932 to May 1937, as well as the 1943 film Victory Through Air PowerVictory Through Air Power (film)Victory Through Air Power is a 1943 Walt Disney Technicolor animated feature film based on the 1942 book by Alexander P. de Seversky. De Seversky appeared in the film, an unusual departure from the Disney animated feature films of the time....
, were always owned by The Walt Disney CompanyThe Walt Disney CompanyThe Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
. A number of these had been re-released through RKO (replacing the original titles) prior to the launch of Buena Vista Distribution in 1953.
- All of the Walter LantzWalter LantzWalter Benjamin Lantz was an American cartoonist, animator, film producer, and director, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker.-Early years and start in animation:...
cartoons distributed by UA during 1947 up to 1949 are now held by Lantz's original home, UniversalUniversal StudiosUniversal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
.
- The Twentieth Century pictures released by UA between 1933 and 1935 rest with the successor company, 20th Century Fox20th Century FoxTwentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
.
Collaborations
Films made by UA in co-production with other companies rest with several studios in certain territories or under contractual agreements.- As of the present, UA owns domestic distribution (including television syndication, theatrical, and internet) and the copyright to The Return of the Pink PantherThe Return of the Pink PantherThe Return of the Pink Panther is the fourth film in the Pink Panther series, released in 1975. The film stars Peter Sellers in the role of Inspector Clouseau in his third Panther appearance, after the original The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark.Herbert Lom also reprises his role as Chief...
. All other rights reside under Universal Pictures' Focus FeaturesFocus FeaturesFocus Features is the art house films division of NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, and acts as both a producer and distributor for its own films and a distributor for foreign films....
division in partnership with ITC and its successor ITV Global Entertainment Ltd.. Ironically, MGM/UA's rights are the result of their theatrical distribution license for the ITC/ITV library.
- In another twist of irony, UA also owns theatrical distribution rights to the 1978 remake of The Big SleepThe Big Sleep (1978 film)The Big Sleep was the second film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Robert Mitchum in his second feature film portrayal of the detective Philip Marlowe. The cast includes Sarah Miles, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, and...
(another ITC production originally released by UA) by virtue of MGM's distribution rights to ITC's theatrical output.
- U.S. and worldwide television rights to the film NetworkNetwork (film)Network is a 1976 American satirical film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a fictional television network, Union Broadcasting System , and its struggle with poor ratings. The film was written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet...
(a co-production with MGM) are now owned by WB/Turner Entertainment, as the domestic rights were originally held by MGM and incorporated into the Turner library in 1986. But in other countries, the film still resides with MGM (due to UA distributing the film outside the U.S. as opposite to CIC).
- Worldwide rights to Always are now with Universal PicturesUniversal Pictures-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
, the film's co-producing studio.
- Most ancillary rights to Convoy (an EMI FilmsEMI FilmsEMI Films was a British film and television production company and distributor. The company was formed after the takeover of Associated British Picture Corporation in 1968 by EMI....
production) are now with EMI's successor company, StudioCanalStudioCanalStudioCanal is a French-based production and distribution company that owns the third-largest film library in the world...
, although its copyright and US home video re-release issues are with MGM, but an official home video/DVD re-issue has yet to be announced.
Independent producers
- Rights to the UA-released Hal RoachHal RoachHarold Eugene "Hal" Roach, Sr. was an American film and television producer and director, and from the 1910s to the 1990s.- Early life and career :Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York...
films are now with RHI EntertainmentRHI EntertainmentRHI Entertainment , formerly known as Hallmark Entertainment, is an American producer of television movies and miniseries, founded in 1979 by Robert Halmi Jr. and Robert Halmi Sr. as Robert Halmi Incorporated....
, even though most of these are in the public domain.
- McLintock!McLintock!McLintock! is a 1963 comedy Western starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and loosely based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The film is notable, perhaps even infamous, for its two spanking scenes, in which mother and daughter are each paddled with coal shovels: the daughter by her...
, made by John Wayne's Batjac ProductionsBatjac ProductionsBatjac Productions is an independent film production company founded by John Wayne in the early 1950s as a vehicle for Wayne to produce as well as star in movies. Its first release was Big Jim McLain with Warner Brothers in 1952, and its final film was also with Warner Brothers, McQ, in 1974...
, is in the public domain (though the music score is still under copyright). Batjac retains the original film elements, and licensed Paramount Home EntertainmentParamount Home EntertainmentParamount Home Entertainment is the division of Paramount Pictures dealing with home video founded in late 1975.-History:...
the distribution rights to release DVD versions authorized by Wayne's estate.
- Rights to Stanley Kramer'sStanley KramerStanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer. Kramer was responsible for some of Hollywood's most famous "message" movies...
pre-1952 productions for UA (ex. ChampionChampion (1949 film)Champion is an American film noir drama based on a short story by Ring Lardner. Filmed in black-and-white, it recounts the struggles of boxer "Midge" Kelly fighting his own demons while working to achieve success in the boxing ring. The drama was directed by Mark Robson, with cinematography by...
, The Men, High NoonHigh NoonHigh Noon is a 1952 American Western film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. The film tells in real time the story of a town marshal forced to face a gang of killers by himself...
), as well as a majority of the films made by Enterprise Productions (ex. Body and SoulBody and Soul (1947 film)Body and Soul is a 1947 film noir which tells the story of a boxer who becomes involved with crooked promoters. It stars John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere and William Conrad....
, Arch of TriumphArch of Triumph (1948 film)Arch of Triumph is a 1948 American war romance film made by Enterprise Productions. The film was directed by Lewis Milestone and adapted from the 1945 Erich Maria Remarque novel Arch of Triumph....
) are currently owned by Republic Pictures under ParamountParamount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, with Trifecta handling television syndication and Lionsgate holding video/DVD rights. Another Kramer production, the 1950 film version of Cyrano de BergeracCyrano de Bergerac (1950 film)Cyrano de Bergerac is a 1950 black-and-white feature film based on the 1897 French Alexandrine verse drama Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. It uses poet Brian Hooker's 1923 English blank verse translation as the basis for its screenplay...
, is in the public domain.
- Rights to the The Caddo Company/Howard HughesHoward HughesHoward Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
films produced by UA are now owned by UniversalUniversal Pictures-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
(except for a few like Two Arabian KnightsTwo Arabian KnightsTwo Arabian Knights is an American comedy film, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring William Boyd and Mary Astor. A silent film, Two Arabian Knights was produced by Howard Hughes and was distributed by United Artists.-Plot:...
and The Front PageThe Front Page (1931 film)The Front Page is a 1931 American comedy film, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Adolphe Menjou and Pat O'Brien. Based on a Broadway play of the same name, the film was produced by Howard Hughes, written by Bartlett Cormack and Charles Lederer, and distributed by United Artists. The...
, which are in the public domain—home video rights rest with independent home video distributors like Flicker Alley and Reelclassicdvd.com).
- The pre-1941 Samuel GoldwynSamuel GoldwynSamuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios.-Biography:...
films released by UA (as well as the films made during his tenure at RKO) were temporarily handled by The Samuel Goldwyn CompanyThe Samuel Goldwyn CompanyThe Samuel Goldwyn Company was an independent film company founded by Samuel Goldwyn, Jr., the son of the famous Hollywood mogul, Samuel Goldwyn, in 1979.-Background:...
(with HBO Home Video handling home entertainment rights) but are currently held by successor company MGM (ironically also the parent company of UA), which Goldwyn feuded with for years.
- The U.S. rights to The African Queen are now owned by Paramount PicturesParamount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
(after years of changing hands as the result of a series of management changes involving Paramount's parent company Viacom). As of the present, Paramount handles theatrical distribution, while Trifecta Entertainment & MediaTrifecta Entertainment & MediaTrifecta Entertainment & Media is an American entertainment company founded in 2006. The company's founders previously held jobs as executives at MGM Television. Trifecta is primarily a distribution company and also handles advertising sales in exchange for syndication deals with local television...
manages television syndication under Paramount's license. ITV Global Entertainment Ltd. handles distribution outside the U.S.
- Ancillary rights to The Final Countdown are now with LionsgateLions Gate EntertainmentLions Gate Entertainment Corporation is a North American entertainment company. The company was formed in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1997, and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California...
(successor-in-interest to Producers Sales OrganizationProducers Sales OrganizationProducers Sales Organization was an independent production/distribution company founded in 1977.Inititated by Mark Damon, an actor-turned-producer, PSO largely handled foreign sales of independent films...
), however the video rights are held by Blue UndergroundBlue UndergroundBlue Underground is an American company specializing in releasing authoritative editions of cult and exploitation movies on Blu-ray Disc and DVD....
.
- Lionsgate also now owns US DVD rights to Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
's Apocalypse NowApocalypse NowApocalypse Now is a 1979 American war film set during the Vietnam War, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The central character is US Army special operations officer Captain Benjamin L. Willard , of MACV-SOG, an assassin sent to kill the renegade and presumed insane Special Forces...
(under license from Paramount PicturesParamount PicturesParamount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
, which owns US distribution rights on behalf of the film's rights holder, American ZoetropeAmerican ZoetropeAmerican Zoetrope is a studio founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Founded on December 12, 1969, American Zoetrope was an early adopter of digital filmmaking, including some of the earliest uses of HDTV...
, Coppola's company). Trifecta (also under license from Paramount) handles television distribution rights. International distribution rights have been farmed out to other companies (in some countries, the original and "Redux" versions have different distributors).
- Rights to Mike Todd's Around the World in Eighty Days and the UA-distributed LorimarLorimar ProductionsLorimar, later known as Lorimar Television and Lorimar Distribution, was an American television production company that was later a subsidiary of Warner Bros., active from 1969 until 1993...
films are now with Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
. WB bought the rights to Days from Elizabeth TaylorElizabeth TaylorDame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...
, Todd's widow, and the Lorimar library after they bought out the company in 1993.
- Saul ZaentzSaul ZaentzSaul Zaentz is an American film producer and former record company executive. He has won the Academy Award for Best Picture three times and in 1996 was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award....
and his namesake corporation retains the rights to his UA-distributed productions, which includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NestOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (film)One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American drama film directed by Miloš Forman and based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey....
. Zaentz licensed the distribution of these films to Warner Bros.
- Several of Otto Preminger's UA films remain under the control of his estate, with Warner Bros. distributing. However, Preminger's The Man With the Golden ArmThe Man with the Golden ArmThe Man with the Golden Arm is a 1955 American drama film, based on the novel of the same name by Nelson Algren, which tells the story of a heroin addict who gets clean while in prison, but struggles to stay that way in the outside world. It stars Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold...
is no longer under copyright (though the music score still is).
- Rights to the Mexican films originally released by UA are now with Laguna Films, while others are in the public domain or owned by independent companies. That's because the US copyright laws did not apply worldwide.
The Selznick library
- Rights to Selznick International PicturesSelznick International Pictures-Origin:It was founded in 1935 by producer David O. Selznick and investor John Hay "Jock" Whitney after Selznick left Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and leased a section of the RKO Pictures lot in Culver City, California...
and other later productions from David O. Selznick are held by ABCAmerican Broadcasting CompanyThe American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
(which is also owned by Disney). Home video rights are held by MGMMGM Home EntertainmentMGM Home Entertainment is the home video and DVD arm of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-History:The home video division of MGM started in 1979 as MGM Home Video, releasing all the movies and TV shows by MGM. In 1980, MGM joined forces with CBS Video Enterprises, the home video division of the CBS television...
under license. This excludes Gone with the WindGone with the Wind (film)Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
, which was originally released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and is now owned by Time Warner (via subsidiary Turner EntertainmentTurner EntertainmentTurner Entertainment Company, Inc. is an American media company founded by Ted Turner. Now owned by Time Warner, the company is largely responsible for overseeing its library for worldwide distribution Turner Entertainment Company, Inc. (commonly known as Turner Entertainment Co.) is an American...
Company) with TW's Warner Bros.Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
unit holding distribution rights.
- Like Gone with the Wind, The Prisoner of ZendaThe Prisoner of Zenda (1937 film)The Prisoner of Zenda is a 1937 black-and-white adventure film based on the Anthony Hope 1894 novel of the same name and the 1896 play. Of the many film adaptations, this is considered by many to be the definitive version....
(1937) is also owned by Turner. Unlike the case of Gone with the Wind, which Selznick sold to MGM in 1944, It is assumed that The Prisoner of Zenda was bought by MGM themselves because they planned to produce a would-be 1952 remake of the filmThe Prisoner of Zenda (1952 film)The Prisoner of Zenda is a 1952 film version of the classic novel of the same name by Anthony Hope and a remake of the famous 1937 film version. This version was made by Loew's and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by Richard Thorpe and produced by Pandro S...
and wished to better the original film (a similar situation occurred when MGM filmed a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941 film)Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a 1941 horror film starring Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman and Lana Turner. Rather than being a new film version of the novel, it is a direct remake of the 1931 film of the same name, which differs greatly from the novel. The movie was based on Robert Louis Stevenson's...
in 1941, having also bought the 1931 versionDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 film)Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a 1932 American Pre-Code horror film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Fredric March. The film is an adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , the Robert Louis Stevenson tale of a man who takes a potion which turns him from a mild-mannered man of...
from Paramount). When the pre-May 1986 MGM library was bought by Turner Entertainment, both productions were included in the roster as well.
- Little Lord FauntleroyLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1936 film)Little Lord Fauntleroy is a 1936 drama film based on the 1886 novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett. The film stars Freddie Bartholomew, Dolores Costello, , and C. Aubrey Smith...
(1936), Nothing SacredNothing Sacred (film)Nothing Sacred is a 1937 Technicolor screwball comedy film made by Selznick International Pictures and distributed by United Artists. It was directed by William A. Wellman and produced by David O. Selznick, from a screenplay credited to Ben Hecht, based on a story by James H. Street...
(1937), A Star is BornA Star Is Born (1937 film)A Star Is Born is a 1937 Technicolor romantic drama film produced by David O. Selznick and directed by William A. Wellman, with a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. It stars Janet Gaynor as an aspiring Hollywood actress, and Fredric March as an aging movie star who...
(1937) and Made for Each OtherMade for Each Other (1939 film)Made for Each Other is a 1939 drama film directed by John Cromwell and produced by David O. Selznick. It stars Carole Lombard and James Stewart as a couple who get married after only knowing each other very briefly.-Plot:...
are now in the public domain.
Pre-May 1986 MGM/UA library
- The pre-May 1986 MGM films released through United Artists (and outside Anglo-America through Cinema International Corporation and United International Pictures) are also now with WB/Turner Entertainment.
- Some of the pre-May 1986 MGM/UA films made around the early 1980s still remain in the MGM library and were not picked up by Turner Entertainment due to most of these films produced by UA (ex. the 1983 film WarGamesWarGamesWarGames is a 1983 American Cold War suspense/science-fiction film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film stars Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy....
; and the James BondEON ProductionsEon Productions is a film production company known for producing the James Bond film series. The company is based in London's Piccadilly and also operates from Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom...
, Pink Panther and Rocky franchises).
- However, a specific film from the official UA library, the 1937 film The Prisoner of Zenda, has managed to enter the Turner library, thus part of the Warner catalogs. (See above)
- One WB film in the a.a.p. package, RopeRope (film)Rope is a 1948 American thriller film based on the play Rope by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions...
, had its rights reverted to director Alfred HitchcockAlfred HitchcockSir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
in later years. His estate then sold the rights to Universal Studios in 1983, although UA still holds the film's copyright.
- The 1975 documentary, Bugs Bunny: SuperstarBugs Bunny: SuperstarBugs Bunny: Superstar is a 1975 Looney Tunes documentary film, narrated by Orson Welles and produced and directed by Larry Jackson.The film includes nine Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons which were previously released during the 1940s :* What's Cookin' Doc? * The Wild Hare Bugs Bunny:...
, is also now with WB/Turner, as it featured several full cartoons in the a.a.p. package.
- Most of the a.a.p. library (The Popeye cartoons and most of the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library) are owned by WB/Turner (The only exceptions are Rope and originally a post-1950 WB film, Moby Dick.)
The Beatles' films
- Rights to A Hard Day's NightA Hard Day's Night (film)A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 British black-and-white comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists...
(1964) are controlled by The Weinstein CompanyThe Weinstein CompanyThe Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
, in conjunction with Miramax FilmsMiramax FilmsMiramax Films is an American entertainment company known for distributing independent and foreign films. For its first 14 years the company was privately owned by its founders, Bob and Harvey Weinstein...
and Lionsgate (the latter company currently holding home video rights under Miramax). - The rights to Help!Help! (film)Help! is a 1965 film directed by Richard Lester, starring The Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—and featuring Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, John Bluthal, Roy Kinnear and Patrick Cargill. Help! was the second feature film made by the Beatles and is a...
(1965) and Let It BeLet It Be (film)Let It Be is a 1970 documentary film about The Beatles rehearsing and recording songs for the album Let It Be in January 1969. The film features an unannounced rooftop concert by the group, their last performance in public...
(1970), also distributed by UA, are now owned by the surviving members of The BeatlesThe BeatlesThe Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
and the estates of the deceased members through Apple CorpsApple CorpsApple Corps Ltd. is a multi-armed multimedia corporation founded in January 1968 by the members of The Beatles to replace their earlier company and to form a conglomerate. Its name is a pun. Its chief division is Apple Records, which was launched in the same year...
, with licensing from EMIEMIThe EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
. - While losing the rights to the films above, UA held on to Yellow Submarine (1968), meaning MGM would gain rights to it when they purchased UA.
UA Films on video
United Artists originally leased the home video rights to its films (including the pre-1950 Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
classics they owned at the time) to Magnetic Video
Magnetic Video
Magnetic Video was a home video/audio duplication service established by Andre Blay in 1968 and based in Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1977 it became the first corporation to release theatrical motion pictures onto Betamax and VHS videocassette for consumer use. Magnetic Video was a home...
, the first home video company. Magnetic was purchased by 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
in 1981 and was renamed 20th Century-Fox Video
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of the 20th Century Fox film studio. It was established in 1976 as Magnetic Video Corporation, and later as 20th Century Fox Video, CBS/Fox Video and FoxVideo, Inc....
that year. In 1982, 20th Century-Fox Video merged with CBS Video Enterprises
CBS Video Enterprises
CBS Home Entertainment is the home entertainment arm of CBS Corporation.-CBS Video Enterprises:CBS, Inc...
(which had demerged with MGM/CBS Home Video
MGM Home Entertainment
MGM Home Entertainment is the home video and DVD arm of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-History:The home video division of MGM started in 1979 as MGM Home Video, releasing all the movies and TV shows by MGM. In 1980, MGM joined forces with CBS Video Enterprises, the home video division of the CBS television...
after MGM merged with UA) giving birth to CBS/Fox Video
CBS/Fox Video
CBS/Fox Video was a home video company formed and established in 1982, as a merger between 20th Century Fox Video, formerly Magnetic Video Corporation, and CBS Video Enterprises....
but UA was not allowed to leave the deal at the time. In 1986, the pre-1950 WB and the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television libraries were purchased by Ted Turner after its short-lived ownership of MGM/UA, and as a result CBS/Fox lost home video rights to the pre-1950 WB films to MGM/UA Home Video
MGM Home Entertainment
MGM Home Entertainment is the home video and DVD arm of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.-History:The home video division of MGM started in 1979 as MGM Home Video, releasing all the movies and TV shows by MGM. In 1980, MGM joined forces with CBS Video Enterprises, the home video division of the CBS television...
. When the deal with CBS/Fox (inherited from Magnetic Video) expired in 1989, the UA films began to be issued through MGM/UA Home Video.
United Artists Broadcasting
| DMA | Market | Station | Years Owned | Known Today As | Notes |
| 17. | Cleveland – Akron Akron, Ohio Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan... – Canton Canton, Ohio Canton is the county seat of Stark County in northeastern Ohio, approximately south of Akron and south of Cleveland.The City of Caton is the largest incorporated area within the Canton-Massillon Metropolitan Statistical Area... |
WUAB WUAB WUAB, identified on-air as "My43 The Block, WUAB", is the MyNetworkTV affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio. The station is licensed to the suburb of Lorain, and it shares a studio in downtown Cleveland with sister station WOIO, Cleveland's CBS affiliate. Its transmitter is located in Parma, Ohio... 43 |
1968–1977 | MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV is a television broadcast syndication service in the United States, owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a division of News Corporation... affiliate owned by Raycom Media Raycom Media - History :Although Raycom Media dates its birth to 1996, the core of the company was formed in 1992 when Atlanta native Bert Ellis formed Ellis Communications. He eventually controlled 13 television stations and two radio stations.... |
Licensed to Lorain Lorain, Ohio Lorain is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States. The municipality is located in northeastern Ohio on Lake Erie, at the mouth of the Black River, about 30 miles west of Cleveland.... . The call letters stand for United Artists Broadcasting, which founded the station. Kaiser Broadcasting Kaiser Broadcasting Kaiser Broadcasting was the name of an entity that owned and operated broadcast television stations in the United States from 1958 to 1977.-History:... owned a minor stake from 1975–1977 following the closure of crosstown WKBF WKBF-TV WKBF-TV channel 61 was an Independent television station serving the Cleveland, Ohio market owned by a joint venture between Kaiser Broadcasting and Field Communications... . In 1977, Gaylord acquired WUAB to a station. Starring in 1989, it replaced Gaylord Entertainment Company Gaylord Entertainment Company The Gaylord Entertainment Company operates a number of hotel, resort, and media companies that were built by Edward Gaylord. It was previously a subsidiary of the Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Publishing Company, which is owned by the Gaylord family and publishes the Daily Oklahoman newspaper... to MGM/UA Television Stations Group Inc. MGM Television Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Television is an American television production/distribution launched in 1955 and a subsidiary of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc.... to produced until 1997. In 1995 with the WB/Kids WB affiliation added. Starring in 1997, it renamed "MGM Television Stations Group" until 2006 when Raycom Media Raycom Media - History :Although Raycom Media dates its birth to 1996, the core of the company was formed in 1992 when Atlanta native Bert Ellis formed Ellis Communications. He eventually controlled 13 television stations and two radio stations.... owned this station. |
| NR | San Juan San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of... – Ponce Ponce, Puerto Rico Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the... – Mayagüez Mayagüez, Puerto Rico Mayagüez is the eighth-largest municipality of Puerto Rico. Originally founded as "Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria" it is also known as "La Sultana del Oeste" , "Ciudad de las Aguas Puras" , or "Ciudad del Mangó"... |
WRIK-TV 7 | 1970–1972? | Independent station Independent station An independent station is in the category of television terminology used to describe a television station broadcasting in the United States or Canada that is not affiliated with any television network.... WSTE WSTE WSTE-DT is a full-power television station licensed to Ponce, Puerto Rico. It transmits on digital channel 7 over a four-site distributed transmission system.WSTE is owned by Univision and is operated by the network as well through WLII in Caguas... owned by Univision Univision Univision is a Spanish-language television network in the United States. It has the largest audience of Spanish language television viewers according to Nielsen ratings. Randy Falco, COO, has been in charge of the company since the departure of Univision Communications president and CEO Joe Uva... |
Licensed to Ponce. Operates 3 booster stations throughout Puerto Rico Puerto Rico Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an... . |
Additionally, United Artists Broadcasting also held the permit to KUAB-TV in Houston, Texas, which would have possibly launched sometime around 1969 on channel 20; the station would eventually launch in 1982 under different ownership
Grant Broadcasting System II
Based in Roanoke, Virginia, Grant Broadcasting System II is an owner of various television stations in the United States....
as KTXH
KTXH
KTXH, digital channel 19 , is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station in Houston, Texas. It is owned by the Fox Television Stations, a division of the News Corporation, and is one-half of a duopoly with Fox network station KRIV .Along with programming from MyNetworkTV, the station also airs...
. United Artists also owned one radio station, WWSH
WISX
WISX is a Hot adult contemporary radio station licensed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are owned by Clear Channel Communications.-Beautiful Music Era: WQAL/WWSH:...
in Philadelphia, from 1970 to 1977.
UAB/Transamerica left the broadcasting business in 1977 by selling WUAB to the Gaylord Broadcasting Company
Gaylord Entertainment Company
The Gaylord Entertainment Company operates a number of hotel, resort, and media companies that were built by Edward Gaylord. It was previously a subsidiary of the Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Publishing Company, which is owned by the Gaylord family and publishes the Daily Oklahoman newspaper...
and WWSH to Cox Communications
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...
but in 1982, WUAB and WMGM were sold to MGM/UA Television Stations Group.
See also
- List of United Artists films
- United Artists TelevisionUnited Artists Television-Background:UA purchased Associated Artists Productions in 1958, giving UA access to the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library and the Popeye cartoons made by Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios between 1933 and 1957....
- United Artists RecordsUnited Artists RecordsUnited Artists Records was a record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 initially to distribute records of its movie soundtracks, though it soon branched out into recording music of a number of different genres.-History:...
- List of film production companies
- Production companyProduction companyA production company provides the physical basis for works in the realms of the performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, and video.- Tasks and functions :...