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RKO Pictures Contract Players
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, is an American film production and distribution company, historically one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone, and in early 1929 production began under the RKO name (an initialism of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum. RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid- to late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had thei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Production Logo
A production logo, studio logo, vanity card, vanity plate, or vanity logo is a logo used by Film studio, movie studios and television production company, production companies to brand what they produce and to determine the production company and the distributor of a television show or film. Production logos are usually seen at the beginning of a theatrical movie or video game (an "opening logo"), and/or at the end of a television program or Television movie, TV movie (a "closing logo"). Many production logos have become famous over the years, such as the 20th Century Studios' 20th Century Fox Fanfare, monument and searchlights and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, MGM's Leo the Lion (MGM), Leo the Lion. Unlike logos for other media, production logos can take advantage of Motion (physics), motion and synchronized sound, and almost always do. Production logos are becoming commonplace in online video platforms such as YouTube, often as "channel" branding. Online channels may have a professiona ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Floyd Odlum
Floyd Bostwick Odlum (March 30, 1892 – June 17, 1976) was an American lawyer and industrialist. He has been described as "possibly the only man in the United States who made a great fortune out of the Depression", referring to the Great Depression. Life and career After struggling as a corporate attorney in Salt Lake City, Odlum received an offer of a job at a New York firm, and in 1921 became vice-president of his primary client, Electric Bond and Share Company. In 1923, Odlum, a friend, and their wives pooled a total of $39,600 and formed the United States Company to speculate in purchases of utilities and general securities. Within two years, the company's net assets had increased 17 fold to nearly $700,000. In 1928, Odlum incorporated Atlas Utilities Company to take over the common stock of his other company. During the summer of 1929, Odlum was one of the few industrial moguls to believe that the boom on Wall Street could not continue much longer, and he sold one hal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Notorious (1946 Film)
''Notorious'' is a 1946 American spy film noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as three people whose lives become intimately entangled during an espionage operation. The film follows U.S. government agent T. R. Devlin (Grant), who enlists the help of Alicia Huberman (Bergman), the daughter of a German war criminal, to infiltrate a circle of executives of IG Farben hiding out in Rio de Janeiro after World War II. The situation becomes complicated when the two fall in love as Huberman is instructed to seduce Alex Sebastian (Rains), a Farben executive who had previously been infatuated with her. It was shot in late 1945 and early 1946, and was released by RKO Radio Pictures in August 1946. ''Notorious'' is considered by critics and scholars to mark a watershed for Hitchcock artistically, and to represent a heightened thematic maturity. His biographer, Donald Spoto, writes that ''"Notorious'' is in fact Alfred Hitc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American Drama (film and television), drama film directed by, produced by and starring Orson Welles and co-written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz. It was Welles's List of directorial debuts, first feature film. The film à clef, quasi-biographical film examines the life and legacy of Charles Foster Kane, played by Welles, a composite character based on American Media proprietor, media barons William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, Chicago tycoons Samuel Insull and Harold Fowler McCormick, Harold McCormick, as well as aspects of the screenwriters' own lives. After the Broadway theatre, Broadway success of Welles's Mercury Theatre and the controversial 1938 radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama), The War of the Worlds" on ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'', Welles was courted by Hollywood. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in 1939. Although it was unusual for an untried director, he was given freedom to develop his own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American director, actor, writer, producer, and magician who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Aged 21, Welles directed high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project in New York City—starting with a celebrated Voodoo Macbeth, 1936 adaptation of ''Macbeth'' with an African-American cast, and ending with the political musical ''The Cradle Will Rock'' in 1937. He and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented productions on Broadway through 1941, including a modern, politically charged ''Caesar (Mercury Theatre), Caesar'' (1937). In 1938, his radio anthology series ''The Mercury Theatre on the Air'' gave Welles the platform to find international fame as the director and narrator of The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama), a radio adaptation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King Kong (1933 Film)
''King Kong'' is a 1933 American Pre-Code Hollywood, pre-Code adventure film, adventure horror film, horror Monster movie, monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with special effects by Willis H. O'Brien and music by Max Steiner. Produced and distributed by RKO Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, it is the first film in the King Kong (franchise), ''King Kong'' franchise and combines live action sequences with stop-motion animation using rear-screen projection. The idea for the film came when Cooper decided he wanted to make a film about a giant gorilla struggling against modern civilization. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong (actor), Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot. The film follows a giant ape dubbed King Kong, Kong who feels affection for a beautiful young woman offered to him as a sacrifice. ''King Kong'' opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews, with praise for its stop-motion animation and score. During its init ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Film Noir
Film noir (; ) is a style of Cinema of the United States, Hollywood Crime film, crime dramas that emphasizes cynicism (contemporary), cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key lighting, low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German expressionist cinematography. Many of the prototypical stories and attitudes expressed in classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Great Depression, known as noir fiction. The term ''film noir'', French for "black film" (literal) or "dark film" (closer meaning), was first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, but was unrecognized by most American film industry professionals of that era. Frank is believed to have been inspired by the French literary publishing imprint Série noire, founded in 1945. Cinema hist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Val Lewton
Val Lewton (May 7, 1904 – March 14, 1951) was a Russian-American novelist, film producer, and screenwriter best known for a string of low-budget horror films he produced for RKO Pictures in the 1940s. His son, also named Val Lewton, was a painter and exhibition designer. Lewton was born in Yalta, Imperial Russia, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1909. He began his career as a writer, producing novels, including the best-selling pulp novel ''No Bed of Her Own''. Lewton worked as a writer and publicist for MGM before being named head of RKO's horror unit in 1942. His first production, '' Cat People'', became a top moneymaker for RKO that year. Lewton produced several successful films, often writing the final draft of the screenplays himself. He gave first directing opportunities to Robert Wise and Mark Robson and worked with Boris Karloff, who credited Lewton with saving his career. After leaving RKO, Lewton worked for Paramount and MGM, producing various ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Screwball Comedy
Screwball comedy is a film subgenre of the romantic comedy genre that became popular during the Great Depression, beginning in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1950s, that satirizes the traditional love story. It has secondary characteristics similar to film noir, distinguished by a female character who dominates the relationship with the male central character, whose masculinity is challenged, and the two engage in a humorous wikt:battle of the sexes, battle of the sexes.Cele Otnes; Elizabeth Hafkin PleckCele Otnes, Elizabeth Hafkin Pleck (2003''Cinderella dreams: the allure of the lavish wedding''University of California Press, p. 168. . The genre also featured romantic attachments between members of different social classes, as in ''It Happened One Night'' (1934) and ''My Man Godfrey'' (1936). What sets the screwball comedy apart from the generic romantic comedy is that "screwball comedy puts the emphasis on a funny spoofing of love, while the more traditional rom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English and American actor. Known for his blended British and American accent, debonair demeanor, lighthearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing, he was one of Classical Hollywood cinema, classic Hollywood's definitive leading man, leading men. He was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, Academy Award, received an Academy Honorary Award in 42nd Academy Awards, 1970, and received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981. He was named AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars#List of 50 greatest screen legends: Top 25 Male and Top 25 Female stars, the second greatest male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood by the American Film Institute in 1999. Grant was born into an impoverished family in Bristol, where he had an unhappy childhood marked by the absence of his mother and his father's alcoholism. He became attracted to theatre at a young age when he visited the Bristol Hippodrome. At 16, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American actor. He is known for his antihero roles and film noir appearances. He received nominations for an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1984 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1992. Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema. Mitchum rose to prominence with an Academy Award nomination for the Best Supporting Actor for '' The Story of G.I. Joe'' (1945). His best-known films include ''Out of the Past'' (1947), '' Angel Face'' (1953), '' River of No Return'' (1954), '' The Night of the Hunter'' (1955),'' Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison'' (1957), '' Thunder Road'' (1958), '' The Sundowners'' (1960), '' Cape Fear'' (1962), '' El Dorado'' (1966), '' Ryan's Daughter'' (1970), '' The Friends of Eddie Coyle'' (1973), and '' Farewell, My Lovely'' (1975). He is also known for h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
