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Radio-Keith-Orpheum
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] |
Film Booking Offices Of America
Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), registered as FBO Pictures Corp., was an American film studio of the Silent film, silent era, a midsize producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began in 1918 as Robertson-Cole, an Anglo-American import-export company. Robertson-Cole began distributing films in the United States that December and opened a Los Angeles production facility in 1920. Late that year, R-C entered into a working relationship with East Coast financier Joseph P. Kennedy. A business reorganization in 1922 led to its assumption of the FBO name, first for all its distribution operations and ultimately for its own productions as well. Through Kennedy, the studio contracted with Western (genre), Western leading man Fred Thomson, who grew by 1925 into one of Cinema of the United States#Rise of Hollywood, Hollywood's most popular stars. Thomson was just one of several silent screen cowboys with whom FBO became identified. The studio, whose core mark ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff (February 27, 1891 – December 12, 1971) was a Russian and American businessman who played an important role in the American history of radio and television. He led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for most of his career in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970. He headed a conglomerate of telecommunications and media companies, including RCA and NBC, that became one of the largest in the world. Named a Reserve Brigadier General of the Signal Corps in 1945, Sarnoff thereafter was widely known as "The General". Early life and career David Sarnoff was born to a Jewish family in Uzlyany, a small town in Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire (today part of Belarus), the son of Abraham Sarnoff and Leah Privin. Abraham emigrated to the United States and raised funds to bring the family. Sarnoff spent much of his early childhood in a cheder (or yeshiva) studying and memorizing the Torah. He emigrated with his mothe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Corporation Of America
RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company. In 1932, RCA became an independent company after the partners were required to divest their ownership as part of the settlement of a government United States antitrust law, antitrust suit. An innovative and progressive company, RCA was the dominant electronics and communications firm in the United States for over five decades. In the early 1920s, RCA was at the forefront of the mushrooming radio industry as a major manufacturer of radio receivers, and the exclusive manufacturer of the first superheterodyne sets. The company also created the first nationwide American radio network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). RCA was also a pioneer in the introduction and development of television, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Major Film Studios
Major film studios are filmmaking, production and film distributor, distribution companies that release a substantial number of films annually and consistently command a significant share of box office revenue in a given market. In the American and international markets, the major film studios, often known simply as the majors or the Big Five studios, are commonly regarded as the five diversified media conglomerates whose various film production and distribution subsidiaries collectively command approximately 80 to 85% of American box office revenue. The term may also be applied more specifically to the primary motion picture business subsidiary of each respective conglomerate. Since History of film, the dawn of filmmaking, the major American film studios have List of film distributors by country, dominated both Cinema of the United States, American cinema and the global film industry. American studios have benefited from a strong first-mover advantage in that they were the firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Studio System
A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the early years of the Golden Age of Hollywood from 1927 (the introduction of sound motion pictures) to 1948 (the beginning of the demise of the studio system), wherein studios produced films primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under often long-term contract, and dominated exhibition through vertical integration, i.e., the ownership or effective control of distributors and exhibition, guaranteeing additional sales of films through manipulative booking techniques such as block booking. During the Hollywood Golden Age, eight companies constituted the major studios that promulgated the Hollywood studio system. Of these eight, five were fully integrated conglomerates known as the original Big Five, combining ownership of a production ... [...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] |
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] |
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] |
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] |
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] |
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] |
