Richard A. Rowland (December 8, 1880 – May 12, 1947) was an American
studio executive and film producer.
Career
Born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
, Rowland was the head of
Metro Pictures
Metro Pictures Corporation was a Film, motion picture production company founded in early 1915 in Jacksonville, Florida. It was a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company produced its films in New York, Los Angeles, and sometimes at le ...
Corporation from 1915 to 1920, a studio he founded in 1915 along with
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer (; born Lazar Meir; July 12, 1884Mayer maintained that he was born in Minsk on July 4, 1885. According to Scott Eyman, the reasons may have been:
* Mayer's father gave different dates for his birthplace at different times, so ...
. Mayer left in 1918 to form his own studio. Metro did most of its productions in Los Angeles and in New York City, where it occasionally leased facilities in
Fort Lee, New Jersey
Fort Lee is a Borough (New Jersey), borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, New Jersey, Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop The Palisades (Hudson River), The Palisades.
As of the 2020 Uni ...
. Among Metro's productions were: ''
The Eternal Question'' (1916) with
Olga Petrova
Olga Petrova (born Muriel Harding; 10 May 1884 – 30 November 1977) was a British-American actress, screenwriter and playwright.
Origins
In adulthood, Olga Petrova insisted that she had been born in Warsaw, Poland, then part of the Russian E ...
, ''The Divorcée'' (1919) with
Ethel Barrymore
Ethel Barrymore (born Ethel Mae Blythe; August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an American actress and a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regarde ...
, and ''
What Will People Say?'' (1915) directed by
Alice Guy-Blache.
In 1919, when
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered o ...
,
D.W. Griffith,
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. (born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman; May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor and filmmaker best known for being the first actor to play the masked Vigilante Zorro and other swashbuckler film, swashbu ...
, and
Mary Pickford
Gladys Louise Smith (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American film actress and producer. A Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood, pioneer in the American film industry with a Hollywood care ...
formed
United Artists
United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...
to protect their work and control their careers, Rowland, then head of Metro Studios, famously remarked that "the lunatics have taken over the asylum".
In 1920, Rowland sold Metro to
Marcus Loew
Marcus Loew ( ; May 7, 1870 – September 5, 1927) was an American business magnate and a pioneer of the motion picture industry who formed Loew's Theatres and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio (MGM).
Life and career
Loew was born in New York ...
, and subsequently became an executive at
Fox Film Corporation
The Fox Film Corporation (also known as Fox Studios) was an American independent company that produced motion pictures and was formed in 1914 by the theater "chain" pioneer William Fox (producer), William Fox. It was the corporate successor to ...
. Loew was acquiring studios to help supply product to his theater chain. A few years later, Loew merged Metro with recently acquired
Goldwyn Pictures Corporation to form
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...
(MGM).
Rowland played a key role in the setting of standards and improving the speed of movie projection to improve the quality of the experience as a member of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, later the
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded by Charles Francis Jenkins in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and e ...
(SMPTE).
Later years and death
Later in life, he was a professor at
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
, where he wrote several academic articles on the role that film played in modern culture. In one of his essays, titled ''American Classic'', he argues that
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act known for their anarchic humor, rapid-fire wordplay, and visual gags. They achieved success in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in 14 motion pictures. The core group consisted of brothers Chi ...
films are classics that will stand the test of time.
Rowland died on May 12, 1947, in New York City. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Rowland has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a landmark which consists of 2,813 five-pointed terrazzo-and-brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along 15 blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in the Hollywood, Los Angeles, Hollywood dist ...
located at 1541
Vine Street
Vine Street is a street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, that runs north–south between Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, and Melrose Avenue. The intersection of Hollywood and Vine being symbolic of Hollywood itself. The intersection has be ...
.
Filmography
References
*James Mottram, ''The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood'' (Faber, 2006)
*Tino Balio, ''The American Film Industry: a Reader'' revised 2nd Edition (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985) pp. 319
*Wes D. Gehring, ''The Marx Brothers: a Bio-Bibliography'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1987) pp 177.
*Richard Rowland, 'American Classic', ''Hollywood Quarterly'' (April 1947) Vol. 2, No. 3
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowland, Richard A.
Film producers from Pennsylvania
American film studio executives
American film production company founders
Columbia University faculty
Businesspeople from Pittsburgh
1880 births
1947 deaths
20th-century American businesspeople