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Radio-Keith-Orpheum
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA chief 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 abbreviation of Radio-Keith-Orpheum). Two years later, another Kennedy holding, 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 their ... [...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 the company's assumption of the new FBO name. Two years later, the studio contracted with Western (genre), Western leading man Fred Thomson, who within a couple years was 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 market was America's small towns, also put out many romantic melodramas, ... [...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 Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1920s to 1960s, 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. The studio system was challenged under the antitrust laws in a 1948 Supreme Court ruling which sought to separate production from the distribution and exhibition and ended such practices, thereby hastening the end of the studio system. By 1954, with television competing for audience and the last of the operational links between a major production studio and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Sarnoff
David Sarnoff (February 27, 1891 – December 12, 1971) was an American businessman and pioneer of American radio and television. Throughout most of his career, he led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970. He ruled over an ever-growing telecommunications and media empire that included both RCA and NBC, and became one of the largest companies in the world. Named a Reserve Brigadier General of the Signal Corps in 1945, Sarnoff thereafter was widely known as "The General." Sarnoff is credited with ''Sarnoff's law'', which states that the value of a broadcast network is proportional to the number of viewers. Early life and career David Sarnoff was born to a Jewish family in Uzlyany, a small town in the Russian Empire, now 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 c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Corporation Of America
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), 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 antitrust suit. An innovative and progressive company, RCA was the dominant electronics and communications firm in the United States for over five decades. RCA was at the forefront of the mushrooming radio industry in the early 1920s, as a major manufacturer of radio receivers, and the exclusive manufacturer of the first superheterodyne sets. RCA also created the first nationwide American radio network, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The company was also a pioneer in the introduction and development of television, both black and white and especially color television. During this pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Major Film Studio
Major film studios are production and 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 U.S. box office revenue. The term may also be applied more specifically to the primary motion picture business subsidiary of each respective conglomerate. Since the dawn of filmmaking, the U.S. major film studios have dominated both American cinema and the global film industry. U.S. studios have benefited from a strong first-mover advantage in that they were the first to industrialize filmmaking and master the art of mass-producing and distributing high-quality films with broad cross-cultu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American dancer, choreographer, actor, and singer. He is often called the greatest dancer in Hollywood film history. Astaire's career in stage, film, and television spanned 76 years. He starred in more than 10 Broadway and West End musicals, made 31 musical films, four television specials, and numerous recordings. As a dancer, he was known for his uncanny sense of rhythm, creativity, and tireless perfectionism. Astaire's most memorable dancing partnership was with Ginger Rogers, whom he co-starred with in 10 Hollywood musicals during the classic age of Hollywood cinema. Astaire and Rogers starred together in ''Top Hat'' (1935), '' Swing Time'' (1936), and ''Shall We Dance'' (1937). Astaire's fame grew in films like ''Holiday Inn'' (1942), '' Easter Parade'' (1948), '' The Band Wagon'' (1953), '' Funny Face'' (1957), and ''Silk Stockings'' (1957). The American Film Institute named Astaire the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer and singer during the Classical Hollywood cinema, Golden Age of Hollywood. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (film), ''Kitty Foyle'' (1940), and performed during the 1930s in RKO Pictures, RKO's musical films with Fred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century. Rogers was born in Independence, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City. She and her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, when she was nine years old. In 1925, she won a Charleston dance contest that helped her launch a successful vaudeville career. After that, she gained recognition as a Broadway theatre, Broadway actress for her stage debut in ''Girl Crazy''. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film roles as a supporting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress in film, stage, and television. Her career as a Hollywood leading lady spanned over 60 years. She was known for her headstrong independence, spirited personality, and outspokenness, cultivating a screen persona that matched this public image, and regularly playing strong-willed, sophisticated women. Her work was in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and earned her various accolades, including four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named the greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute. Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while at Bryn Mawr College. Favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood. Her early years in film brought her international fame, including an Academy Award for Best Actress for her thir ... [...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 rose to prominence with an Academy Award nomination for the Best Supporting Actor for ''The Story of G.I. Joe'' (1945), followed by his starring in several classic film noirs. His acting is generally considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known films include ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944), ''Out of the Past'' (1947), ''River of No Return'' (1954), '' The Night of the Hunter'' (1955), '' Thunder Road'' (1958), '' Cape Fear'' (1962), '' El Dorado'' (1966), ''Ryan's Daughter'' (1970) and ''The Friends of Eddie Coyle'' (1973). He is also known for his television role as U.S. Navy Captain Victor "Pug" Henry in the epic miniseries ''The Winds of War'' (1983) and sequel ''War and Remembrance'' (1988). Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema. Ear ... [...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. Early life Lewton was born Vladimir Ivanovich Hofschneider or Leventon (russian: link=no, Владимир Иванович Левентон, uk, Володимир Іванович Левентон, both with surname Leventon) in Yalta, Imperial Russia (now in Ukraine), in 1904. He was of Jewish descent, the son of moneylender Max Hofschneider and Anna "Nina" Leventon, a pharmacist's daughter. The family converted to Christianity.''Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows'', 2007 documentary by Martin Scorsese He was nephew of actress Alla Nazimova. His mother left his father and moved to Berlin, taking their two children with her. In 1909, they emigrated to the United States as second cabin class passengers on boa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cary Grant
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men from the 1930s until the mid-1960s. Grant was born and brought up in Bristol, England. He became attracted to theater at a young age when he visited the Bristol Hippodrome. At 16, he went as a stage performer with the Pender Troupe for a tour of the US. After a series of successful performances in New York City, he decided to stay there. He established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s. Grant initially appeared in crime films and dramas such as ''Blonde Venus'' (1932) with Marlene Dietrich and '' She Done Him Wrong'' (1933) with Mae West, but later gained renown for his performances in romantic screwball ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pathé Exchange
Pathé Exchange, commonly known as Pathé, was an American film production and distribution company, largely of Hollywood's silent era. Known for its groundbreaking newsreel and wide array of shorts, it grew out of the American division of the major French studio Pathé Frères, which began distributing films in the United States in 1904. Ten years later, it produced the enormously succeesful '' The Perils of Pauline'', a twenty-episode serial that came to define the genre. The American operation was incorporated as Pathé Exchange toward the end of 1914 and spun off as an independent entity in 1921; the Merrill Lynch investment firm acquired a controlling stake. The following year, it released Robert J. Flaherty's influential documentary ''Nanook of the North''. For much of the 1920s, Pathé distributed the shorts of comedy pioneers Hal Roach and Mack Sennett and innovative animator Paul Terry. Beginning in 1927, the studio changed hands several times in quick succession: it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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