Paramount Pictures Corporation is a
Worldwide American film production and
distribution company, located at 5555
Melrose Avenue in
Hollywood, California. 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 headquartered in the Hollywood district of
Los Angeles. Paramount is consistently ranked as one of the top grossing movie studios.
[boxofficemojo.com/studio/]
History
Early history
1910s
Paramount Pictures can trace its beginning to the creation in May 1912 of the
Famous Players Film Company. Founder
Hungarian-born
Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in
nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners
Daniel Frohman and
Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time (leading to the slogan "Famous Players in Famous Plays"). By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success.
That same year, another aspiring producer,
Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as
Samuel Goldwyn. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience,
Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable location site in Hollywood, near
Los Angeles, for his first film,
The Squaw Man.
Beginning in 1914, both Lasky and Famous Players released their films through a start-up company,
Paramount Pictures Corporation, organized early that year by a Utah theatre owner,
W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged several smaller firms. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer
Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of
Jack London movies. Paramount was the first successful nation-wide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a state-wide or regional basis. Not only was this inefficient, but it had proved costly to film producers. Also while Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned Paramount was a corporation so the other two companies were merged into Paramount.
Soon the ambitious Zukor, unused to taking a secondary role, began courting Hodkinson and Lasky. In 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. The new company,
Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, grew quickly, with Lasky and his partners Goldfish and DeMille running the production side, Hiram Abrams in charge of distribution, and Zukor making great plans. With only the exhibitor-owned
First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its "Paramount Pictures" soon dominated the business.
1920s
Because Zukor believed in stars, he signed and developed many of the leading early stars, including
Mary Pickford,
Douglas Fairbanks,
Gloria Swanson,
Rudolph Valentino, and
Wallace Reid. With so many important players, Paramount was able to introduce "
block booking", which meant that an exhibitor who wanted a particular star's films had to buy a year's worth of other Paramount productions. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, but which led the government to pursue it on
antitrust grounds for more than twenty years.
The driving force behind Paramount's rise was Zukor. All through the teens and twenties, he built a mighty theatrical chain of nearly 2,000 screens, ran two production studios, and became an early investor in radio, taking a 50% interest in the new
Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928. By acquiring the successful
Balaban & Katz chain in 1926, he gained the services of both
Barney Balaban, who became Paramount's president, and Sam Katz, who ran the Paramount-Publix theatre chain. Zukor also hired independent producer
B. P. Schulberg, an unerring eye for new talent, to run the West Coast studio. In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took on the name
Paramount-Famous Lasky Corporation. Three years later, because of the importance of the Publix theater chain, it was later known as
Paramount-Publix Corporation.
Also in 1928, Paramount began releasing
Inkwell Imps animated cartoons produced by
Max and
Dave Fleischer's
Fleischer Studios in
New York City. The Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, would prove to be among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of
Walt Disney. The Paramount
newsreel series
Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957.
1930s
Eventually Zukor shed most of his early partners; the Frohman brothers, Hodkinson and Goldfish/Goldwyn were out by 1917 while Lasky hung on until 1932, when, blamed for the near-collapse of Paramount in the Depression years, he too was tossed out. Zukor's over-expansion and use of overvalued Paramount stock for purchases led the company into receivership in 1933. A bank-mandated reorganization team, led by
John Hertz and
Otto Kahn kept the company intact, and, miraculously, kept Zukor on. In 1935, Paramount Publix went bankrupt. in 1936, Barney Balaban became president, and Zukor was bumped up to chairman of the board. In this role, Zukor reorganized the company as
Paramount Pictures, Inc. and was able to successfully bring the studio out of bankruptcy.
As always, Paramount films continued to emphasize stars; in the 1920s there were Swanson, Valentino, and
Clara Bow. By the 1930s, talkies brought in a range of powerful new draws:
Miriam Hopkins,
Marlene Dietrich,
Mae West,
Gary Cooper,
Claudette Colbert, the
Marx Brothers,
Dorothy Lamour,
Carole Lombard,
Bing Crosby, the band leader
Shep Fields and the famous Argentine tango singer
Carlos Gardel among them. In this period Paramount can truly be described as a movie factory, turning out sixty to seventy pictures a year. Such were the benefits of having a huge theater chain to fill, and of block booking to persuade other chains to go along. In 1933,
Mae West would also add greatly to Paramount's success with her movies
She Done Him Wrong and
I'm No Angel [www.filmsite.org/shed.html][www.filmsite.org/imno.html]. However, the sex appeal West gave in these movies would also lead to the enforcement of the
Production Code, as the newly formed organization the
Catholic Legion of Decency threatened a boycott if it wasn't enforced
[www.mae-west.org/old/mw.bio.html].
Paramount cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios continued to be successful, with characters such as
Betty Boop and
Popeye the Sailor becoming widely successful. One Fleischer series,
Screen Songs, featured live-action music stars under contract to Paramount hosting sing-alongs of popular songs. However, a huge blow to Fleischer Studios occurred in 1934, after the Production Code was enforced and Betty Boop's popularity declined as she was forced to have a more tame personality and wear a longer skirt.
[www.geocities.com/Hollywood/6773/?200726]. The animation studio would rebound with
Popeye, and in 1935, polls showed that Popeye was even more popular than Mickey Mouse
[forums.goldenagecartoons.com/showthread.php?t=2907]. After an unsuccessful expansion into feature films, as well as the fact that Max and Dave Fleischer were no longer speaking to one another, Fleischer Studios was acquired by Paramount, which renamed the operation
Famous Studios and continued cartoon production until 1967.
[] shorts.]]
1940s
In 1940, Paramount agreed to a government-instituted consent decree: block booking and "pre-selling" (the practice of collecting up-front money for films not yet in production) would end. Immediately Paramount cut back on production, from sixty-plus pictures to a more modest twenty annually in the war years. Still, with more new stars (like
Bob Hope,
Alan Ladd,
Veronica Lake,
Paulette Goddard, and
Betty Hutton), and with war-time attendance at astronomical numbers, Paramount and the other integrated studio-theatre combines made more money than ever. At this, the
Federal Trade Commission and the
Justice Department decided to reopen their case against the five integrated studios. Paramount also had a monopoly over Detroit movie theaters through subsidiary company United Detroit Theaters as well
[www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/united-detroit_paramount-history.htm]. This led to the
Supreme Court decision
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. (1948) holding that movie studios could not also own movie theater chains. This decision broke up Adolph Zukor's amazing creation and effectively brought an end to the classic Hollywood
studio system.
The 1950s to the 1970s
1950s
With the separation of production and exhibition forced by the U.S. Supreme Court, Paramount Pictures Inc. was split in two. Paramount Pictures Corporation was formed to be the production distribution company, with the 1,500-screen theater chain handed to the new
United Paramount Theaters on December 31, 1949.
Leonard Goldenson, who had headed the chain since
1938, remained as the new company's president. The Balaban and Katz theatre division was spun off with UPT. The Balaban and Katz trademark is now owned by the Balaban and Katz Historical Foundation. Cash-rich and controlling prime downtown real estate, Goldenson began looking for investments; barred from film-making, he acquired the struggling
ABC television network in February, 1953.
Paramount Pictures had been an early backer of television, launching experimental stations in 1939 in
Los Angeles (later to become
KTLA) and
Chicago (which was sold off as part of UPT and eventually became
WBBM-TV). It was also an early investor in the pioneer
DuMont Laboratories and through that, the
DuMont Television Network, but because of anti-trust concerns after the 1948 ruling, and station ownership issues (DuMont owned three stations in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh; but because of Paramount's involvement, KTLA and WBBM were also recognized by the FCC as network
O&O stations, even though the former was only an affiliate in 1947 and the latter never carried a DuMont program) proved to be a timid and obstructionist partner, refusing to aid DuMont as it sank in the mid-1950s.
[Spadoni, M. (June 2003). DuMont: America's First "Fourth Network". Television Heaven. Retrieved on December 28, 2006.][McDowell, W. (March 30, 2001). Remembering the DuMont Network: A Case Study Approach. College of Mass Communication and Media Arts.]
Southern Illinois University. Retrieved on December 28, 2006.
With the loss of the theater chain, Paramount Pictures went into a decline, cutting studio-backed production, releasing its contract players, and making production deals with independents. By the mid-1950s, all the great names were gone; only C.B. DeMille, associated with Paramount since 1913, kept making pictures in the grand old style. Despite Paramount's losses, DeMille would, however, give the studio some relief and create his most successful film at Paramount, a 1956
remake of his 1923 film
The Ten Commandments[www.filmsite.org/tenc.html]. Like some other studios, Paramount saw little value in its film library (see below for more info on the early Paramount library). DeMille died in 1959.
1960s
By the early 1960s Paramount's future was doubtful. The high-risk movie business was wobbly; the theater chain was long gone; investments in DuMont and in early pay-television came to nothing. Even the flagship Paramount building in Times Square was sold to raise cash, as was KTLA (sold to
Gene Autry in 1964 for a then-phenomenal $12.5 million). Founding father Adolph Zukor (born in 1873) was still chairman emeritus; he referred to chairman Barney Balaban (born 1888) as 'the boy'. Such aged leadership was incapable of keeping up with the changing times, and in 1966, a sinking Paramount was sold to
Charles Bluhdorn's industrial conglomerate
Gulf and Western Industries. Bluhdorn immediately put his stamp on the studio, installing a virtually unknown producer,
Robert Evans, as head of production. Despite some rough times, Evans held the job for eight years, restoring Paramount's reputation for commercial success with
The Odd Couple,
Love Story,
Chinatown, and
Rosemary's Baby.
Gulf and Western Industries also bought the neighboring
Desilu television studio (once the lot of
RKO Pictures) from
Lucille Ball in 1967. Using Desilu's established shows like
Star Trek,
Mission: Impossible and
Mannix as a foot in the door at the networks, the newly-reincorporated
Paramount Television eventually became known as a specialist in half-hour situation comedies.
1970s
In 1970, Paramount teamed with
Universal Studios to form
Cinema International Corporation, a new company that would distribute films by the two studios outside the United States.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer would become a partner in the mid 1970s. Both Paramount and CIC entered the video market with Paramount Home Video (now Paramount Home Entertainment) and
CIC Video, respectively.
Robert Evans quit as head of production in 1974; his successor
Richard Sylbert, was too literary and tasteful for Gulf + Western's Bluhdorn. By 1976, a new, television-trained team was in place:
Barry Diller, and his 'killer-Dillers,' associates
Michael Eisner,
Jeffrey Katzenberg,
Dawn Steel and
Don Simpson. The specialty now was simpler, 'high concept' pictures like
Saturday Night Fever,
Grease,
Mario Puzo's The Godfather and
Mario Puzo's The Godfather Part II. With his television background, Diller kept pitching an idea of his to the board:
a fourth commercial network. But the board, and Bluhdorn, wouldn't bite. Neither would Bluhdorn's successor, Martin Davis. Diller took his fourth-network idea with him when he moved to
Twentieth Century-Fox in 1984, where the new proprietor,
Rupert Murdoch, was a more interested listener.
Paramount Pictures was unconnected to
Paramount Records, until it purchased the rights to use Paramount Records' name (but not its catalogue) in the late 1960s. The
Paramount name was used for soundtrack albums and some pop re-issues from the
Dot Records catalogue. Paramount had acquired the pop-oriented Dot in 1958, but by 1970 Dot had become an all-country label.
[www.bsnpubs.com/dot/paramount.html] In 1974, Paramount sold all of its record holdings to
ABC Records, which in turn was sold to
MCA in 1978.
From the 1980s to 1994
Paramount's successful run of pictures extended into the 1980s and 1990s, generating hits like
Flashdance,
Terms Of Endearment,
Footloose,
Pretty In Pink,
Fatal Attraction, the
Friday the 13th slasher series, as well as
Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels. Other examples are the
Star Trek series and a string of films starring comedian
Eddie Murphy like
Trading Places,
Beverly Hills Cop and BHC's sequels. While the emphasis was decidedly on the commercial, there were occasional less commercial but more artistic and intellectual efforts like
I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can,
The Elephant Man,
Atlantic City,
Reds, and
Witness. During this period responsibility for running the studio passed from Eisner and Katzenberg to
Frank Mancuso Sr. (1984) and
Ned Tanen (1984) to
Stanley Jaffe (1991) and
Sherry Lansing (1992). More so than most, Paramount's slate of films included many remakes and television spinoffs; while sometimes commercially successful, there have been few compelling films of the kind that once made Paramount the industry leader. The studio even had its share of box office flops such as
Grease 2.
In 1981, Cinema International Corporation was reorganized as
United International Pictures. This was necessary because MGM had merged with
United Artists which had its own international distribution unit, but MGM was not allowed to leave the venture at the time (they finally did in 2001, switching international distribution to
20th Century Fox).
In 1985,
Dawn Steel became head of Motion Picture Production.
When Charles Bluhdorn died unexpectedly, his successor Martin Davis dumped all of G+W's industrial, mining, and sugar-growing subsidiaries and refocused the company, renaming it
Paramount Communications in 1989. With the influx of cash from the sale of G+W's industrial properties in the mid-1980s, Paramount bought a string of television stations and
KECO Entertainment's theme park operations, renaming them
Paramount Parks.
In 1993,
Sumner Redstone's entertainment conglomerate
Viacom made a bid for Paramount; this quickly escalated into a bidding war with Barry Diller. But Viacom prevailed, ultimately paying $10 billion for the Paramount holdings.
Paramount is the last major film studio located in Hollywood proper. When Paramount moved to its present home in 1927, it was in the heart of the film community. Since then, former next-door neighbor
RKO closed up shop in 1957;
Warner Bros. (whose old Sunset Boulevard studio was sold to Paramount in 1949 as a home for KTLA) moved to
Burbank in 1930;
Columbia joined Warners in Burbank in 1973 then moved again to
Culver City in 1989; and the Pickford-Fairbanks-Goldwyn-United Artists lot, after a lively history, has been turned into a
post-production and music-scoring facility for Warners, known simply as "The Lot". For a time the semi-industrial neighborhood around Paramount was in decline, but has now come back. The recently refurbished studio has come to symbolize Hollywood for many visitors, and its studio tour is a popular attraction.
1994-2004: The Dolgen/Lansing years
During this time period, Paramount Pictures went under the guidance of Jonathan Dolgen, chairman and
Sherry Lansing, president.
[www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000523764][www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,750351,00.html] During their administration over Paramount, the studio had an extremely successful period of films with two of Paramount's ten highest grossing films being produced during this period.
[boxofficemojo.com/studio/chart/?view=company&view2=allmovies&studio=paramount.htm] The most successful of these films,
Titanic, went on to become the highest grossing film of all time grossing over $1.8 billion worldwide.
[boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=titanic.htm] Also during this time, three Paramount Pictures films won the
Academy Award for Best Picture;
Titanic, Braveheart, and
Forrest Gump. Dolgen and Lansing also presided over the production and release of other films including
Saving Private Ryan (outside the US;
DreamWorks handled American distribution), as well as the
Mission: Impossible films.
In
1995, Viacom and
Chris-Craft Industries'
United Television launched
United Paramount Network (UPN), fulfilling Barry Diller's 1970s plan for a Paramount network. In 1999, Viacom bought out United Television's interests, and handed responsibility for the start-up network to the newly acquired
CBS unit, which Viacom bought in 1999 - an ironic confluence of events as Paramount had once invested in CBS, and Viacom had once been the syndication arm of CBS as well.
[www.solarnavigator.net/films_movies_actors/paramount.htm]
In
2002, Paramount Pictures,
Walt Disney Pictures,
20th Century Fox,
Sony Pictures,
Universal Studios, and
Warner Bros. formed the
Digital Cinema Initiative.
[www.dcimovies.com/] DCI was created "to establish and document voluntary specifications for an open architecture for digital cinema that ensures a uniform and high level of technical performance, reliability and quality control."
2005 to present
CBS Corporation/Viacom split
Reflecting in part the troubles of the broadcasting business, in 2005 Viacom wrote off over $28 billion from its radio acquisitions and, early that year, announced that it would split itself in two. The split was completed in January 2006.
The CBS television and radio networks, the Infinity radio-station chain (now called
CBS Radio), the Paramount Television production unit (known as
CBS Paramount (Network) Television) and the network
UPN (replaced by
The CW Television Network, co-owned with rival
Time Warner's
Warner Bros.) are part of
CBS Corporation, as was Paramount Parks prior to its June 2006 sale by CBS to the
Cedar Fair Entertainment Company. CBS Corporation also merged its television distribution arms,
KingWorld, CBS Paramount International Television and CBS Paramount Television, into
CBS Television Distribution in 2006.
Paramount Pictures is now lumped in with
MTV,
BET, and other highly profitable channels owned by the new
Viacom.
With the announcement of the split of Viacom, Dolgen and Lansing were replaced by former television executives Brad Grey and Gail Berman. The decision was made to split Viacom into two companies, which in turn led to a dismantling of the Paramount Studio/Paramount TV infrastructure. The current Paramount is about one-quarter the size it was under Dolgen and Lansing and consists only of the movie studio. The famed Paramount Television studio was made part of CBS in the split. The remaining businesses were sold off or parceled out to other operating groups. Paramount's home entertainment unit continues to distribute the Paramount TV library through
CBS DVD, as both Viacom and CBS Corporation are controlled by
National Amusements.
However, CBS ended the use of Paramount name in 2009 and renamed itself as
CBS Television Studios, thus the Paramount name is now gone from television. It is one of only 2 of the Big Six to have this fate (the other being
Columbia Pictures).
DreamWorks
On December 11, 2005, Paramount announced that it had purchased
DreamWorks SKG (which was co-founded by former Paramount executive
Jeffrey Katzenberg) in a deal worth $1.6 billion. The announcement was made by Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, who noted that enhancing Paramount's pipeline of pictures is a "key strategic objective in restoring Paramount's stature as a leader in filmed entertainment." The agreement doesn't include
DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc., the most profitable part of the company that went public the previous year.
Under the deal, Paramount is required to distribute the DreamWorks animated films for a small fee intended only to cover Paramount's out of pocket costs with no profit to the studio, including the
Shrek franchise (and
ending for the 2004 installment,
Shrek 2). The first film distributed under this deal is
Over the Hedge.
The deal closed on February 6, 2006. This acquisition was seen at the time as a stopgap measure as Brad Grey had been unsuccessful in assembling sufficient films for production and distribution and the DreamWorks films would fill the gap.
On October 6, 2008, Paramount and DreamWorks announced the joint venture was ending and that DreamWorks would be seeking new distributors for its films.
[DreamWorks Executives Sever Ties With Paramount to Form a New Company]
UIP, Famous Music and Digital Entertainment
Grey also broke up the famous UIP international distribution company, the most successful international film distributor in history, after a 25-year partnership with Universal Studios and has started up a new international group. As a consequence Paramount fell from #1 in the international markets to the lowest ranked major studio in 2006 but recovered in 2007 if the DreamWorks films, acquired by Paramount, are included in Paramount's market share.
Grey also launched a Digital Entertainment division to take advantage of emerging digital distribution technologies. This led to Paramount becoming the second movie studio to sign a deal with
Apple Inc. to sell its films through the iTunes store. They also signed an exclusive agreement with the failed
HD DVD consortium and subsequently gave up the guarantees they had received and will now release in the
Blu-ray format.
Also, in 2007, Paramount sold another one of its "heritage" units,
Famous Music, to
Sony/ATV Music Publishing (best known for publishing many songs by
The Beatles), ending a nearly-eight decade run as a division of Paramount, being the studio's music publishing arm since the period when the entire company went by the name "Famous Players."
Paramount Home Entertainment
Paramount Home Entertainment (formerly
Paramount Home Video and
Paramount Video) is the division of Paramount Pictures dealing with
home video and was founded in late 1975.
PHE distributes films by Paramount (under its own label) and
DreamWorks (under the
DreamWorks Pictures Home Entertainment label), shows from
MTV Networks (under the
MTV DVD,
Nickelodeon DVD,
Nickelodeon Movies DVD,
Comedy Central DVD and
Spike DVD labels),
PBS (under the
PBS Home Video label),
Showtime (under its own label), and
CBS-owned programs (under the
CBS Home Entertainment label) on DVD. Films from
Republic Pictures, Paramount's other subsidiary, are not distributed on video and DVD by PHE (with some exceptions), but are distributed on video and DVD by
Lionsgate Home Entertainment, which recently signed a deal to distribute some of Paramount's own films on DVD (in addition to the aforementioned Republic library). Also, as a result of this deal, Lionsgate has recently relased "triple features" of their own library of films on DVD using the package design originated by Paramount.
PHE have developed a well-known trademark by giving their Special Edition/Director's Cut editions different names rather than the usual "Special Edition," or "Director's Edition". Paramount Home Entertainment gives them different names such as
Grease: The Rockin' Rydell Edition,
Beavis & Butthead Do America: The Edition That Doesn't Suck and
Airplane!: The "Don't Call Me Shirley" Edition.
Internationally, PHE holds the DVD rights to several shows on
HBO. PHE also distributes in Germany the DVD releases of films distributed theatrically by Prokino Filmverleih.
As Paramount Home Video, the company once distributed several
Miramax releases on video - the video rights to some of these films (such as
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth) are still owned by Paramount.
[:: Paramount Pictures ::]
Recently, PHE launched a direct-to-video label, Paramount Famous Productions (with the "Famous" part of the name a throwback to the days when the company was called Famous Players).
Had CBS/Fox Video not been bought by 20th Century Fox just before the CBS/Viacom merger of 1999, itself and Paramount may have shared a single home entertainment arm.
HD DVD & Blu-ray support
Paramount brands the majority of its HD content under the label 'Paramount High Definition' which is seen both on the title box cover and as an in-movie opening. Films from Paramount subsidiaries such as
Nickelodeon Movies and
MTV Films as well as from sister studio
DreamWorks SKG use no special branding,
Paramount Vantage (another subsidiary) releases only select titles under the Paramount High Definition banner such as
Babel.
In October 2005, Paramount announced that it would be supporting the
HD video format
Blu-ray Disc in addition to rival format
HD DVD, becoming the first studio to release on both formats.
[Paramount says yes to both Blu-ray and HD DVD - Engadget] Its first four HD DVD releases came in July 2006,
[Historical HD DVD Release Dates | High Def Digest] and it released four titles on Blu-ray two months later.
[Historical Blu-ray Release Dates | High Def Digest] In August 2007, Paramount (along with
DreamWorks SKG and
DreamWorks Animation) announced their exclusive support for HD DVD.
However, when other studios eventually dropped HD DVD and players for the technology stopped being manufactured, Paramount switched to Blu-ray. In May 2008, it released 3 titles on Blu-ray and continues to release its high-definition discs in that format exclusively.
[Blu-ray releases on May 20th, 2008 - Engadget HD], however they are not a member of the Blu-ray Disc Association.
The Paramount library
Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, many of Paramount's early cartoons, shorts, and feature films are owned by numerous entities.
In 1955, Paramount acquired
Frank Capra's production company,
Liberty Films, which produced only 2 films in the late 1940s:
It's a Wonderful Life, released originally by
RKO Radio Pictures, and
State of the Union, released originally by
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Around that same time, as mentioned before, Paramount saw little value in its library, and decided to sell off its back catalog.
The pre-1948 Paramount feature films (both sound and certain silent films) went to
EMKA, Ltd., the subsidiary of
MCA. The Paramount cartoons and shorts went to various television distributors, with
U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. acquiring the majority of the cartoons and live action short subjects made before 1951. Some lesser known features were included in this deal as well, as was
It's a Wonderful Life. However, the
Popeye cartoons were sold to
Associated Artists Productions, and the Superman cartoons went to Motion Pictures for Television, producers of the
Superman television series. U.M.&M. was later sold to
National Telefilm Associates (or NTA). NTA changed its name to
Republic Pictures (which was previously the name of a minor film studio, whose backlog had been sold to NTA) in 1984, and was sold to Viacom in 1999, hence all the material sold to U.M.&M. would return to Paramount (though, except for
It's a Wonderful Life and a few other films, video rights belong to
Lionsgate).
The Popeye cartoons passed on to
United Artists after its purchase of a.a.p., then to MGM after they purchased UA. After
Ted Turner failed in an attempt to buy MGM/UA in 1986, he settled for ownership of the library, which included the a.a.p. material.
Turner Entertainment, the holding company for Turner's film library, would later be sold to
Time Warner. Turner technically holds the rights to the Popeye cartoons today, but sales and distribution is in the hands of
Warner Bros. Entertainment. WB also owns Superman's publisher,
DC Comics, and although the Superman cartoons are now in the
public domain, WB owns the original film elements.
The rest of the majority of cartoons by Famous Studios were sold to
Harvey Comics and are now owned by
Classic Media. Except for the Superman cartoons and the features sold to MCA (to end up with Universal), most television prints of these films have had their titles remade to remove most traces of their connection to Paramount (The original copyright lines were left intact on Popeye cartoons). The Popeye cartoons have been restored for DVD release with the original Paramount titles.
When the talent agency
Music Corporation of America (better known as MCA), then wielding major influence on Paramount policy, offered $50 million for 750 pre-1949 features (with payment to be spread over many years), a cash-strapped Paramount thought it had made the best possible deal. To address anti-trust concerns, MCA set up a separate company,
EMKA, Ltd., to sell these films to television. The deal included such notable Paramount films as the early
Marx Brothers films, most of the
Bob Hope-
Bing Crosby "Road" pictures, and such
Oscar contenders as
Double Indemnity,
The Lost Weekend, and
The Heiress. MCA later admitted that over the next forty years it took in more than a billion dollars in rentals of these supposedly "worthless" pictures. MCA later purchased the US branch of
Decca Records, which owned
Universal Studios (now a part of
NBC Universal), and thus Universal now owns these films, though EMKA continues to hold the copyright and technically are part of the television unit of NBC Universal.
Several other feature films ended up in Republic Pictures's possession, yet others had been retained by Paramount due to other rights issues (such as
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek). As for Paramount's silent features, some still are under Paramount ownership—for example, 1927's
Wings, the first "Best Picture"
Academy Award winner—but many others are either
lost or in the public domain. Also, one additional pre-1950 film, the 1931 version of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 who filmed a
remake that same year - this film is also now owned by WB/Turner Entertainment.
Rights to some of Paramount's films from 1950 onward would also change hands. Most notably, the rights to five Paramount films directed by
Alfred Hitchcock --
Rear Window,
The Trouble with Harry,
The Man Who Knew Too Much,
Vertigo and
Psycho - eventually reverted to ownership by the director himself with the exception of
Psycho, which was sold directly to Universal in 1968. Following Hitchcock's death, Universal eventually acquired the distribution rights to the four other films in 1983 from the Hitchcock estate (which still holds all other ancillary rights to these films—the estate is overseen by his daughter, Patricia). However, one Hitchcock film,
To Catch A Thief, is still under Paramount's ownership.
The later
Bob Hope films originally released by Paramount (including
The Seven Little Foys and
The Lemon Drop Kid) are now co-owned by
Sony Pictures Television and
FremantleMedia, both successors-in-interest to a joint venture called
Colex Enterprises, which had consisted of respective predecessor companies
Columbia Pictures Television and
LBS Communications.
A number of films merely distributed by Paramount would also end up with other companies - for example, the 1971 film
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was produced by
Wolper Productions; Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the film from the film's financer
The Quaker Oats Company in 1977, after Paramount no longer had any interest to own the distribution rights to the film due to the initial failure of
Willy Wonka. WB also owns the rights to several films originally distributed by Paramount that were produced by
Lorimar Productions, which was sold to WB in 1989. Some other films from 1950 onward went into the public domain as well.
Paramount's association with the comedian
Jerry Lewis, which produced
The Nutty Professor among other films, ended in the 1970s, and the rights to these films were given back to Lewis. As a consequence, the hit remakes starring Eddie Murphy were released by Universal Pictures. This reversion to Jerry Lewis resulted from a promise made by then-Paramount CEO Barney Balaban who gratuitously offered to give the rights back to Lewis as a birthday present. Paramount, however, has retained full distribution rights to the Lewis films.
Balaban, consistent with his other decisions to sell off rights and dismantle Paramount's library, was of the opinion that there was no future economic value to 'old' movies. This "strategy" of the gradual dismantling Paramount's assets and library has continued under current Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman who not only split the company in half and gave the television library and distribution rights to the feature films to CBS, but also sold off the Company's music library,
Famous Music.
In the 1970s, Paramount acquired the rights to the
Frank Capra film
Broadway Bill, which was originally released by
Columbia Pictures. Paramount had remade the film as
Riding High in 1950. Then in 2004, Paramount bought all worldwide rights to the original 1975 version of
The Stepford Wives (also released by Columbia), in connection with the release of
the remake.
Paramount owns DVD rights to many films produced by
Full Moon Entertainment, due to a deal made with the company years before. Paramount also owns DVD rights to several films released by
Miramax Films prior to that firm's acquisition by Disney in 1993, also a result of a deal.
Independent company Hollywood Classics now represents Paramount in the theatrical distribution of all the films produced by the various motion picture divisions of
CBS over the years, as a result of the Viacom/CBS merger. This also includes US rights to the 1951 film
The African Queen, originally distributed by
United Artists (the international rights are with
ITV Global Entertainment Ltd.). Paramount (via
CBS DVD) has outright video distribution to the aforementioned CBS library with few exceptions-for example, the original
Twilight Zone DVDs are handled by
Image Entertainment. Until 2009, the video rights to
My Fair Lady were with original theatrical distributor
Warner Bros., under license from CBS (the video license to that film has now reverted to CBS DVD under Paramount).
As for distribution of the material Paramount itself still owns, it has been split in half, with Paramount themselves owning theatrical rights. But from 2006-2009, the library was distributed by
CBS Television Distribution, the television distribution arm of CBS Paramount Television (now
CBS Television Studios). The films are now distributed by
Trifecta Entertainment & Media on television.
In early 2008, Paramount partnered with Los Angeles-based developer
FanRocket to make short scenes taken from its film library available to users on
Facebook. The application, called VooZoo, allows users to send movie clips to other Facebook users and to post clips on their profile pages.
[Facebook app lets users send movie clips] Paramount engineered a similar deal with
Makena Technologies to allow users of
vMTV and
There.com to view and send movie clips.
[ Paramount to open virtual movie vault]
The logo
The distinctively pyramidal Paramount mountain has been the company's logo since its inception and is the oldest surviving Hollywood film logo. Legend has it that the mountain is based on a doodle made by
W. W. Hodkinson during a meeting with
Adolph Zukor. It is said to be based on the memories of his childhood in
Utah. Some claim that Utah's
Ben Lomond is the mountain Hodkinson doodled, and that Peru's
Artesonraju[SummitPost - Artesonraju - Climbing, Hiking & Mountaineering] is the mountain in the live-action logo.
Many residents of the
County of Sutherland in the north western
Scottish Highlands believe that the logo of Paramount is based on a local mountain,
Ben Stack. Indeed, looking at the North-Eastern side of the mountain, it is not hard to see why this assumption was made. The
lochs and hillocks below and around the mountain do resemble the logo very closely, almost to the point of uniformity.
The logo began as a somewhat indistinct charcoal rendering of the mountain ringed with superimposed stars. The logo originally had twenty-four stars, as a tribute to the then current system of contracts for actors, since Paramount had twenty-four stars signed at the time. In 1952, the logo was redesigned as a
matte painting created by Jan Domela. The current mountain style debuted in 1954. In 1974 the logo was simplified, adopting the design of the then-current television version, and the number of stars was changed to twenty-two; this version of the logo is still in use as Paramount's current print logo. The visual logo was replaced in 1987, Paramount's 75th Anniversary, by a version created by Apogee, Inc. with a
computer generated lake and stars. For Paramount's 90th anniversary in 2002, a new, completely computer-generated logo was created.
[Paramount Film Preservation][Hollywood Lost and Found - Studio Logos - Paramount]
Not long before the
United Paramount Network (UPN) was merged with
The WB to form
the CW Network, there were plans to re-brand UPN as The Paramount Network, featuring a stylized mountain/stars logo to identify the newly-named network with the studio, but the plans were scrapped. In contrast, UPN's initial logo from its January 1995 launch featured its initials in geometric shapes. The "U" (for "United") was in a circle, the "P" ("Paramount") in a triangle, and the "N" ("Network") in a square, with the "P" triangle being a nod to the Paramount mountain.
Visiting Paramount
Those wishing to visit Paramount can take daily studio tours. The tours operate Monday through Friday. Reservations are required, and can be made by calling the studio. Most of the buildings are named for historical Paramount executives or the many great artists that worked at Paramount over the years. Many of the legendary stars' dressing rooms are still standing today, converted into working offices. The stages where
Samson and Delilah, Sunset Blvd.,
White Christmas,
Rear Window,
Sabrina,
Breakfast at Tiffany's, and many other classic films were shot are still in use today. The studio's massive remaining backlot set, "New York Street," features numerous blocks of facades that depict a number of New York locales: "Washington Square," (where
The Heiress, starring
Olivia de Havilland, was shot) "Harlem," "Financial District," and others.
See also
