United Artists

From Includipedia, the inclusionist encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article or section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup.
Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style.(December 2007)
This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (December 2007)
<tr class="logo"><td colspan="2" style="text-align:center; padding:16px 0 16px 0;">Image:United Artists.jpg</td></tr> <tr class="note"><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Type</th><td>film studio</td></tr><tr class="note"><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Founded</th><td>February 5, 1919 (original date)
November 2, 2006 (relaunch)</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Headquarters</th><td class="adr">MGM Tower, Century City, California</td></tr><tr class="note"><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Key people</th><td>Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise</td></tr><tr class="note"><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Industry</th><td>film, music</td></tr><tr class="note"><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Products</th><td>motion picture</td></tr><tr class="note"><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Owner</th><td>MGM</td></tr><tr><th style="text-align:right; padding-right:0.75em;">Website</th><td class="url">www.unitedartists.com</td></tr>
United Artists Entertainment, LLC
This article is about the film studio. Previously, it was affiliated with a cinema chain bearing this name, now owned by Regal Entertainment Group.

United Artists Entertainment LLC (UA)[1][2] is an American film studio. The "new" UA was formed in November 2006 under a partnership between producer/actor Tom Cruise and his production partner, Paula Wagner, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., an MGM company.

Cruise and Wagner own a small stake in the studio, a subsidiary of MGM Studios. MGM is owned by MGM Holdings, Inc., which was formed by a consortium including Sony, Comcast, TPG Capital, L.P. and Providence Equity Partners.

Contents

The early years

UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5, 1919 by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood: Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo.[3] The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bonds to help the World War I effort. Already veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures. They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors making moves to tighten their control on star salaries and creative control, a process which would evolve into the rigid studio system. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out even before things had formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, is said to have observed, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams as its first managing director.

The original terms called for Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith and Chaplin to independently produce five pictures each year. But by the time the company got under way in 1920-1921, feature films were becoming more expensive and more polished, and running times had settled at around ninety minutes (or eight reels). It was believed that no one, no matter how popular, could produce and star in five quality feature films a year. By 1924, by which time Hart and Griffith had dropped out, the company was facing a crisis: either bring in others to help support a costly distribution system or concede defeat. The veteran producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president. Not only had he been producing pictures for a decade, but he brought along commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge, and his brother-in-law, Buster Keaton. Contracts were signed with a letter of independent producers, especially Samuel Goldwyn, Alexander Korda and Howard Hughes. Schenck also formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name.

Still, even with a broadening of the company, UA struggled. The coming of sound ended the careers of Pickford and Fairbanks. Chaplin, rich enough to do what he pleased, worked only occasionally. Schenck resigned in 1933 to organize a new company with Darryl F. Zanuck, Twentieth Century Pictures, which soon provided four pictures a year to UA's schedule. He was replaced as president by sales manager Al Lichtman who himself resigned after only a few months. Pickford herself produced a few films, and at various times Goldwyn, Korda, Walt Disney, Walter Wanger, and David O. Selznick were made "producing partners" (i.e., sharing in the profits), but ownership still rested with the founders. As the years passed and the dynamics of the business changed, these "producing partners" drifted away, Goldwyn and Disney to RKO, Wanger to Universal Pictures, Selznick to retirement. By the late 1940s, United Artists had virtually ceased to exist as either a producer or distributor.

Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers

It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article. (Discuss)

The Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers was founded in 1941 by Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Orson Welles, Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Walter Wanger - many of the same people who were members of United Artists. Later members included William Cagney, Sol Lesser, and Hal Roach.

The Society aimed to preserve the rights of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by the studio system.

SIMPP fought to end monopolistic practices by the five major film studios - MGM, Paramount Pictures, RKO, Warner Bros. and Twentieth Century Fox - that controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of films.

In 1942, the SIMPP filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres. The complaint accused Paramount of conspiracy to control first-run and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. It was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors alleging monopoly and restraint of trade.

In 1948, the United States Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered the Hollywood movie studios to sell their theater chains and to eliminate certain anti-competitive practices. This effectively brought an end to the studio system.

By 1958, many of the reasons for creating the SIMPP had been corrected and SIMPP closed its offices.

The 1950s and 1960s

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

In 1951, two lawyers-turned-producers Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin approached Pickford and Chaplin with a wild idea: let them take over United Artists for five years. If, at the end of those five years, UA was profitable, they would be given an option to buy the company. Since UA was barely alive, Pickford saw nothing to lose and agreed. Chaplin was against the deal, but changed his mind in late 1952 when the US government revoked his re-entry visa while he was in London for the UK premiere of Limelight. He sold his remaining shares of UA several years later.

In taking over UA, Krim and Benjamin created the first studio without an actual "studio". Primarily acting as bankers, they offered money to independent producers. UA leased space at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studio, but did not own a studio lot as such. Thus UA did not have the overhead, the maintenance or the expensive production staff which ran up costs at other studios. Among their first clients were Sam Spiegel and John Huston, whose "Horizon Productions" gave UA one major hit, The African Queen (1951) and one slightly less successful one, Moulin Rouge (1952), based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. Others followed, among them Stanley Kramer, Otto Preminger, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, and a number of actors, newly freed from studio contracts and anxious to produce or direct their own films. UA production-head Arnold Picker could do no wrong in selecting the properties which the company would back. With UA's new success, Pickford saw a chance to exit gracefully, though she still held out for top dollar, walking away with $1.5 million in 1955. That same year, UA won its first Best Picture Oscar, for the film Marty. It starred Ernest Borgnine, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

UA went public the following year, and as the other mainstream studios fell into decline, UA prospered, adding relationships with the Mirisch brothers, Billy Wilder, Joseph E. Levine and others. In 1961, United Artists released West Side Story, an adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim stage musical, which won a record ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture). In 1964, UA introduced U.S. film audiences to The Beatles by releasing producer Walter Shenson's A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965). (The group had already made wildly successful television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.) At the same time it backed two expatriate Americans in Britain, who had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming's Bond novels. For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No (which was a sensation in 1962) and served as the launching point for the James Bond series. That franchise has outlived UA's life as a major studio, still running forty years later. Other successful projects backed in this period included Blake Edwards's Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, which made a star of Clint Eastwood.

In 1958 United Artists Records was created, initially to release soundtracks from UA films, but it later diversified into many types of music. It was later sold to EMI. On the basis of its fantastic string of film and television hits in the 1960s, the company was an attractive property, and in 1967 Krim and Benjamin sold control of UA to the San Francisco-based insurance giant, Transamerica Corp. That year, UA released what would turn out to be another Best Picture Oscar winner, In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger.

In 1960 United Artists purchased Ziv Television Programs and using the idea of financial backing for television, UA's television division was responsible for shows like Gilligan's Island, The Fugitive, Outer Limits, and The Patty Duke Show. The television unit also had begun to build up a substantial — and profitable — rental library, having purchased Associated Artists Productions, owners of Warner Bros. pre-1948 features, shorts, and cartoons as well as Popeye cartoons, purchased from Paramount Pictures a few years earlier. (See note below at '"Film Archives"' for more on this).

In 1964, the French subsidiary Les Productions Artistes Associés released its first production That Man From Rio.

The 1970s and 1980s

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

What Transamerica got was not just the UA name and library, but the expertise and experience of Krim, Benjamin and a team of others. For a time the flow of successful pictures continued, including the 1971 screen version of Fiddler on the Roof. New talent was encouraged, including Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Sylvester Stallone, Saul Zaentz, Miloš Forman, and Brian De Palma. In 1973 UA took over the sales and distribution of MGM's films (ironically, MGM would soon be distributing UA's films in the future).

But the ups-and-downs of movie making made insurance companies nervous. They were also not pleased with UA's frequent releases of films rated X by the Motion Picture Corporation of America, such as Last Tango in Paris; in these instances, Transamerica demanded the byline "A Transamerica Company" be removed from the UA logo on the prints and in all advertising. At one point, the parent company expressed their desire to phase out the UA name and replace it with Transamerica Films. And then there were the costs; Hollywood has always been based on image, so executives had to be pampered a bit. All of this drove the insurance company crazy. Finally in 1978, following a dispute over administrative expenses, UA's top executives, including chairman Krim and president Benjamin, walked out. Within days they announced the formation of Orion Pictures, with backing from Warner.

The inexperienced new leadership of UA, anxious to show that they could make quality pictures too, agreed to back Michael Cimino's pet project, a big-budget western, Heaven's Gate. After a tumultuous two-year gestation, the picture turned out to be a colossal box office bomb, angering critics and alienating audiences. The publicity about runaway costs far overshadowed any appeal the film might have. United Artists recorded a major loss for the year; to Transamerica, it was only a blip on a multi-billion dollar balance sheet, but it soured the relationship forever. To the greater Hollywood community, it also signalled that this was a company that could no longer produce pictures. MGM, led by Kirk Kerkorian, made an unsolicited bid for UA by estimating that MGM would pay UA $350 Million in distribution fees if the expiring distribution deal was renewed and used the estimated amount to offer the $350 Million[1] to Transamerica to buy United Artists. Transamerica said yes and MGM absorbed UA. Film editors replaced UA logos on all prints to remove any reference to former owner Transamerica (like the "T" stripped-logo and the "A Transamerica Company" byline, though in some cases, both were retained).[citation needed]

Despite the financial ruin, UA's blockbuster franchise films (Pink Panther, James Bond, and eventually Rocky) were emphasized more heavily than financial flops.

In 1975, Harry Saltzman sold UA his 50% stake in Danjaq, LLC, the holding-company for the Bond films. UA was to remain a silent partner, putting up money, while Albert Broccoli took producer credit.

Danjaq and UA have remained the public co-copyright holders for the Bond series ever since, and the 2006 Casino Royale release shares the copyright with Columbia Pictures, part of the consortium that now owns MGM/UA.

Under Kerkorian, United Artists became a shell. The studio, which was essentially bankrupt following the disaster of Heaven's Gate, cut its production schedule sharply. MGM and UA were merged into MGM/UA Entertainment Co. from 1981 to 1987. UA was essentially dormant after 1989, releasing no films for several years. In part this was due to the continuing turmoil at MGM/UA; bought by Ted Turner in 1986, he could not get financial backing to complete the deal and, seventy-four days later, re-sold UA and the MGM trademark to Kerkorian, while keeping the MGM/UA library for himself (with the exception of those MGM/UA releases by United Artists). (See below for a note on the film library.)

In 1981, United Artists Classics, a speciality film division for UA, was created by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, who would later go on to form Orion Classics and Sony Pictures Classics. The label mostly released foreign and independent films such as Ticket to Heaven and The Grey Fox, and occasional first-run reissues from the UA library, such as director's cuts of Joan Micklin Silver's Head Over Heels (1979 film) and Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way. When the three founders left to form Orion Classics, the label was briefly rechristened MGM/UA Classics before it was finally shut down in the late '80's.

The 1990s

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

In 1990 came the farcical sale to the Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti. Having bought MGM/UA by wildly overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, reviving two long-running franchises, the Pink Panther and James Bond films. MGM was sold in 1997, again to Kirk Kerkorian.

The 2000s

This section does not cite any references or sources.
Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

During the 2000s, UA was repositioned as a boutique or specialty studio. The distributorship, branding, and copyrights for UA's main franchises (James Bond, Pink Panther, and Rocky) were moved to MGM, although select MGM releases (notably the James Bond franchise co-held with Danjaq, LLC and the Amityville Horror remake) carry a United Artists copyright.

UA (re-christened United Artists Films) distributed a few "art-house" films, among them Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, 2002's foreign-film Academy Award winner, No Man's Land, and 2004's Hotel Rwanda, a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Films.

On April 8, 2005, a partnership of Comcast, Sony and several merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for a total of $4.8 billion.

In March 2006, MGM announced that it would return once again as a distribution company. Striking distribution deals with The Weinstein Company, Lakeshore Entertainment, Bauer Martinez and other independent studios, MGM distributes films from these companies on its own. MGM continues funding and co-producing projects that are released in conjunction with Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group.

Technically, MGM and UA are two entities that are run independently of Sony's Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures in Culver City. Sony has a minority stake in MGM and UA but otherwise MGM and UA will operate under Harry Sloan's (CEO of MGM and a minority owner himself) direction.

In 2001, MGM and UA started distributing films worldwide through 20th Century Fox - ironically, UA had distributed films by predecessor 20th Century Pictures in the 1930s (as mentioned above). In 2005, following MGM and UA's acquisition by Sony, Columbia TriStar started domestically distributing films by MGM and UA through Sony Pictures.

The Cruise/Wagner Era

On November 2, 2006, MGM announced that actor Tom Cruise and his long-time production partner Paula Wagner were resurrecting UA[4] [5] (this announcement came after the duo ended a fourteen-year production relationship at Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures earlier that year). Cruise, Wagner and MGM Studios created United Artists Entertainment LLC and, today, the producer/actor and his partner own a small stake in the studio, with the approval by MGM's consortium of owners.

The deal gives them control over production, from development to the "green-lighting" of films. Wagner was named CEO of United Artists, which will have an annual slate of four films with different budget ranges, while Cruise serves as a producer for the revamped studio as well as serving as the occasional star.

On October 29, 2007, the New York Times reported that United Artists was commencing an 18-month marketing campaign including a $20 million media blitz "to reinforce and remind people of what a powerful film history and legacy a brand like United Artists has", said Paula Wagner.[citation needed]

Notable Films

It has been suggested that this section be split into a new article. (Discuss)

1910s

1920s

Image:United logo silent.jpg
Logo from silent era (1919-1929)

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

Image:UnitedArtistsLogo1970s.jpg
The United Artists opening logo of the 1970s

1980s

Image:Ua logo1980s.jpg
An alternative variant of the United Artists' logo used from 1994 to 2001

1990s

2000s

Upcoming Films

Film Archives

The value of film libraries has increased exponentially in recent years, even as ownership gets more fractured. Few studios had the foresight or ability to maintain control over every picture they produced or released.

United Artists, through various strategic purchases, built up a substantial film library. Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the pre-1948 Warner Bros. and RKO libraries. Having passed through numerous hands, this catalog now belongs to Time Warner's Turner Entertainment unit. However, one post-1948 WB film, the 1956 version of Moby Dick, is now owned by UA.

Since UA produced very few of the pictures it released, ownership of UA's output often rests with the individual or company producing. Some UA films of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s fell into the public domain, to be picked up by Republic Pictures (today part of Paramount Pictures) or small boutique houses like Castle Hill Productions (with distribution by Warner Bros. Entertainment).

A good number of United Artists' films from the 1920s through the 1940s, in the public domain, have been forgotten. Of the hundreds of fiilms distributed by UA over eighty-plus years, those which it owns outright today are its own productions from 1951 forward, plus a few pre-1951 films such as 1933's Hallelujah, I'm A Bum and Howard Hawks's Red River (1948).

The Big Four (Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith)

  • Charlie Chaplin's films, features and shorts are controlled by his estate, with the DVD rights licensed to Warner Home Video.
  • Most of the films Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith made at United Artists now rest with film restoration company Blackhawk Films.
  • When she retired from pictures in 1933, Mary Pickford wanted to destroy her films; afraid that they would be laughed-at, she was finally made to see that they would have artistic or historic value, and today rights to all of her films are held by the Mary Pickford Foundation.

Disney, Lantz and Twentieth Century Pictures' productions

  • All of the Disney shorts released through United Artists in the early 1930s are owned by The Walt Disney Company.
  • The Twentieth Century pictures released by UA between 1933 and 1935 rest with the successor company, 20th Century Fox.

Collaborations

  • Films made by UA in co-production with other companies rest with several studios in certain territories or under contractual agreements.
  • Most ancillary rights to Return of the Pink Panther (in collaboration with ITC Entertainment) resides under Universal Pictures' Focus Features division, although UA still owns theatrical distribution rights (as sister company MGM (distributing under Sony Pictures Entertainment) owns theatrical rights to the ITC library).
  • U.S. rights to the film Network (a co-production with MGM) is now owned by Warner Bros./Turner Entertainment, as the domestic rights were originally held by MGM and incorporated into the Turner library in 1986. But in other countries, the film still resides with MGM (due to UA distributing the film outside the U.S.).
  • Most ancillary rights to Convoy (co-produced with EMI Films) are now with EMI's successor company, Studio Canal, although its copyright and home video re-release issues are currently uncertain.

Independent producers

  • Rights to Selznick International Pictures and other later productions from David Selznick are held by ABC (which is also owned by Disney) and home video rights are held by MGM under license. Of course, this excludes Gone with the Wind, which was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and is now owned by Warner Bros. (via subsidiary Turner Entertainment). Warner also acquired the rights to The Prisoner of Zenda through Turner as well. However, few films from the Selznick library did not make it to ABC but instead to other companies like Pioneer Pictures (which most films from the library are now in public domain) and Carlton.
  • The pre-1941 Samuel Goldwyn films released by UA (as well as the films made during his tenure at RKO) were temporarily handled by The Samuel Goldwyn Company (with HBO Home Video handling home entertainment rights) but are now currently held by successor company MGM, with which Goldwyn feuded for years.
  • Rights to Mike Todd's splashy Around the World in Eighty Days and the UA-distributed Lorimar and Saul Zaentz films are now in the hands of Warner Bros.

Pre-1986 MGM/UA library

  • Some of the pre-1986 MGM/UA films made around the early 1980's still remain in the MGM library and not picked up by Turner Entertainment due to most of these films produced by UA (ex. The James Bond and Rocky franchises). However, a specific film from the official UA library, the 1937 film The Prisoner of Zenda, has managed to enter the Turner library, thus part of the Warner catalogs.

The Beatles' films

  • Most of the Beatles' films, all distributed by UA, are now owned by the surviving members of the group, through Apple Corps, with licensing from EMI.
  • While losing the rights to most of their films, UA held on to Yellow Submarine, meaning MGM would gain rights to it when they purchased UA.

See also

References

  1. ^ DENNIS RICE LEAVES DISNEY TO JOIN UNITED ARTISTS AS MARKETING AND PUBLICITY CHIEF April 4, 2007
  2. ^ Template:Cite news
  3. ^ Siklos, Richard (March 4, 2007). Mission Improbable: Tom Cruise as Mogul. New York Times
  4. ^ Template:Cite news
  5. ^ Template:Cite news

Bibliography

  • Bach, Steven. Final Cut. New York: Morrow, 1985.
  • Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976.
  • Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
  • Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
  • Gabler, Neal. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. New York: Crown Publishers, 1988.
  • Schickel, Richard. D.W. Griffith: An American Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
  • Thomson, David. Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick. New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1992.

External links

<tr><td rowspan="1" style="vertical-align:middle; padding-right:7px; width:0%;">Image:United States film.png</td><td colspan="1" style="text-align:center;width:100%;font-size:95%;">

A-Z of films • Films by year • Academy Awards • Actors • Animators • Box office • Cinematographers • Critics • Directors • Editors • Festivals • Film series • Golden Globes • Hollywood • Movie theatres • Producers • Production companies • Score composers • Screenwriters  • Silent films • Stunt performers • AFI 100 Years

</td></tr>

v • d • e</div></span>

Cinema of the United States
ca:United Artists

de:United Artists es:United Artists fa:یونایتد آرتیستز fr:United Artists it:United Artists hu:United Artists nl:United Artists ja:ユナイテッド・アーティスツ no:United Artists pt:United Artists sq:United Artists simple:United Artists fi:United Artists sv:United Artists zh:聯美影業公司

Retrieved from "http://www.includipedia.com/wiki/United_Artists"
Personal tools