Wikipédia

Utilisateur:Fourvin/RKO

< Utilisateur:Fourvin

RKO Pictures, ou officiellement Radio-Keith-Orpheum Pictures, est une société américaine de production et de distribution de films de cinéma.

Sous la dénomination de RKO Radio Pictures Inc., elle est l'une des cinq majors, les Big Five, de l'« âge d'or » d'Hollywood. La société est créée lorsque Radio Corporation of America (RCA) prend le contrôle et fusionne en octobre 1928 le réseau de salles de cinéma Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) et le studio Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) de Joseph P. Kennedy[a]. Le patron de RKO, David Sarnoff orchestre cette fusion en vue de créer un marché pour la technologie d'enregistrement sonore de la société : RCA Photophone. Au milieu des années 1940, le studio est contrôlé par l'investisseur Floyd Odlum.

RKO marque longtemps les esprits par ses films musicaux avec Fred Astaire et Ginger Rogers dans la deuxième moitié des années 1930. Des acteurs tels que Katharine Hepburn et plus tard Robert Mitchum remportent leurs premiers succès en étant sous contrat. Cary Grant lui est fidèle pendant des années. Les films d'horreur à petits budgets du producteur Val Lewton et les nombreuses productions dans le genre maintenant connu sous le vocable film noir obtiennent, même si a posteriori, la pleine reconnaissance des critiques et historiens du cinéma. Et la RKO produit deux monuments de l'histoire du cinéma : la première version de King Kong et Citizen Kane.

Le magnat Howard Hughes s'empare de RKO en 1948. Après plusieurs années de déclin sous sa direction, le studio est racheté par l'équipementier General Tire and Rubber Company en 1955. RKO Pictures arrête la production en 1957 et est dissoute deux ans plus tard. En 1981, le radiodiffuseur RKO General, héritier du groupe, la réactive comme filiale de production, RKO Pictures Inc. En 1989, la société et ses actifs restants (la marque déposée, et les droits de remakes sur de nombreux classiques de son ex-catalogue) est vendue à de nouveaux investisseurs qui en font une petite société indépendante RKO Pictures LLC.

Les origines

modifier

En octobre 1927, Warner Bros. sort Le Chanteur de jazz, le premier long métrage sonore. Son succès est tel que tout Hollywood se bouscule pour abandonner le muet et se convertir au parlant. La Radio Corporation of America (RCA) dispose alors d'un système de son optique sur pellicule, le RCA Photophone, récemment mis au point par la maison mère de RCA, General Electric. Mais le marché est extrêmement encombré : Warner Bros. et Fox, les pionniers en la matière, ont adopté la technologie d'ERPI, une filiale de Western Electric, du groupe AT&T. Les deux plus grosses sociétés de l'époque, Paramount et Loew's/MGM, ainsi que deux autre majors Universal et First National, sont sur le point de signer avec ERPI.[1]

Fichier:RadioKeithOrpheum.jpg
Early Radio-Keith-Orpheum logo

À la recherche d'un client pour son système Photophone, David Sarnoff, alors directeur général de RCA, approche fin 1927 Joseph Kennedy en vue d'équiper le studio de FBO. Les négociations aboutissent à une prise de participation substantielle de General Electric dans le capital de FBO, répondant ainsi à la stratégie de Sarnoff d'établir une position centrale au sein de l'industrie et de maximiser les revenus tirés de Photophone. Sa démarche suivante est d'équiper un ensemble de salles comparables à celles appartenant aux autres grands studios. Kennedy se lance dans la prospection au moment où Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO), qui dispose d'un important réseau de salles de spectacles de vaudeville sur le déclin, envisage une transition vers le cinéma. Déjà, quelques mois auparavant, KAO avait réuni les activités de tournage de Pathé US et Cecil B. DeMille. Début 1928, le directeur général de KAO, John J. Murdock, également président de Pathé participe en tant que conseiller au rapprochement du studio avec la société de DeMille, Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC), réalisant les attentes de Sarnoff et Kennedy[2],[3],[b]

Courant 1928, la tentative échoue de voir utiliser le Photophone par une autre major, First National, qui avait pourtant approché Kennedy en ce sens. RCA acquiert les actions détenues par celui-ci dans FBO et les salles d'exploitation de KAO. Et le 23 octobre 1928, RCA annonce la création de la Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) holding company, et place Sarnoff au siège de président du conseil d'administration. Kennedy, qui abandonne ses fonctions exécutives dans la nouvelle entité, conserve le contrôle de Pathé en dehors de celle-ci[2],[4]. RCA conserve initialement la minorité de blocage (22%) mais sa participation montera jusqu'à 60% au début des années 1930[5]. L'activité de production et de distribution est créée début 1929, sous la direction d'un ancien vice-président de FBO, Joseph I. Schnitzer, avec le nom de Radio Pictures[6]. Cherchant à délaisser l'industrie du cinéma l'année suivante, Kennedy revend Pathé, qu'il avait participé à créer, à RKO à la fin 1930. Le 29 janvier 1931, la cession est finalisée et Pathé passe dans le giron de RKO avec ses acteurs sous contrats, son activité d'actualités filmées réputée, et son studio et ses terrains de Culver City[7].

L'âge d'or

modifier

Premières années

modifier
 
Rio Rita (1929), le premier grand succès de RKO (alors exploitant sous le nom de "Radio Pictures")

Déclarant qu'elle n'entrependrait que des films entièrement parlant, RKO utilise d'abord les petites installations que FBO partage avec Pathé à New York, pendant qu'elle équipe son studio principal à Hollywood. Le directeur de production est alors William Le Baron, qui occupait la même fonction au sein de FBO. Les deux premier titres sont des films musicaux : Syncopation, mélodrame de Bert Glennon, sort le 29 mars 1929[8], la comédie Street Girl (Wesley Ruggles) le 30 juillet suivant. Ce sont donc les deux premières productions « officielles », après la création formelle de Radio Pictures, et réalisées à Hollywood.[9],[c]. Suivent quelques films non chantants, mais le premier grand succès est lui aussi musical : RKO investit dans le luxueux Rio Rita, en y incluant également quelques séquences en technicolor. Le film sort en septembre, et reçoit des critiques élogieuses, Film Daily allant jusqu'à le classer dans les dix meilleurs films de l'année [10]. L'historien du cinéma Richard Barrios estime qu'il marque le début du « premier âge des musicals de Broadway à l'écran[11]. » Sur les dernier mois de l'année, RKO acquiert à Encino, dans la vallée de San Fernando, des surfaces supplémentaires pour ses installation de production : environ 50 ha destinés aux tournages en extérieurs et aux grands décors[12].

Au cours de sa première année, RKO aligne douze longs métrages. L'année suivante en 1930, le chiffre monte à vingt-neuf[13]. Initialement subdivisée en RKO Productions Inc. et RKO Distributing Corp., un regroupement est effectué en juillet sous l'unique raison sociale RKO Radio Pictures Inc.[14]. Sur la lancée du succès de Rio Rita, RKO produit plusieurs films musicaux à gros budget, incorporant des séquences en technicolor, tels que Dixiana et Hit the Deck, dont le scénario et la réalisation sont assurés, comme pour Rio Rita, par Luther Reed[15]. Imitant également les autres majors, RKO envisage de créer sa propre revue, Radio Revels[16]. Annoncé comme la plus grosse production alors, RKO prévoit un tournage entièrement en technicolor[17]. Mais devant la baisse d'intérêt du public pour les films musicaux, le projet est abandonné. Hollywood produit en effet soixante films musicaux en 1929, et plus de quatre-vingt l'année suivante, mais le nombre chute à onze en 1931[18]. Tenue par contrat avec technicolor de réaliser encore deux films, RKO obtempère, malgré la saturation du public et le lien établi dans les esprits entre ces séquences et un genre passé de mode. Les deux films entièrement en couleurs, The Runaround et Fanny Foley Herself, sortent en 1931, sans aucune séquence musicale mais sont des échecs commerciaux[19].

Malgré le début de la crise économique[20], RKO s'engage dans des dépenses importantes, rachetant de multiples salles pour étoffer son réseau. En octobre 1930, la société acquiert 50% du studio Van Beuren à New York, spécialisé dans les dessins animés et courts métrages[21]. La production monte à 40 films par an, sortis sous la marque Radio Pictures, ou, brièvement en 1931 après la fusion : RKO Pathé.

Cette même année, RKO décroche son premier Oscar, avec La Ruée vers l'Ouest (Cimarron), produit par LeBarron lui-même. Néanmoins, l'exploitation du film ne couvre pas un imposant budget de 1,4 millions de dollars[22],[d]. En cette période antérieure au code Hays[23], la star de la RKO est Irene Dunne, qui débute en 1930 dans le film musical Leathernecking, et restera en haut des affiches tout au long de la décennie[24]. Les autres grands noms sont Joel McCrea, Ricardo Cortez, Dolores del Río, et Mary Astor. De son côté, Richard Dix, nommé à l'oscar du meilleur acteur pour Cimarron, est la tête d'affiche des films de série B du studio jusqu'au début des années 1940[25]. Le duo comique de formé par Bert Wheeler et Robert Woolsey, souvent confrontés à l'ingénue Dorothy Lee, fournit des rentrées régulières[26]. Constance Bennett, Ann Harding, et Helen Twelvetrees arrivent sous contrat avec Pathé.[27]

Si l'absorption de Pathé se justifie à long terme pour ses installations, elle représente néanmoins un investissement conséquent pour la jeune RKO, d'autant que le cours de Pathé a été artificiellement poussé à la hausse du fait de pré-achats douteux[28].

Selznick et le succès

modifier
 
King Kong (1933), one of Hollywood's great spectacles

À l'exception de Rio Rita et La Ruée vers l'Ouest, la production de RKO est généralement considérée comme de médiocre qualité, aussi Sarnoff engage-t-il en octobre 1931 David O. Selznick, alors agé de vingt-neuf ans, pour remplacer LeBaron au poste de responsable de la production[29]. Outre la mise en place d'un contrôle rigoureux des coûts, Selznick se fait le héraut du système de production décentralisée (unit production), qui donne beaucoup plus de responsabilité au producteur de film, comparé à l'organisation qui a communément cours. « L'industrialisation de la production fait que vous dépouillez le metteur en scène de son individualité, déclare Selznick, mais comme cette industrie est également celle de la création, cela est dommageable à la qualité des produits réalisés.[30] ». Il est également persuadé que la production décentralisée va permettre des réductions de budgets de 30 à 40 pourcents[30].

Pour la réalisation des films selon ces nouvelles règles, il recrute également des professionnels de valeurs derrière la caméra : le metteur en scène George Cukor, le metteur en scène et producteur Merian C. Cooper, et donne rapidement des projets de plus en plus importants au producteur Pandro S. Berman, âgé de seulement vingt-six ans.[31] Il découvre et engage une jeune actrice qui va rapidement devenir une des plus grandes stars du studio : Katherine Hepburn, pendant que John Barrymore interprète quelques rôles mémorables[32]. À partir de septembre 1932, la publicité dans la presse n'utilisent plus que le nom de "RKP Radio Pictures", la marque Pathé n'étant plus utilisée que pour les actualités et les documentaires. Au cours de la même année, le siège social de New York emménage dans le nouveau RKO Building, un gratte-ciel art déco et l'un des tous premiers de l'ensemble du Rockfeller Center à être occupé[33].

Après seulement quinze mois à la tête de la production de RKO, Selznick démissionne, suite à un désaccord avec le nouveau président du groupe Merlin Aylesworth au sujet du contrôle de la création[34]. Une de ses dernières décisions est de donner son accord à un bout d'essai tourné par chanteur et danseur de Broadway, au cheveu rare et aux grandes oreilles du nom de Fred Astaire[35]. Dans une note, Selznick écrit : « Je pense que, malgré ses énormes oreilles et son faciès peu avenant, son charme est... énorme. »[36]. Le bilan de Selznick est largement reconnu comme impressionnant : avant son arrivée (octobre 1931), le studio produisait quarante-deux longs métrages pour un budget total de 16 millions de dollars. En 1932, quarante et un films sont produits, pour un budget total de 10,2 millions de dollars et avec une nette amélioration de la qualité et du succès rencontré[37]. Il a soutenu plusieurs des grands succès de l'année, dont Héritage (A Bill of Divorcement), qui, sous la direction de George Cukor, marque les débuts de Katherine Hepburn, et surtout le monument King Kong, fruit de l'imagination de Merian C. Cooper et des effets spéciaux exceptionnels de Willis O'Brien [38]. Néanmoins, la fragilité financière et les excès issus de l'ère pré-Selznick ne permettent pas à la RKO de faire face sans dommage à la crise économique : la société est placée en redressement judicaire au début 1933 dont elle ne sortira qu'en 1940.[39].

Cooper à la barre

modifier
 
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the only performers ever to make the annual list of top box office stars while with RKO.[40] Top Hat (1935) was the third of the eight films in which they costarred between 1934 and 1939.

Merian C. Cooper prend la responsabilité de la production après le départ de Selznick, et supervise deux succès avec Katharine Hepburn : Morning Glory, grâce auquel elle obtient son premier oscar, et Les Quatre Filles du docteur March (Little Women), dans lequel George Cukor la dirige pour la deuxième fois[41] et qui est le plus gros succès de la décennie pour le studio[42]. Ginger Rogers était déjà apparue dans plusieurs films mineurs de la RKO quand Cooper l'engage pour un contrat de sept ans et la fait jouer dans le film musical à gros budget Carioca (Flying Down to Rio)[43]. Rogers y fait équipe avec Fred Astaire dont c'est le premier film. Bien qu'en quatrième et cinquième positions au générique, le film fait d'eux des stars[44] Hermes Pan, assistant du chorégraphe du film, deviendra ultérieurement l'un des chorégraphes les plus remarqués d'Hollywood grâce à ses collaborations avec Fred Astaire[45],[46].

Avec Columbia Pictures, RKO se fait une spécialité des comédies burlesques dénommées screwball comedy. L'historien du cinéma James Harvey juge que, comparés à leurs concurrents plus en vue, les deux studios sont {{citation|plus ouverts à l'expérimentation, plus tolérants au désordre sur les plateaux. C'est grâce à eux (...) que quasiment tous les metteurs en scène burlesques notables ont réalisé leurs films les plus mémorables : Howard Hawks, Gregory La Cava, Leo McCarey, George Stevens"[47]. Le presqu'oublié William A. Seiter dirige en 1934 le premier opus du genre : The Richest Girl in the World[48]. Et dans un genre opposé, le drame L'Emprise (Of Human Bondage), de John Cromwell, est le premier grand succès de Bette Davis[49] Stevens's Alice Adams and director John Ford's The Informer were each nominated for the 1935 Best Picture Oscar—the Best Director statuette won by Ford was the only one ever given for an RKO production.[50] The Informer's star, Victor McLaglen, also took home an Academy Award; he would appear in a dozen movies for the studio over a span of two decades.[51]

Lacking the financial resources of industry leaders MGM, Paramount, and Fox, RKO turned out many pictures during the era that made up for it with high style in an Art Deco mode, exemplified by such Astaire–Rogers musicals as The Gay Divorcee (1934), their first pairing as leads, and Top Hat (1935).[52] One of the figures most responsible for that style was another Selznick recruit: Van Nest Polglase, chief of RKO's highly regarded design department for almost a decade.[53][54] Film historian James Naremore has described RKO as "chiefly a designer's studio. It never had a stable of important actors, writers, or directors, but ... it was rich in artists and special-effects technicians. As a result its most distinctive pictures contained a strong element of fantasy—not so much the fantasy of horror, which during the thirties was the province of Universal, but the fantasy of the marvelous and adventurous."[55]

As a group, the studio's craft divisions were among the strongest in the industry.[53][56] Costumer Walter Plunkett, who worked with the company from the close of the FBO era through the end of 1939, was known as the top period wardrobist in the business.[57] Sidney Saunders, innovative head of the studio's paint department, was responsible for significant progress in rear projection quality.[58] On June 13, 1935, RKO premiered the first feature film shot entirely in advanced three-strip Technicolor, Becky Sharp. The movie was coproduced with Pioneer Pictures, founded by Cooper—who departed RKO after two years helming production—and John Hay "Jock" Whitney, who brought in his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney; Cooper had successfully encouraged the Whitneys to purchase a major share of the Technicolor business as well.[59] Though judged by critics a failure as drama, Becky Sharp was widely lauded for its visual brilliance and technical expertise.[60] RKO also employed some of the industry's leading artists and craftsmen whose work was never seen. From the studio's earliest days through late 1935, Max Steiner, regarded by many historians as the most influential composer of the early years of sound cinema, made music for over 100 RKO films.[46][61] Murray Spivak, head of the studio's audio special effects department, made important advances in the use of rerecording technology first heard in King Kong.[62]

Briskin and Berman

modifier

In October 1935 the ownership team expanded, with financier Floyd Odlum leading a syndicate that bought 50 percent of RCA's stake in the company; the Rockefeller brothers, also major stockholders, increasingly became involved in the business.[63] While RKO kept missing the mark in building Hepburn's career, major stars Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck joined the studio's roster—though Stanwyck would have little success during her few years there. Grant was a trendsetter, one of the first leading men of the sound era to work extensively as a freelancer, under nonexclusive studio deals, while his star was still on the rise.[64][f] Ann Sothern starred in seven RKO films between 1935 and 1937, paired five times with Gene Raymond.[65]

 
Katharine Hepburn's last film for RKO was a bomb. Today, Bringing Up Baby (1938) is regarded as one of the finest screwball comedies.[66]

Soon after the appointment of a new production chief, Samuel Briskin, in late 1935, RKO entered into an important distribution deal with animator Walt Disney (Van Beuren consequently folded its cartoon operations).[67] From 1936 to 1954, the studio released his features and shorts; Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the highest grossing movie in the period between The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Gone with the Wind (1939).[68] Following the change in print branding a few years earlier, the opening and closing logos on RKO movies, other than the Pathé nonfiction line, were changed from "Radio Pictures" to "RKO Radio Pictures" in 1936. In February 1937, Selznick, now a leading independent producer, took over RKO's Culver City studio and Forty Acres, as the backlot was known, under a long-term lease. Gone with the Wind, his coproduction with MGM, was largely shot there.[69][g] In addition to its central Hollywood studio, RKO production now revolved around its Encino backlot. While the Disney association was beneficial, RKO's own product was widely seen as declining in quality and Briskin was gone by the end of the year.[70]

Pandro Berman—who had filled in on three previous occasions—accepted the position of production chief on a noninterim basis. As it turned out, he would leave the job before the decade's turn, but his brief tenure resulted in some of the most notable films in studio history, including Gunga Din, with Grant and McLaglen; Love Affair, starring Dunne and Charles Boyer; and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (all 1939).[71] Charles Laughton, who gave a now fabled performance as Quasimodo in the latter, returned periodically to the studio, headlining six more RKO features.[72] For Maureen O'Hara, who made her American screen debut in the film, it was the first of ten pictures she would make for RKO through 1952.[73] After costarring with Ginger Rogers for the eighth time in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Fred Astaire departed the studio.[74]

The studio's B Western star of the period was George O'Brien, who made eighteen RKO pictures, sixteen between 1938 and 1940. The Saint in New York (1938) successfully launched a B detective series featuring the character Simon Templar that would run through 1943.[75] The Wheeler and Woolsey comedy series ended in 1937 when Woolsey became ill (he died the following year). RKO filled the void by releasing independently produced features such as the Dr. Christian series and the Laurel and Hardy comedy The Flying Deuces (1939).[76] The studio soon had its own new B comedy star in Lupe Vélez: The Girl from Mexico (1939) was followed by seven frantic installments of the Mexican Spitfire series, all featuring Leon Errol, between 1940 and 1943.[75] The studio's technical departments maintained their reputation as industry leaders; Vernon Walker's special effects unit became famous for its sophisticated use of the optical printer and lifelike matte work, an art that would reach its apex with 1941's Citizen Kane.[77]

Kane and Schaefer's troubles

modifier
 
Orson Welles in the title role of Citizen Kane (1941), often cited as the greatest film of all time.[78]

Pan Berman had received his first screen credit in 1925 as a nineteen-year-old assistant director on FBO's Midnight Molly.[79] He departed RKO in December 1939 after policy clashes with studio president George J. Schaefer, handpicked the previous year by the Rockefellers and backed by Sarnoff.[80] With Berman gone, Schaefer became in effect production chief, though other men—including the former head of the industry censorship board, Joseph I. Breen—nominally filled the role.[81] Schaefer, announcing his philosophy with a new studio slogan, "Quality Pictures at a Premium Price", was keen on signing up independent producers whose films RKO would distribute.[82] In 1941, the studio landed one of the most prestigious independents in Hollywood when it arranged to handle Samuel Goldwyn's productions. The first two Goldwyn pictures released by the studio were highly successful: The Little Foxes, directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis, garnered four Oscar nominations,[83] while the Howard Hawks–directed Ball of Fire at last brought Barbara Stanwyck a hit under the RKO banner. However, Schaefer agreed to terms so favorable to Goldwyn that it was next to impossible for the studio to make money off his films.[84] David O. Selznick loaned out his leading contracted director for two RKO pictures in 1941: Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a modest success and Suspicion a more substantial one, with an Oscar-winning turn by Joan Fontaine.[h]

That May, RKO released Citizen Kane, coproducing with director Orson Welles's Mercury Productions. While it opened to strong reviews and would go on to be hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made, it lost money at the time and brought down the wrath of the Hearst newspaper chain on RKO.[85] The next year saw the commercial failure of Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons—like Kane, critically lauded and overbudget—and the expensive embarrassment of his aborted documentary It's All True.[86] The three Mercury productions combined to drain $2 million from the RKO coffers, major money for a corporation that had reported an overall deficit of $1 million in 1940 and a nominal profit of a bit more than $500,000 in 1941.[i] Many of RKO's other artistically ambitious pictures were also dying at the box office and it was losing its last exclusive deal with a major star as well. Rogers, after winning an Oscar in 1941 for her performance in the previous year's Kitty Foyle, held out for a freelance contract like Grant's; after 1943, she would appear in just one more RKO production, thirteen years later.[87] On June 17, 1942, Schaefer tendered his resignation.[88] He departed a weakened and troubled studio, but RKO was about to turn the corner. Propelled by the box-office boom of World War II and guided by new management, RKO would make a strong comeback over the next half-decade.[89]

Rebound under Koerner

modifier

By the end of June 1942, Floyd Odlum had taken over a controlling interest in the company via his Atlas Corporation, edging aside the Rockefellers and Sarnoff. Charles Koerner, former head of the RKO theater chain and allied with Odlum, had assumed the title of production chief some time prior to Schaefer's departure.[90] With Schaefer gone, Koerner could actually do the job; announcing a policy of "entertainment, not genius" (a snipe at Schaefer's artistic ambitions in general and his sponsorship of Welles in particular),[91] he brought the studio much-needed stability until his death in February 1946.[89][92] The change in RKO's fortunes was virtually immediate: corporate profits rose from $736,241 in 1942 (the theatrical division compensating for the studio's $2.34 million deficit) to $6.96 million the following year.[93] The Rockefellers sold off their stock and, early in 1943, RCA dispensed with the last of its holdings in the company as well, cutting David Sarnoff's ties to the studio that was largely his conception.[94] In June 1944, RKO created a television production subsidiary, RKO Television Corporation, to provide content for the new medium. RKO became the first major studio to produce for television with Talk Fast, Mister, a one-hour drama filmed at RKO-Pathé studios in New York and broadcast by the DuMont network's New York station, WABD, on December 18, 1944. In collaboration with Mexican businessman Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta, RKO established Estudios Churubusco in Mexico City in 1945.[95]

 
Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946). RKO made over $1 million profit on the coproduction with David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films.[96]

With RKO on increasingly secure ground, Koerner sought to increase its output of handsomely budgeted, star-driven features. However, the studio's only remaining major stars under anything like extended contracts were Grant, whose services were shared with Columbia Pictures, and O'Hara, shared with Twentieth Century-Fox.[97][98] Lacking in-house stars, Koerner and his successors under Odlum arranged with the other studios to loan out their biggest names or signed one of the growing number of freelance performers to short-term, "pay or play" deals. Thus RKO pictures of the mid- and late forties offered Bing Crosby, Henry Fonda, and others who were out of the studio's price range for extended contracts.[99] John Wayne appeared in 1943's A Lady Takes a Chance on loan from Republic Pictures; he was soon working regularly with RKO, making nine more movies for the studio.[100] Gary Cooper appeared in RKO releases produced by Goldwyn and, later, the startup International Pictures,[101] and Claudette Colbert starred in a number of RKO coproductions.[102] Ingrid Bergman appeared under a variety of hats: on loan out from Selznick in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), the biggest hit of any in-house RKO production during the 1940s;[42] in the coproductions Notorious (1946) and Stromboli (1950); and in the independently produced Joan of Arc (1948).[103] Freelancing Randolph Scott appeared in one major RKO release annually from 1943 through 1948.[104]

In similar fashion, many leading directors made one or more films at RKO during this era, including Alfred Hitchcock once more, with Notorious, and Jean Renoir, with This Land Is Mine (1943), reuniting Laughton and O'Hara, and The Woman on the Beach (1947).[105] John Ford's The Fugitive (1947) and Fort Apache (1948), which appeared right before studio ownership changed hands again, were followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Wagon Master (1950); all four were co-productions between RKO and Argosy, the company run by Ford and RKO alumnus Merian C. Cooper.[106] Of the directors under long-term contract to RKO in the 1940s, the best known was Edward Dmytryk, who first came to notice with the remarkably profitable Hitler's Children (1943). Shot on a $205,000 budget placing it in the bottom quartile of Big Five studio productions, it was one of the ten biggest Hollywood hits of the year.[107][j] Another low-cost war-themed film directed by Dmytryk, Behind the Rising Sun, released a few months later, was similarly profitable.[42][108]

Focus on B movies

modifier
Fichier:IWalkedZombieTrailer.jpg
Film art at low budget: I Walked with a Zombie (1943), produced by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur

Much more than the other Big Five studios, RKO relied on B pictures to fill up its schedule. Of the thirty-one features released by RKO in 1944, for instance, ten were budgeted below $200,000, twelve were in the $200,000 to $500,000 range, and only nine cost more. In contrast, a clear majority of the features put out by the other top four studios were budgeted at over a half a million dollars.[109] A focus on B pictures limited the studio's financial risk; while it also limited the potential for reward (Dmytryk's extraordinary coups aside), RKO had a history of making better profits with its run-of-the-mill and low-cost product than with its A movies.[5] The studio's low-budget films offered training opportunities for new directors, as well, among them Mark Robson, Robert Wise, and Anthony Mann.[110][111] Robson and Wise received their first directing assignments with producer Val Lewton, whose specialized B horror unit also included the more experienced director Jacques Tourneur. The Lewton unit's moody, atmospheric work—represented by films such as Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Body Snatcher (1945)—is now highly regarded.[110][112] Richard Dix concluded his lengthy RKO career with the 1943 Lewton production The Ghost Ship.[113] Tim Holt was RKO's cowboy star of the era, appearing in forty-six B Westerns and more than fifty movies altogether for the studio.[114] In 1940, Chester Lauck and Norris Goff brought their famous comic characters Lum and Abner from radio to RKO for a six-film run.[115] The Falcon detective series began in 1941; the Saint and the Falcon were so similar that Saint creator Leslie Charteris sued RKO.[116] The Falcon was first played by George Sanders, who had appeared five times as the Saint. He bowed out after four Falcon films and was replaced by his brother, Tom Conway. Conway had a nine-film run in the part before the series ended in 1946. Johnny Weissmuller starred in six Tarzan pictures for RKO between 1943 and 1948 before being replaced by Lex Barker.[65]

Film noir, to which lower budgets lent themselves, became something of a house style at the studio; indeed, the RKO B Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) is widely seen as initiating noir's classic period.[117] Its cinematographer, Nicholas Musuraca, who began at FBO in the 1920s and stayed with RKO through 1954, is a central figure in creating the look of classic noir.[118] Design chief Albert D'Agostino—another long-termer, who succeeded Van Nest Polglase in 1941—and art director Walter Keller, along with others in the department, such as art directors Carroll Clark and Jack Okey and set decorator Darrell Silvera, are similarly credited.[119] The studio's 1940s list of contract players was filled with noir regulars: Robert Mitchum (who graduated to major star status) and Robert Ryan each made no fewer than ten film noirs for RKO.[120] Gloria Grahame, Jane Greer, and Lawrence Tierney were also notable studio players in the field.[121] Freelancer George Raft starred in two noir hits: Johnny Angel (1945) and Nocturne (1946).[122] Tourneur, Musuraca, Mitchum, and Greer, along with D'Agostino's design group, joined to make the A-budgeted Out of the Past (1947), now considered one of the greatest of all film noirs.[123] Nicholas Ray began his directing career with the noir They Live by Night (1948), the first of a number of well-received films he made for RKO.[124]

HUAC and Howard Hughes

modifier
 
Crossfire (1947) was a hit, but no American studio would hire blacklisted director Edward Dmytryk again until he named names to HUAC in 1951.[125] Producer Adrian Scott wouldn't get another screen credit for two decades. He died before he could see it.[126]

RKO, and the movie industry as a whole, had its most profitable year ever in 1946. A Goldwyn production released by RKO, The Best Years of Our Lives, was the most successful Hollywood film of the decade.[127] But the legal status of the industry's reigning business model was increasingly being called into doubt: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bigelow v. RKO that the company was liable for damages under antitrust statutes for having denied an independent movie house access to first run films—a common practice among all of the Big Five.[128] With profits at a high point, Floyd Odlum cashed in by selling off about 40 percent of his shares in the company to a group of investment firms.[129] After Koerner's death, Radio-Keith-Orpheum president N. Peter Rathvon and RKO Radio Pictures president Ned Depinet had exchanged positions, with Depinet moving to the corporate offices in New York and Rathvon relocating to Hollywood and doubling as production chief while a permanent replacement was sought for Koerner. On the first day of 1947, producer and Oscar-winning screenwriter Dore Schary, who had been working at the studio on loan from Selznick, took over the role.[130]

RKO appeared in good shape to build on its recent successes, but the year brought a number of unpleasant harbingers for all of Hollywood. The British government imposed a 75 percent tax on films produced abroad; along with similarly confiscatory taxes and quota laws enacted by other countries, this led to a sharp decline in foreign revenues.[131][132] The postwar attendance boom peaked sooner than expected and television emerged as a competitor for audience interest. Across the board, profits fell—a 27 percent drop for the Hollywood studios from 1946 to 1947.[133] The phenomenon that would become known as McCarthyism was building strength, and in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began hearings into Communism in the motion picture industry. Two of RKO's top talents, Dmytryk and producer Adrian Scott, refused to cooperate. As a consequence, they were fired by RKO per the terms of the Waldorf Statement, the major studios' pledge to "eliminate any subversives". Scott, Dmytryk, and eight others who also defied HUAC—dubbed the Hollywood Ten—were blacklisted across the industry.[134] Ironically, the studio's major success of the year was Crossfire, a Scott–Dmytryk film.[135] Odlum concluded it was time to exit the film business, and he put his remaining RKO shares—approximately 25 percent of the outstanding stock—on the market.[136] Before the turn of the year, the Pathé-branded newsreel was sold to Warner Bros.[132] For her performance in The Farmer's Daughter (1947), a coproduction with Selznick's Vanguard Films, Loretta Young won the Best Actress Oscar the following March. It would turn out to be the last major Academy Award for an RKO picture.[137]

In May 1948, eccentric aviation tycoon and occasional movie producer Howard Hughes gained control of the company, beating out British film magnate J. Arthur Rank as the buyer of Odlum's interest.[138] During Hughes's tenure, RKO suffered its worst years since the early 1930s, as his capricious management style took a heavy toll. Production chief Schary quit almost immediately due to his new boss's interference and Rathvon soon followed.[139] Within weeks of taking over, Hughes had dismissed three-fourths of the work force; production was virtually shut down for six months as the conservative Hughes shelved or canceled several of the "message pictures" that Schary had backed. Once shooting picked up again, Hughes quickly became notorious for meddling in minute production matters, particularly the presentation of actresses he favored.[140] All of the Big Five saw their profits dwindle in 1948—from Fox, down 11 percent, to Loew's/MGM, down 62 percent—but at RKO they virtually vanished: from $5.1 million in 1947 to $0.5 million, a drop of 90 percent.[141] The production-distribution end of the RKO business, now deep in the red, would never make a profit again.[142]

Offscreen, Robert Mitchum's arrest and conviction for marijuana possession—he would serve two months in jail—was widely assumed to mean career death for RKO's most promising young star, but Hughes surprised the industry by announcing that his contract was not endangered.[143] Of much broader significance, Hughes decided to get the jump on his Big Five competitors by being the first to settle the federal government's antitrust suit against the major studios, which had won a crucial Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. Under the consent decree he signed, Hughes agreed to dissolve the old parent company, Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp., and split RKO's production-distribution business and its exhibition chain into two entirely separate corporations—RKO Pictures Corp. and RKO Theatres Corp.—with the obligation to promptly sell off one or the other. While Hughes delayed the divorcement procedure until December 1950 and didn't actually sell his stock in the theater company for another three years, his decision to acquiesce was one of the crucial steps in the collapse of classical Hollywood's studio system.[144]

Turmoil under Hughes

modifier
 
Robert Mitchum, RKO's most prolific lead of the late 1940s and early 1950s,[97] costarred in Macao (1952) with Jane Russell, who was personally contracted to Howard Hughes.[145] Director Josef von Sternberg's work was combined with scenes shot by Nicholas Ray and Mel Ferrer.[146]

While Hughes's time at RKO was marked by dwindling production and a slew of expensive flops, the studio continued to turn out some well-received films under production chiefs Sid Rogell and Sam Bischoff, though both became fed up with Hughes's meddling and quit after less than two years. (Bischoff would be the last man to hold the job under Hughes.)[147] There were B noirs such as The Window (1949), which turned into a hit,[148] and The Set-Up (1949), directed by Robert Wise and starring Robert Ryan, which won the Critic's Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.[149] The Thing from Another World (1951), a science-fiction drama coproduced with Howard Hawks's Winchester Pictures, is seen as a classic of the genre.[150] In 1952, RKO put out two films directed by Fritz Lang, Rancho Notorious and Clash by Night. The latter was a project of the renowned Jerry Wald–Norman Krasna production team, lured by Hughes from Warner Bros. with great fanfare in August 1950.[151]

The company also began a close working relationship with Ida Lupino. She starred in two suspense films with Robert Ryan—Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground (1952, though shooting had been completed two years earlier) and Beware, My Lovely (1952), a coproduction between RKO and Lupino's company, The Filmakers.[152] Of more historic note, Lupino was Hollywood's only female director during the period; of the five pictures The Filmakers made with RKO, Lupino directed three, including her now celebrated The Hitch-Hiker (1953).[153] Exposing many moviegoers to Asian cinema for the first time, RKO distributed Akira Kurosawa's epochal Rashomon in the United States, sixteen months after its original 1950 Japanese release.[154] The only smash hits released by RKO in the 1950s came out during this period, but neither was an in-house production: Goldwyn's Hans Christian Andersen et la Danseuse (Hans Christian Andersende) (1952) was followed by Disney's Peter Pan (1953).[42][155]

In early 1952, Hughes fought off a lawsuit by screenwriter Paul Jarrico, who had been caught up in the latest round of HUAC hearings—Hughes had fired him and removed his name from the credits of a recent release. The studio owner subsequently ordered 100 RKO employees on "leave of absence" while he established a "security office" to oversee an ideological vetting system. "We are going to screen everyone in a creative or executive capacity", he declared. "The work of Communist sympathizers will not be used."[156] As more credits were expunged, some in the industry began to question whether Hughes's hunt for subversives served primarily as a convenient rationale for further curtailing production and trimming expenses.[157]

In September, Hughes and his corporate president, Ned E. Depinet, sold their RKO studio stock to a Chicago-based syndicate with no experience in the movie business; the syndicate's chaotic reign lasted until February 1953, when the stock and control were reacquired by Hughes.[158] The studio's net loss in 1952 was over $10 million, and shooting had taken place for just a single in-house production over the last five months of the year.[159] During the turmoil, Samuel Goldwyn ended his 11-year-long distribution deal with RKO. Wald and Krasna escaped their contracts and the studio as well. The deal that brought the team to RKO had called for them to produce sixty features over five years; in just shy of half that time, they succeeded in making four.[160] The Encino backlot shut down permanently in 1953 and the property was sold off.[161] In November, Hughes finally fulfilled his obligations under the 1948 consent decree, divesting RKO Theatres; Albert A. List purchased the controlling interest in the business and renamed it List Industries.[162] Hughes soon found himself the target of no less than five separate lawsuits filed by minority shareholders in RKO, accusing him of malfeasance in his dealings with the Chicago group and a wide array of acts of mismanagement. "RKO's contract list is down to three actors and 127 lawyers", quipped Dick Powell.[163]

Looking to forestall the impending legal imbroglio, in early 1954 Hughes offered to buy out all of RKO's other stockholders. Convinced that the studio was sinking, Walt Disney ended his arrangement with RKO and set up his own distribution firm, Buena Vista Pictures.[164] By the end of the year, at a cost of $23.5 million, Hughes had gained near-total control of RKO Pictures, becoming the first virtual sole owner of a studio since Hollywood's pioneer days. Virtual, but not quite actual. Floyd Odlum reemerged to block Hughes from acquiring the 95 percent ownership of RKO stock he needed to write off the company's losses against his earnings elsewhere. Hughes had reneged on his promise to give Odlum first option on buying the RKO theater chain when he divested it and was now paying the price.[165] With negotiations between the two at a stalemate, in July 1955, Hughes turned around and sold RKO pictures to the General Tire and Rubber Company for $25 million.[166] For Hughes, this was the effective end of a quarter-century's involvement in the movie business. Historian Betty Lasky describes Hughes's relationship with RKO as a "systematic seven-year rape."[167]

General Tire and studio's demise

modifier
 
Jet Pilot, a Hughes pet production launched in 1949. Shooting wrapped in May 1951, but it was not released until 1957 due to his interminable tinkering. RKO was by then out of the distribution business. The movie was released by Universal-International.[168]

In taking control of the studio, General Tire restored RKO's links to broadcasting. General Tire had bought the Yankee Network, a New England regional radio network, in 1943.[169] In 1950, it purchased the West Coast regional Don Lee Broadcasting System,[170] and two years later, the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, owner of the WOR TV and radio stations in New York City.[171] The latter acquisition gave General Tire majority control of the Mutual Broadcasting System, one of America's leading radio networks.[172] General Tire then merged its broadcasting interests into a new division, General Teleradio.[173]

Thomas O'Neil, son of General Tire's founder William O'Neil and chairman of the broadcasting group, saw that the company's new television stations, indeed all TV outlets, were in need of programming. With the purchase of RKO, the studio's library was his, and rights to the 742 films to which RKO retained clear title were quickly put up for sale. C&C Television Corp., a subsidiary of beverage maker Cantrell & Cochrane, won the bidding in December 1955. It was soon offering the films to independent stations in a package called "MovieTime USA".[174][175] RKO Teleradio Pictures—the new company created from the merger of General Teleradio and the RKO studio—retained the broadcast rights for the cities where it owned TV stations. By 1956, RKO's classic movies were playing widely on television, allowing many to see such films as Citizen Kane for the first time. The $15.2 million RKO made on the deal convinced the other major studios that their libraries held profit potential—a turning point in the way Hollywood did business.[174][176]

The new owners of RKO made an initial effort to revive the studio, hiring veteran producer William Dozier to head production.[177][178] In the first half of 1956, the production facilities were as busy as they had been in a half-decade.[177][179] RKO Teleradio Pictures released Fritz Lang's final two American films, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (both 1956), but years of mismanagement had driven away many directors, producers, and stars.[118] The studio was also saddled with the last of the inflated B movies such as Pearl of the South Pacific (1955) and The Conqueror (1956) that enchanted Hughes.[180] The latter, starring John Wayne, was the biggest hit produced at the studio during the decade, but its $4.5 million in North American rentals did not come close to covering its $6 million cost.[42]

After a year and a half without a notable success, General Tire shut down production at RKO for good at the end of January 1957. The Hollywood and Culver City facilities were sold later that year for $6.15 million to Desilu Productions, owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, who had been an RKO contract player from 1935 to 1942.[181] Desilu would be acquired by Gulf and Western Industries in 1967 and merged into G+W's other production company, Paramount Pictures; the former RKO Hollywood studio became home to Paramount Television (now CBS Paramount Television), which it remains to this day. The renovated Culver City studio is now owned and operated as an independent production facility.[182] Forty Acres, the Culver City backlot, was razed in the mid-1970s.[183] List Industries, the former RKO Theatres Corp., was acquired by Glen Alden Corp. in 1959. After Glen Alden's 1967 acquisition of the Stanley Warner theater group, the two chains were merged into RKO–Stanley Warner Theatres. Cinerama purchased the exhibition circuit from Glen Alden in 1971.[184]

With the closing down of production, RKO also shut its distribution exchanges; from 1957 forward, remaining pictures were released through other companies, primarily Universal-International. The final RKO film, Verboten!, a coproduction with director Samuel Fuller's Globe Enterprises, was released by Columbia Pictures in March 1959.[185] That same year, "Pictures" was stripped from the corporate identity; the holding company for General Tire's broadcasting operation and the few remaining motion picture assets was renamed RKO General.[186][k] In the words of scholar Richard B. Jewell, "The supreme irony of RKO's existence is that the studio earned a position of lasting importance in cinema history largely because of its extraordinarily unstable history. Since it was the weakling of Hollywood's 'majors,' RKO welcomed a diverse group of individualistic creators and provided them...with an extraordinary degree of freedom to express their artistic idiosyncrasies.... [I]t never became predictable and it never became a factory."[187]

RKO General

modifier
Article détaillé : RKO General.

One of North America's major radio and television broadcasters from the 1950s through the late 1980s, RKO General traces its roots to the 1943 purchase of the Yankee Network by General Tire. In 1952, the company united its newly expanded broadcasting interests into a division dubbed General Teleradio. With the tire manufacturer's acquisition of the RKO film studio in 1955, its media businesses were brought together under the rubric of RKO Teleradio Pictures. In 1959, following the breakup of the movie studio, the media division was given the name it would operate under for the next three decades, RKO General. In addition to its broadcasting activities, RKO General was also the holding company for many of General Tire's (and, after its parent company's reorganization, GenCorp's) other noncore businesses, including soft-drink bottling, hotel enterprises, and, for seventeen years, the original Frontier Airlines.[188]

The RKO General radio lineup included some of the highest rated, most influential popular music stations in North America. In May 1965, KHJ (AM) in Los Angeles introduced the Boss Radio variation of the top 40 format. The restrictive programming style was soon adopted by many of RKO's other stations and imitated by non-RKO broadcasters around the country.[189] RKO's FM station in New York pioneered numerous formats under a variety of call letters, including WOR and WXLO ("99X"); in 1983, as WRKS ("98.7 Kiss FM"), it became one of the first major stations to regularly program rap music.[190] In 1979, RKO General created the RKO Radio Network, reportedly the first broadcasting web linked via satellite.[191]

The company's television stations, for the most part non–network affiliated, were known for showing classic films (both RKO productions and many others) under the banner of Million Dollar Movie, launched by New York's WOR-TV in 1954.[192] In June 1962, RKO General and Zenith Electronics initiated what became the first extended venture into subscription television service: through early 1969, Hartford, Connecticut's WHCT-TV aired movies, sports, classical and pop music concerts, and other live performances without commercials, generating income from descrambler installation and weekly rental fees as well as individual program charges.[193] However, RKO General's most notable legacy is what may be the longest licensing dispute in television history. It began in 1965, when General Tire was accused of obliging vendors to buy advertising with one of its stations if they wanted to keep their contracts. More than two decades' worth of legal actions ensued, eventually forcing GenCorp (the parent company since 1983 of both General Tire and RKO General) to sell off its broadcast holdings under FCC pressure. RKO General exited the media business permanently in 1991.[188][194]

Later incarnations

modifier

Modèle:Infobox Company Beginning with 1981's Carbon Copy, RKO General became involved in the coproduction of a number of feature films and TV projects through a subsidiary created three years earlier, RKO Pictures Inc.[195] In collaboration with Universal Studios, RKO put out five films over the next three years. Though the studio frequently worked with major names—including Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Jack Nicholson in The Border, and Nastassja Kinski in Cat People (all 1982)—it met with little success. Starting with the Meryl Streep vehicle Plenty (1985), RKO took on more projects as sole studio backer. Films such as the erotic thriller Half Moon Street (1986) and the Vietnam War drama Hamburger Hill (1987) followed, but production ended as GenCorp underwent a massive reorganization following an attempted hostile takeover.[188] With RKO General dismantling its broadcast business, RKO Pictures Inc., along with the original RKO studio's trademark, remake rights, and other remaining assets, was spun off and put up for sale. After a bid by RKO Pictures' own managers failed, it was acquired in late 1987 by Wesray Capital Corporation—under the control of former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon and Ray Chambers—and linked with their Six Flags amusement parks to form RKO/Six Flags Entertainment Inc.[196]

In 1989, RKO Pictures, which had produced no films while under Wesray control, was spun off yet again. Actress and Post Cereals heiress Dina Merrill and her husband, producer Ted Hartley, acquired a majority interest and merged the company with their Pavilion Communications. After a brief period as RKO/Pavilion, the business was reorganized as RKO Pictures LLC.[197] With the inaugural RKO production under Hartley and Merrill's ownership, False Identity (1990), the company also stepped into the distribution business. In 1992, it handled the well-regarded independent production Laws of Gravity, directed by Nick Gomez.[198] RKO's next significant release came in 1998 with Mighty Joe Young, a remake of a 1949 RKO movie that was itself something of a King Kong redux.[199] In the early 2000s, the company was involved as a coproducer on TV movies and modestly budgeted features at the rate of about one annually. In 2003, RKO coproduced a Broadway stage version of the 1936 Astaire–Rogers vehicle Swing Time, under the title Never Gonna Dance.[200]

In 2003, as well, RKO Pictures entered into a legal battle with Wall Street Financial Associates (WSFA). Hartley and Merrill claimed that the owners of WSFA fraudulently induced them into signing an acquisition agreement by concealing their "cynical and rapacious" plans to purchase RKO with the intention only of dismantling it. WSFA sought a preliminary injunction prohibiting RKO's majority owners from selling their interests in the company to any third parties.[201] The WSFA motion was denied in July 2003, freeing RKO to deal with another potential purchaser, InternetStudios.com. In 2004, that planned sale fell through when InternetStudios.com apparently folded.[202] The company's minimal involvement in new film production continues to focus on its remake rights: Are We Done Yet?, based on Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), was released in April 2007 to dismal reviews.[203] Later in the year, RKO launched a horror division, Roseblood Movie Company. As of early 2010, Roseblood's mission had expanded, according to the RKO website, to encompass the "popular horror/thriller genre ... youth-oriented feature length motion pictures that are edgy, sensuous, scary and commercial."[204] The most recent RKO film production is Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (2009), a remake of a 1956 RKO film directed by Fritz Lang.[205] A stage version of Top Hat toured Great Britain in the second half of 2011.[206]

Studio library

modifier

RKO Pictures LLC is the owner of all the trademarks and logos connected with RKO Radio Pictures Inc., as well as the rights concerning stories, screenplays (including 800 to 900 unproduced scripts), remakes, sequels, and prequels connected with the RKO library.[207] The television, video, and theatrical distribution rights, however, are in other hands: The U.S. and Canadian TV—and, consequently, video—rights to the bulk of the RKO film library were sold at auction in 1971 after the holders, TransBeacon (a corporate descendant of C&C Television), went bankrupt. The auctioned rights were split between United Artists and Marian B. Inc. (MBI). In 1984, MBI created a subsidiary, Marian Pictures Inc. (MBP), to which it transferred its share of the RKO rights. Two years later GenCorp's subsidiaries, RKO General and RKO Pictures, repurchased the rights then controlled by MBP.[208] In the meantime, United Artists had been acquired by MGM. In 1986, MGM/UA's considerable library, including its RKO rights, was bought by Turner Broadcasting for its new Turner Entertainment division. During RKO Pictures' brief Wesray episode, Turner acquired many of the distribution rights that had returned to RKO via MBP, as well as both the theatrical rights and the TV rights originally held back from C&C for the cities where RKO owned stations.[209]

In October 1996, Turner Broadcasting was merged into Time Warner, which controls and distributes the bulk of the RKO library today, though RKO Pictures retains the copyright.[210] As for RKO's primary release deals, the Disney pictures originally distributed by the studio are controlled by the Walt Disney Company. Rights to the Goldwyn features released by RKO, which had been held by the Samuel Goldwyn Company, are now controlled by MGM.[211]

Ownership of the major European TV and video distribution rights to RKO's library is divided on a virtual country-by-country basis: In the UK, many of the RKO rights are currently held by Universal Studios.[212] In 1981, RAI, the public broadcasting service, acquired the Italian rights to the RKO library, which it now shares with Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest.[213] In France, the rights are held by Ariès.[214] The German rights were acquired in 1969 by KirchGruppe on behalf of its KirchMedia division, which went bankrupt in 2002.[215] EOS Entertainment's Beta Film purchased many of KirchMedia's rights in 2004, and the library is now distributed by Kineos, created in 2005 as a Beta Film–KirchMedia joint venture.[216]

Logos

modifier
Fichier:RKOlogo.jpg
Classic closing logo of RKO Radio Pictures

Most Radio Pictures Inc. and RKO Radio Pictures Inc. films produced between 1929 and 1957 have an opening logo displaying the studio's famous trademark, the spinning globe and radio tower, nicknamed the "Transmitter." It was inspired by a two-hundred-foot tower built in Colorado for a giant electrical amplifier, or Tesla coil, created by inventor Nikola Tesla.[217] Orson Welles referred to the design as his "favorite among the old logos, not just because it was so often a reliable portent. ... It reminds us to listen."[218] The studio's closing logo, a triangle enclosing a thunderbolt, was also a well-known trademark.[219] Instead of the Transmitter, many Disney films released by the studio originally appeared with colorful versions of the RKO closing logo as part of the main title sequence. For decades, re-releases of these films had Disney/Buena Vista logos replacing the RKO insignia, but the originals have been restored in many recent DVD editions.[220] The Hartley–Merrill RKO Pictures has created new versions of the Transmitter and the closing thunderbolt logo.

See also

modifier

Notes

modifier
  1. ^  L'actuelle édition en ligne de l'Encyclopædia Britannica affirme par erreur que RKO résulte « de la fusion de Radio Corporation of America, du réseau de cinéma Keith-Albee-Orpheum et de la société de production American Pathé. » Cf. (en) l'article, consulté le 3 mars 2010. De nombreuses autres sources en ligne reproduisent cette erreur ou de similaires, comme le fait que RCA Photophones fut rattachée à RKO.
    Il est également important de noter :
    • De nombreuses sources indiquent que la Keith-Albee-Orpheum résulte de la fusion de trois réseaux de salles. En fait, le nom ne provient que de la réunion de deux réseaux : B. F. Keith Corp., sous l'enseigne Keith-Albee, et l'Orpheum Circuit Inc. Edward F. Albee était l'homme de confiance de Benjamin F. Keith. Il repris la société à la mort de son fondateur en 1914, puis de celle de son fils A. Paul Keith, quatre and plus tard[221].
    • l'acronyme FBO est souvent développé à tort comme "Film Booking Office of America" alors que l'intitulé exact est "Film Booking Offices of America" comme l'atteste son official logo.[222]
    Pour illustrer les très nombreuses erreurs qui entachent les début de RKO, même dans des sources dignes de confiance, il suffit de s'arrêter sur le résumé figurant dans Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930–1939 (Un grand dessein : Hollywood en tant qu'entreprise moderne, 1930-1939 — non traduit), de Tino Balio (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Londres : Presses de l'université de Californie, 1995 [1993]), p. 16. Un unique paragraphe doit y être corrigé de la manière suivante :
    • Le nom développé de FBO n'était pas "Film Booking Office" (cf. ci-dessus).
    • RCA Photophone ne fut pas fusionnée avec FBO et KAO au sein de Radio-Keith-Orpheum holding company.[223]
    • La société ne comptaient absolument pas près de 300 salles (Cf. note b ci-dessous).
    • Jusqu'à son rachat de Pathé en 1931, RKO ne disposait pas de quatre studios, que ce soit en termes de société de production (il n'y en avait qu'un : FBO) que comme lieu permanent de tournage (au mieux il en avait trois : le studio d'Hollywood de FBO, le petit studio de FBO à New York partagé avec Pathé, et le terrain acheté par RKO en 1929 à Encino, dans la banlieue de Los Angeles).
  2. ^  La référence dans Jewell (1982) à « 700 salles KAO aux États-Unis et au Canada » est inexacte : Time (1927) fait état, en mai 1927, de 50 salles à l'enseigne Keith-Albee (l'entité juridique de B. F. Keith Corp.) et 47 pour Orpheum. Crafton (1997) affirme que KAO disposait de « 200 salles lors de la fondation de RKO » The reference in Jewell (1982) to "the 700 K-A-O Theatres in the US and Canada" (p. 10) is inaccurate. Time (1927) indicates that as of May 1927, Keith-Albee (legally the B. F. Keith Corp.) had 50 theaters and Orpheum had 47. Crafton (1997) claims KAO had "200 theaters" at the time of RKO's founding (p. 141), though he references no contemporary source. He does cite Film Daily in a description of RKO as controlling 250 theaters in 1930, following a "buying binge" (p. 256). Schatz (1998) describes an "RKO chain of 161 theaters" around the time David O. Selznick became production chief in October 1931 (p. 128). Schatz (1999) writes that as of 1940, RKO had "slightly more than 100 theaters" (p. 17). He explains that "the figures on studio-affiliated theaters vary considerably, owing to the number of houses in which the studios held only partial interest—as little as 5 percent in some cases" (p. 484, n. 24). A 1944 book, Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry, includes the table "Theater holdings of the major companies are approximately as follows"—RKO is listed as holding 222 theaters.[224] Lasky (1989) indicates that a 1953 Fortune article tallied the RKO circuit in 1948, at the time of Hughes's purchase, at "124 theaters, plus a share in about 75 others" (p. 205).
  3. ^  The standard history and reference guide to the studio's films, The RKO Story, by Richard B. Jewell, with Vernon Harbin (New York: Arlington House/Crown, 1982) is used as the final arbiter of whether specific films made between 1929 and 1957 were RKO solo productions, coproductions, or completely independent productions. Official year of release is also per The RKO Story.
  4. ^  Only one previous sound film had cost more than $1 million, and just barely: Noah's Ark (1929), from Warner Bros.[225]
  5. ^  For the switch to the RKO Radio Pictures brand at the beginning of the 1932–33 exhibition season for U.S. print advertising, see, e.g., this original poster for The Most Dangerous Game, which premiered September 9, 1932.[226]
  6. ^  Among still-ascendant male stars, Grant was preceded by the more established Fredric March as a freelancer. For other freelance Hollywood performers of the mid-1930s, see Balio (1995), p. 155.
  7. ^  By August 1940, the lease was no longer exclusive—see "Screen News Here and in Hollywood," New York Times, August 28, 1940. By mid-1949, Selznick had left the studio entirely—see two articles by Thomas F. Brady: "Republic to Make Film on Baseball," New York Times, April 8, 1949; and "Hollywood Buys More Stories," New York Times, May 1, 1949.
  8. ^  Schatz's (1999) brief description of Mr. and Mrs. Smith as a "critical and commercial failure" (p. 89) is evidently incorrect. According to historian Leonard Leff, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith had a happy ending: good reviews and modest box office success."[227] Ed Sikov agrees, calling it a "solid commercial hit".[228] Donald Spoto's report on its release lends further support to this position.[229]
  9. ^  Citizen Kane lost $150,000–$160,000 on original release (the production cost was precisely $805,527.53); The Magnificent Ambersons lost $624,000 (production cost $1.125 million); and the unreleased It's All True cost the studio an estimated $1.2 million.[230] Note that the studio operation itself was almost certainly a bigger money-loser than the cited figures suggest, with profits coming from the corporation's theatrical division.[231]
  10. ^  Jewell (1982) states that it "attracted $3,355,000 in film rentals" (p. 181); Lasky (1989) refers to a Hollywood Reporter article on the film, published seven months after its premiere, predicting it "would do better than $3 million in the U.S. alone" (p. 185). It is not listed in Schatz's (1999) appendix of annual top box-office films of the 1940s (p. 466), based on a 1992 Variety reckoning, perhaps because of its unusual production history. Assuming Jewell's figure is accurate, and the Schatz/Variety list is otherwise accurate and complete, Hitler's Children was the ninth biggest earner of 1943, a very impressive feat for a movie with a B budget and star (Tim Holt).
  11. ^  De nombreuses sources en ligne indiquent que l'année de création de RKO General est 1958. La date de 1959 fournie par O'Neill est confortée par le fait ni le New York Times ni le Los Angeles Time ne font mention de RKO General avant février 1960.

References

modifier
  1. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 9; Lasky (1989), pp. 22–24; Gomery (1985), p. 60; Crafton (1997), pp. 129–31.
  2. ↑ a et b Goodwin (1987), pp. 375–79; Jewell (1982), pp. 9–10; Lasky (1989), pp. 25–27; Gomery (1985), pp. 63–65; Crafton (1997), pp. 136–39, 193–94.
  3. ↑ "Cinemerger", Time, May 2, 1927 (consulatble en ligne).
  4. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 28–29.
  5. ↑ a et b Crafton (1997), p. 210.
  6. ↑ "New Incorporations", New York Times, April 11, 1929.
  7. ↑ Goodwin (1987), pp. 422–23; Jewell (1982), p. 32; Crafton (1997), pp. 208, 210.
  8. ↑ Koszarski (2008), pp. 169–71; Barrios (1995), pp. 86–88.
  9. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 20; Lasky (1989), pp. 46–47; Barrios (1995), pp. 209, 226.
  10. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 42–47; Barrios (1995), pp. 225–29.
  11. ↑ Barrios (1995), p. 225.
  12. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 10.
  13. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 20, 24.
  14. ↑ Catalogue of Copyright Entries (1930), p. 369 et al.
  15. ↑ Barrios (1995), p. 127; Lasky (1989), p. 52.
  16. ↑ ??? expliquer ???
  17. ↑ Bradley (1996), p. 260; "R.-K.-O. Signs More Noted Names", Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1929; "Studios Plan Huge Programs", Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1929.
  18. ↑ Bradley (1996), p. 279.
  19. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 38, 41. For Technicolor contracts during this era, see Kalmus, Herbert, « Technicolor Adventures in Cinemaland », Widescreen Museum, (consulté le )
  20. ↑ Le krach de 1929 démarre avec le jeudi noir du 24 octobre 1929.
  21. ↑ Crafton (1997), p. 210; Barrier (2003), p. 169.
  22. ↑ Crafton (1997), p. 552; Lasky (1989), p. 55.
  23. ↑ Code d'autocensure appliqué par le cinéma américain de 1934 à 1966
  24. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 30.
  25. ↑ Finler (2003), pp. 221, 223.
  26. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 214.
  27. ↑ Lasky (1989), p. 74.
  28. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 44.
  29. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 67–70.
  30. ↑ a et b Bordwell et al. (1985), p. 321.
  31. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 74–76; Jewell (1982), p. 17.
  32. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 77–80, 93.
  33. ↑ Kroessler (2002), p. 219.
  34. ↑ Schatz (1998), pp. 131–33; Lasky (1989), pp. 81–82.
  35. ↑ Schatz (1998), p. 133; Lasky (1989), p. 83.
  36. ↑ Mueller (1986), p. 7.
  37. ↑ Schatz (1998), pp. 131.
  38. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 78–79, 93–95; Jewell (1982), pp. 52, 60.
  39. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 81–82.
  40. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 221.
  41. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 100–1.
  42. ↑ a b c d et e Finler (2003), p. 219.
  43. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 98–99.
  44. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 69.
  45. ↑ Lasky (1989), p. 112.
  46. ↑ a et b Finler (2003), p. 229.
  47. ↑ Harvey (1998), p. 290.
  48. ↑ Cf., p.ex., Di Battista (2001), p. 90.
  49. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 109–10.
  50. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 224.
  51. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 71, 84, 103, 126, 128, 134, 168, 172, 196, 228, 241, 283.
  52. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 77, 88; Lasky (1989), p. 117.
  53. ↑ a et b Finler (2003), p. 227.
  54. ↑ Albrecht, Donald, « The Art of RKO—Van Nest Polglase and the Modern Movie Set: A Pioneer Who Changed the Cinematic Landscape », Architectural Digest, (consulté le )
  55. ↑ Naremore (1989), pp. 17–18.
  56. ↑ Rode (2007), pp. 58–59.
  57. ↑ Morton (2005), p. 43.
  58. ↑ Cotta Vaz and Barron (2002), p. 59.
  59. ↑ "What? Color in the Movies Again?" Fortune, October 1934 (available online); Morton (2005), pp. 111–12; Lasky (1989), p. 104.
  60. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 87; Lasky (1989), pp. 115–16.
  61. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 231.
  62. ↑ Brunelle (1996); Morton (2005), pp. 75–77, 108–9.
  63. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 118–19; Jewell (1982), p. 19.
  64. ↑ McCann (1998), pp. 79–80, 144.
  65. ↑ a et b Finler (2003), p. 215.
  66. ↑ Dickstein (2002), p. 48.
  67. ↑ Barrier (2003), p. 170; Lasky (1989), p. 137; Jewell (1982), p. 92.
  68. ↑ Finler (2003), pp. 36, 47, 319.
  69. ↑ "News of the Screen," New York Times, February 16, 1937; Schatz (1998), p. 181.
  70. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 18–19, 102.
  71. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 154–57; Jewell (1982), pp. 19, 128–29, 138.
  72. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 138, 152, 171, 178, 181, 246, 260.
  73. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 138, 148, 150, 158, 178, 186, 206, 217, 235, 264.
  74. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 153–54.
  75. ↑ a et b Finler (2003), pp. 214–15.
  76. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 136.
  77. ↑ Bordwell et al. (1985), p. 349. For Walker's earlier work on King Kong: Morton (2005), pp. 30, 43, 52.
  78. ↑ « 100 Best Films of the 20th Century », Village Voice, Filmsite.org, (consulté le ) « Top Ten Poll », Sight and Sound, BFI, (consulté le )
  79. ↑ Kear (2009), p. 144.
  80. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 152, 156–57; Jewell (1982), p. 116.
  81. ↑ For Breen's position, see Jeff and Simmons (2001), pp. 119, 122–125.
  82. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 140.
  83. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 304.
  84. ↑ Schatz (1999), p. 57; Jewell (1982), p. 142.
  85. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 161–65.
  86. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 167, 176–80.
  87. ↑ For ambitious box office failures: Jewell (1982), pp. 144, 146 (Abe Lincoln in Illinois), 152 (They Knew What They Wanted), 156, 166 (All That Money Can Buy); Lasky (1989), p. 165; Schatz (1999), p. 57. For Rogers: Jewell (1982), p. 156; Schatz (1999), p. 57.
  88. ↑ "Ned Depinet Heads RKO Pictures Unit; Ex-Vice President in Charge of Distribution Is Elected to Succeed G. J. Schaefer", New York Times, June 26, 1942.
  89. ↑ a et b Jewell (1982), pp. 142, 168.
  90. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 167–68, 174–76.
  91. ↑ Server (2002), p. 78.
  92. ↑ Jewell (2002), p. 208.
  93. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 168, 178.
  94. ↑ Lasky (1989), p. 187.
  95. ↑ Fein (2000), passim; Lasky (1989), p. 228.
  96. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 213.
  97. ↑ a et b Finler (2003), p. 222.
  98. ↑ Lasky (1989), p. 176.
  99. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 200, 208, 226.
  100. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 187, 198, 204, 211, 225, 241, 259, 286, 290, 295.
  101. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 164, 168, 192, 203, 232.
  102. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 209, 211, 241, 248, 283.
  103. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 206, 212, 247, 232.
  104. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 184, 196, 203, 211, 218, 229.
  105. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 212, 178, 220.
  106. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 228, 241, 248.
  107. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 181; Lasky (1989), pp. 184–85. For budgets of Big Five releases the following year: Schatz (1999), p. 173, table 6.3.
  108. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 186.
  109. ↑ Schatz (1999), p. 173, table 6.3.
  110. ↑ a et b Schatz (1999), p. 232; Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 23.
  111. ↑ For B films and slightly higher budgeted "intermediates" directed by Robson: Jewell (1982), pp. 187, 190, 195, 204, 211, 238. By Wise: Jewell (1982), pp. 193, 195, 201, 206, 215, 219, 231, 236. By Mann: Jewell (1982), pp. 202, 205, 212, 219.
  112. ↑ Finler (2003), pp. 219–20.
  113. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 190.
  114. ↑ Finler (2003), pp. 214–15, 221–22.
  115. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 151, 171, 180, 186, 197, 211.
  116. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 164.
  117. ↑ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), p. 19; Finler (2003), p. 216.
  118. ↑ a et b Finler (2003), p. 216.
  119. ↑ Cook (2007), p. 22; Stephens (1995), p. 102; Jacobs (2007), pp. 315–16.
  120. ↑ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 196–98, 205–6. For noir and noir-related films featuring Mitchum: Jewell (1982), pp. 216, 222, 223, 231, 237, 250, 255, 256, 259, 265, 267, 272, 274. Featuring Ryan: Jewell (1982), pp. 220, 222, 227, 236, 247, 248, 252, 255, 259, 262, 266.
  121. ↑ Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 100–2, 152, 189–90, 210; Lasky (1989), p. 198; Schwartz (2005), p. 60.
  122. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 205, 216.
  123. ↑ See, e.g., Ballinger and Graydon (2007), pp. 56, 151–52; Schatz (1999), p. 364; Ottoson (1981), p. 132.
  124. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 225.
  125. ↑ Dixon (2005), p. 112.
  126. ↑ Langdon-Teclaw (2007), p. 168.
  127. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 357; Jewell (1982), p. 214.
  128. ↑ Glick, Reymann, and Hoffman (2003), pp. 35–36; Schatz (1999), pp. 16–17.
  129. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 203–4.
  130. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 192–93, 195.
  131. ↑ Schatz (1999), pp. 299, 331; Lasky (1989), p. 202.
  132. ↑ a et b Jewell (1982), p. 216.
  133. ↑ Schatz (1999), pp. 290–91.
  134. ↑ Friedrich (1997), pp. 333–36; Lasky (1989), pp. 198–202.
  135. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 194–98, 202.
  136. ↑ Brown and Broeske (2004), p. 281.
  137. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 231; Jewell (1982), pp. 306–7.
  138. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 204–5.
  139. ↑ Lasky (1989), p. 206, 216–17.
  140. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 216–17, 221–22; Jewell (1982), p. 143.
  141. ↑ Analysis based on Schatz (1999), p. 330, table 10.2. See Jewell (1982), pp. 216, 226, for confirmation of RKO figures.
  142. ↑ Finler (2003), p. 220.
  143. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 226.
  144. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 218–20, 223, 227; « Part 6: The Supreme Court Verdict That Brought an End to the Hollywood Studio System, 1948 », The Independent Producers and the Paramount Case, 1938–1949, Society Of Independent Motion Picture Producers (consulté le )
  145. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 205, 219.
  146. ↑ Server (2002), pp. 219–22.
  147. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 246, 254.
  148. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 237.
  149. ↑ Ottoson (1981), p. 155.
  150. ↑ See, e.g., Finler (2003), p. 216.
  151. ↑ Lasky (1989), pp. 220–21.
  152. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 262, 266.
  153. ↑ Muller (1998), pp. 176–77; Jewell (1982), pp. 251, 257, 271.
  154. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 265.
  155. ↑ Finler (2003), pp. 358–59.
  156. ↑ Quoted in Lasky (1989), p. 224.
  157. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 243; Lasky (1989), pp. 223–24.
  158. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 243–44, 262, 270; Lasky (1989), pp. 225–26; "An Old Flame Returns", Time, February 23, 1953 (available online).
  159. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 262.
  160. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 246, 262; Lasky (1989), pp. 221, 223, 225.
  161. ↑ Crosby (2009), p. 75.
  162. ↑ Conant (1981), p. 567.
  163. ↑ Quoted in Lasky (1989), p. 226.
  164. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 244, 276; Lasky (1989), pp. 226–27.
  165. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 244–45; Lasky (1989), pp. 218–19, 223, 227–28.
  166. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 245; Lasky (1989), pp. 228–29.
  167. ↑ Lasky (1989), p. 229.
  168. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 290; Lasky (1989), pp. 219, 221, 223, 228.
  169. ↑ "Rubber Yankee," Time, January 18, 1943 (available online).
  170. ↑ Howard (1979), p. 151; "Don Lee Sale Approval Asked," Los Angeles Times, November 21, 1950; "Sale of Don Lee System Approved: Cash Payment of $12,320,000 Involved in FCC Decision," Los Angeles Times, December 28, 1950.
  171. ↑ "Radio-TV Merger Approved By F.C.C.; Deal Covers Macy's Transfer of WOR Interests to General Tire's Don Lee System," New York Times, January 18, 1952.
  172. ↑ "General Tire Gets Control of M. B. S.; Shareholders at Meeting Vote 2-for-1 Stock Split—Company Buys More TV Stations," New York Times, April 2, 1952.
  173. ↑ Howard (1979), pp. 150–52; "Earnings Fall 5% for Macy System; Television's High Cost for Subsidiary, General Teleradio, Cuts Consolidated Net," New York Times, October 11, 1950.
  174. ↑ a et b Segrave (1999), pp. 40–41.
  175. ↑ "An Open Letter to TV Station Owners and Managers", Billboard, September 8, 1956.
  176. ↑ Hilmes (1990), pp. 160–61; Boddy (1990), p. 138.
  177. ↑ a et b Jewell (1982), p. 245.
  178. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 280.
  179. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 284.
  180. ↑ Jewell (1982), pp. 282, 286.
  181. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 245; Lasky (1989), p. 3.
  182. ↑ « About Us—Studio History », The Culver Studios (consulté le )
  183. ↑ "Initial Plans for Movie Studio Backlot Approved", Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1975.
  184. ↑ Conant (1981), pp. 567–68.
  185. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 296.
  186. ↑ O'Neill (1966), p. 180.
  187. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 15.
  188. ↑ a b et c « GenCorp Inc.—Company History », Funding Universe (consulté le )
  189. ↑ Fong-Torres (2001), pp. 172–76; Denisoff (1986), pp. 242–51.
  190. ↑ Keyes (2004), p. 99.
  191. ↑ Cox (2009), p. 198.
  192. ↑ For the early history of Million Dollar Movie and WOR's film programming, see Segrave (1999), pp. 40, 48; "News of TV and Radio; 'Studio One' Returns for the Winter Season", New York Times, September 19, 1954 (excerpted online); "WOR-TV Acquires 10 Selznick Films; It Pays Record $198,000 for 'Package'—Will Be Shown on 'Million Dollar Movie' Discord Theme of Show", New York Times, February 25, 1956; "2 Feature Films Bought By WOR-TV; Station Adds 'Champion' and 'Home of the Brave' to its 'Million Dollar Movie,'" New York Times, June 16, 1956.
  193. ↑ "Fee-Vee," Time, July 6, 1962 (available online); "Payday, Some Day," Time, December 27, 1968 (available online); Mullen, Megan, "The Prehistory of Pay Cable Television: An Overview and Analysis," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 19, no. 1 (January 1, 1999).
  194. ↑ "Turning Off RKO's Licenses," Time, August 24, 1987 (available online); "RKO Appeals F.C.C. Ruling," New York Times, October 20, 1987 (available online); « KHJ Enveloped in Scandal », Metropolitan News-Enterprise, (consulté le )
  195. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 245; Lambert, Bruce, « C. R. Manby, 73, Ex-Chairman and President of RKO Pictures », New York Times, (consulté le )
  196. ↑ "Wesray in Deal for RKO Studio", New York Times, September 18, 1987 (available online); Lambert, Bruce, « Playboy Enterprises International Inc. Proxy Statement », EDGAR Online (SEC), (consulté le )
  197. ↑ "Pavilion Buys Stake in RKO", New York Times, September 1, 1989 (available online); Lucas, Sloane, « The Real Players », Beverly Hills [213], (consulté le ) DiSante, Joseph, « Ted Hartley...and the Rebirth of RKO Studios », Point of View, (consulté le ) Note that while the last article refers to Hartley–Merrill's "RKO Pictures Inc.", SEC filings establish that the company is, in fact, structured as an LLC.
  198. ↑ Pierson (1997), pp. 222, 226.
  199. ↑ Glieberman, Owen, « Mighty Joe Young », Entertainment Weekly, (consulté le )
  200. ↑ Jones, Kenneth, « Never Gonna Dance Will Shutter Feb. 15 », Playbill.com, (consulté le )
  201. ↑ « New Filing—RKO Acquisition (L.A. Superior Court SC077345) » [archive du ], Entertainment Law Digest, (consulté le )
  202. ↑ « Internetstudios Com Inc 10QSB », Securities and Exchange Commission, (consulté le ) For more on InternetStudios.com, see « The Company That Never Was... » [archive du ], StockLemon.com, (consulté le )
  203. ↑ Anderson, John, « Are We Done Yet? », Variety, (consulté le ) « Are We Done Yet? », Rotten Tomatoes (consulté le )
  204. ↑ « Roseblood Movie Company », RKO.com (consulté le )
  205. ↑ « Beyond a Reasonable Doubt », RKO.com (consulté le )
  206. ↑ « Top Hat—Tour », RKO.com (consulté le )
  207. ↑ « Ted Hartley ’46 » [archive du ], U.S. Naval Academy (consulté le )
  208. ↑ « U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals: Saltzman v CIR », FindLaw, (consulté le ) Note that the association of the corporate name "Marian Pictures Incorporated" with the acronym "MBP" is per this legal document.
  209. ↑ Delugach, Al, "Investors Will Pay $48 Million for RKO—Confidential Memo Details Management Group's Purchase Deal", Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1987 (available online); "Turner Buys Rights to 800 RKO Movies", Los Angeles Times (Reuters), December 10, 1987 (available online).
  210. ↑ « Turner Broadcasting System Inc DEFM14A », Securities and Exchange Commission, (consulté le )
  211. ↑ Vogel (2007), p. 97.
  212. ↑ « The Val Lewton Horror Collection: Introduction », The Digital Fix, (consulté le )
  213. ↑ L'Universale—Cinema, vol. 2 (2004), p. 986.
  214. ↑ Salza, Giuseppe, « Interview: Dans la tête des Editions Montparnasse », DVDFr, (consulté le ) « DVD RKO: Interview des Editions Montparnasse », Excessif, (consulté le ) Justamand, François, « La gazette du doublage: Laurence Sabatier, Responsable technique des Editions Montparnasse », Objectif Cinéma, (consulté le )
  215. ↑ « TaurusHolding GmbH & Co. KG—Company History », Funding Universe, (consulté le ) Koval, Ramona, « German Film and TV Giant KirchMedia Collapses », Australian Broadcasting Corporation—Radio National/Night Club, (consulté le ) Ewing, Jack, with John Rossant, « KirchMedia: Opportunity Lost », BusinessWeek Online, (consulté le )
  216. ↑ « DLA Piper Advises KirchMedia GmbH & Co. KGaA in the Sale of the National Film Library », DLA Piper, (consulté le ) Roxborough, Scott, « Von Kruedener Leaves Sony for Beta Film », Hollywood Reporter, (consulté le ) « Kineos », Beta Film (consulté le )
  217. ↑ Deyo and Leibowitz (2003), pp. 5–6.
  218. ↑ Quoted in Thomson (1997), p. 170.
  219. ↑ Nye (1992), p. 157.
  220. ↑ Culhane (1999), passim.
  221. ↑ Haupert (2006), p. 17.
  222. ↑ Cf. également Sherwood (1923), pp. 150, 156, 158–59.
  223. ↑ Cf. par exemple Lasky (1989), p. 120.
  224. ↑ Huettig (1944), p. 296.
  225. ↑ Crafton (1997), p. 549.
  226. ↑ Senn (1996), p. 109.
  227. ↑ Leff (1999), p. 92.
  228. ↑ Sikov (1996), p. 152.
  229. ↑ Spoto (1983), p. 250.
  230. ↑ For Citizen Kane: Brady (1990), pp. 288, 311; Jewell (1982), p. 164. For The Magnificent Ambersons: Jewell (1982), p. 173. For It's All True: Brady (1990), p. 346. For corporate deficit and profit: Jewell (1982), pp. 144, 156.
  231. ↑ Jewell (1982), p. 168.

Sources

modifier
  • Ballinger, Alexander, and Danny Graydon (2007). The Rough Guide to Film Noir. London: Rough Guides. (ISBN 1-84353-474-6)
  • Barrier, Michael (2003). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press. (ISBN 0-19-516729-5)
  • Barrios, Richard (1995). A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film. New York: Oxford University Press. (ISBN 0-19-508811-5)
  • Boddy, William (1990). Fifties Television: The Industry and Its Critics. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. (ISBN 0-252-06299-X)
  • Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson (1985). The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press. (ISBN 0-231-06054-8)
  • Bradley, Edwin M. (1996). The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. (ISBN 0-7864-2029-4)
  • Brady, Frank (1990 [1989]). Citizen Welles: A Biography of Orson Welles. New York: Anchor. (ISBN 0-385-26759-2)
  • Brown, Peter Harry, and Pat H. Broeske (2004). Howard Hughes: The Untold Story. New York: Da Capo. (ISBN 0-306-81392-0)
  • Brunelle, Ray (1996). "The Art of Sound Effects", Experimental Musical Instruments 12, nos. 1 and 2 (September and December). ISSN 0883-0754
  • Catalogue of Copyright Entries, vol. 3, no. 2: Part 1, Group 3—Dramatic Compositions, Motion Pictures (1930). Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress Copyright Office/Government Printing Office.
  • Conant, Michael (1981). "The Paramount Decrees Reconsidered", in The American Film Industry, ed. Tino Balio, pp. 537–73. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. (ISBN 0-299-09874-5)
  • Cook, Pam (2007). The Cinema Book, 3d ed. London: BFI Publishing. (ISBN 1-84457-192-0)
  • Cotta Vaz, Mark, and Craig Barron (2002). The Invisible Art: The Legends of Movie Matte Painting. San Francisco: Chronicle. (ISBN 0-8118-3136-1)
  • Cox, Jim (2009). American Radio Networks: A History. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. (ISBN 978-0-7864-4192-1)
  • Crafton, Donald (1997). The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926–1931. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. (ISBN 0-684-19585-2)
  • Crosby, Michael (2009). Encino. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia. (ISBN 0-7385-6991-7)
  • Culhane, John (1999). Walt Disney's Fantasia. New York: Harry N. Abrams. (ISBN 0-8109-8078-9)
  • Denisoff, R. Serge (1986). Tarnished Gold: The Record Industry Revisited. Piscataway, N.J.: Transaction. (ISBN 0-88738-618-0)
  • Deyo, L. B., and David Leibowitz (2003). Invisible Frontier: Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York. New York: Random House. (ISBN 0-609-80931-8)
  • Di Battista, Maria (2001). Fast-Talking Dames. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press. (ISBN 0-300-08815-9)
  • Dickstein, Morris (2002). "Bringing Up Baby (1938)", in The A List: The National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films, ed. Jay Carr, pp. 48–50. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo. (ISBN 0-306-81096-4)
  • Dixon, Wheeler W. (2005). Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. (ISBN 0-8093-2653-1)
  • Fein, Seth (2000). "Transcultured Anticommunism: Cold War Hollywood in Postwar Mexico", in Visible Nations: Latin American Cinema and Video, ed. Chon A. Noriega, pp. 82–111. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (ISBN 0-8166-3347-9)
  • Finler, Joel W. (2003). The Hollywood Story, 3d ed. London: Wallflower. (ISBN 1-903364-66-3)
  • Fong-Torres, Ben (2001). The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard. (ISBN 0-87930-664-5)
  • Friedrich, Otto (1997 [1986]). City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. (ISBN 0-520-20949-4)
  • Glick, Mark A., Lara A. Reymann, and Richard Hoffman (2003). Intellectual Property Damages: Guidelines and Analysis. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons. (ISBN 0-471-23719-1)
  • Gomery, Douglas (1985). "The Coming of Sound: Technological Change in the American Film Industry", in Technology and Culture—The Film Reader, ed. Andrew Utterson, pp. 53–67. Oxford and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2005. (ISBN 0-415-31984-6)
  • Goodwin, Doris Kearns (1987). The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. New York: Simon and Schuster. (ISBN 0-312-06354-7)
  • Harvey, James (1998). Romantic Comedy in Hollywood, from Lubitsch to Sturges. New York: Da Capo. (ISBN 0-306-80832-3)
  • Haupert, Michael John (2006). The Entertainment Industry. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. (ISBN 0-313-32173-6)
  • Hilmes, Michelle (1990). Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. (ISBN 0-252-01709-9)
  • Howard, Herbert H. (1979). Multiple Ownership in Television Broadcasting: Historical Development and Selected Case Studies. New York: Arno. (ISBN 0-405-11759-0)
  • Huettig, Mae D. (1944). Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry, excerpted in The American Film Industry, ed. Tino Balio, pp. 285–310. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. (ISBN 0-299-09874-5)
  • Jacobs, Steven (2007). The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. (ISBN 90-6450-637-X)
  • Jeff, Leonard J., and Jerold L. Simmons (2001). The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production Code. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. (ISBN 0-8131-9011-8)
  • Jewell, Richard B., with Vernon Harbin (1982). The RKO Story. New York: Arlington House/Crown. (ISBN 0-517-54656-6)
  • Kear, Lynn, with James King (2009). Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Lady Crook. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. (ISBN 0-7864-4363-4)
  • Keyes, Cheryl L. (2004). Rap Music and Street Consciousness. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. (ISBN 0-252-07201-4)
  • King, Emily (2003). Movie Poster. London: Octopus. (ISBN 1-84000-653-6)
  • Koszarski, Richard (2008). Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. (ISBN 0-8135-4293-6)
  • Kroessler, Jeffrey A. (2002). New York Year by Year: A Chronology of the Great Metropolis. New York: NYU Press. (ISBN 0-8147-4751-5)
  • Langdon-Teclaw, Jennifer (2007). "The Progressive Producer in the Studio System: Adrian Scott at RKO, 1943–1947", in "Un-American" Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era, ed. Frank Krutnik, Steve Neale, Brian Neve, and Peter Stanfield, pp. 152–68. New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Rutgers University Press. (ISBN 0-8135-4198-0)
  • Lasky, Betty (1989). RKO: The Biggest Little Major of Them All. Santa Monica, Calif.: Roundtable. (ISBN 0-915677-41-5)
  • Leff, Leonard J. (1999 [1987]). Hitchcock and Selznick: The Rich and Strange Collaboration of Alfred Hitchcock and David O. Selznick in Hollywood. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. (ISBN 0-520-21781-0)
  • McCann, Graham (1998). Cary Grant: A Class Apart. New York: Columbia University Press. (ISBN 0-231-10885-0)
  • Morton, Ray (2005). King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson. New York: Applause. (ISBN 1-55783-669-8)
  • Mueller, John (1986). Astaire Dancing: The Musical Films. London: Hamish Hamilton. (ISBN 0-241-11749-6)
  • Muller, Eddie (1998). Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. New York: St. Martin's. (ISBN 0-312-18076-4)
  • Naremore, James (1989). The Magic World of Orson Welles, rev. ed. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. (ISBN 0-87074-299-X)
  • Nye, David E. (1992). Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology, 1880–1940. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. (ISBN 0-262-64030-9)
  • O'Neill, Dennis J. (1966). A Whale of a Territory: The Story of Bill O'Neil. New York: McGraw Hill.
  • Pierson, John (1997). Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema. New York: Miramax Books/Hyperion. (ISBN 0-7868-8222-0)
  • Rode, Alan K. (2007). Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. (ISBN 0-7864-3167-9)
  • Schatz, Thomas (1998 [1989]). The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era. London: Faber and Faber. (ISBN 0-571-19596-2)
  • Schatz, Thomas (1999 [1997]). Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. (ISBN 0-520-22130-3)
  • Schwartz, Ronald (2005). Neo-Noir: The New Film Noir Style from Psycho to Collateral. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield/Scarecrow. (ISBN 0-8108-5676-X)
  • Segrave, Kerry (1999). Movies at Home: How Hollywood Came to Television. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. (ISBN 0-7864-0654-2)
  • Senn, Bryan (1996). Golden Horrors: An Illustrated Critical Filmography of Terror Cinema, 1931–1939. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. (ISBN 0-7864-0175-3)
  • Server, Lee (2002). Robert Mitchum: "Baby, I Don't Care". New York: St. Martin's. (ISBN 0-312-26206-X)
  • Sikov, Ed (1996). Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the 1950s. New York: Columbia University Press. (ISBN 0-231-07983-4)
  • Spoto, Donald (1984 [1983]). The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: Ballantine. (ISBN 0-345-31462-X)
  • Stephens, Michael L. (1995). Film Noir: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Reference to Movies, Terms, and Persons. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland. (ISBN 0-89950-802-2)
  • Thomson, David (1997 [1996]). Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles. New York: Vintage. (ISBN 0-679-77283-9)
  • L'Universale—Cinema, vol. 2: K–Z (2004) [in Italian]. Milan: Garzantine. (ISBN 88-11-50516-X)
  • Vogel, Harold L. (2007). Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis, 7th ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 0-521-87485-8)
modifier
RKO Radio Pictures history
RKO Pictures LLC
  • RKO Pictures the Hartley–Merrill company's website
  • Ted Hartley personal website of RKO Pictures LLC's chairman and CEO
  • "Newman Helms Doc" article by Michael Fleming on planned Hartley documentary, Variety.com, September 11, 2003
RKO library and logos
  • C&C RKO 16 mm Prints extensive discussion of RKO preservation and rights issues, by David Chierichetti; part of eFilmCenter website
  • The RKO Logo essay by Rick Mitchell; part of Hollywood: Lost and Found website
  • RKO Pictures Logos detailed descriptions by Nicholas Aczel and Sean Beard
Ce document provient de « https://fr.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Utilisateur:Fourvin/RKO&oldid=149110234 ».