RKO Pictures
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The classic opening logo of RKO Radio Pictures. |
This article is about the film production company. For the wrestler, see Randy Orton. RKO (
Radio-Keith-Orpheum)
Pictures is an
American film production company, one of the so-called
Big Five studios of
Hollywood's Golden Age. It was formed in October 1928 as a combination of the
Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chains,
Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio, and
RCA Photophone, the new
sound-on-film division of the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA). First under the majority ownership of RCA, in later years it was taken over by maverick industrialist
Howard Hughes and finally by the
General Tire and Rubber Company. The original RKO Pictures ceased production in 1957 and was out of business as of 1960. In 1981, the name was revived for coproductions by one of RKO's corporate descendants; in the early 1990s, the company with the
trademarks and
remake rights to many classic RKO films were sold to new owners, who now operate an independent company under the name.
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The first Radio-Keith-Orpheum logo from 1929. |
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Radio Pictures logo from 1929. |
Shut out of the sound-film conversion frenzy driven by the success of
Warner Bros.' October 1927 release
The Jazz Singer, RCA bought its way into the motion picture business to gain an outlet for the optical sound-on-film system, Photophone, recently developed by
General Electric, RCA's parent company. All of the major studios and their theater divisions were in the process of signing with ERPI, a subsidiary of
AT&T's
Western Electric division, to handle conversion. Hoping to join in the boom in sound movies,
David Sarnoff, general manager of RCA, approached Joseph Kennedy in late 1927 about using the Photophone system for FBO pictures.
[Note that many sources incorrectly give FBO's full name as "Film Booking Office of America"; the proper name is Film Booking Offices of America, as can be verified by reference to different versions of its official logo (ironically, this source also gives the incorrect name in its headline and text).] Negotiations resulted in General Electric acquiring a substantial interest in the studio, followed by Sarnoff and Kennedy arranging for a takeover of the large Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit of theaters, then used for live vaudeville performances. Under the plan, largely conceived by Sarnoff, Kennedy acquired KAO on May 10, 1928, and with it the
PathĂ© (U.S.)â€"De Mille filmmaking operations, which had united the previous year under the control of Keith-Orpheum (which soon brought the Albee chain into the fold). Meanwhile, Sarnoff had created RCA Photophone, Inc. In October, a merger was effected primarily through a series of stock transfers and the creation of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum holding company was announced, with Sarnoff as chairman of the board. Kennedy, who was briefly president of the new operation before stepping aside, kept what was known as PathĂ© Exchange (
Cecil B. De Mille having been bought out in August) separate from RKO and under his personal control.
[Goodwin, Doris Kearns, The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 375â€"379; Jewell, Richard B., with Vernon Harbin, The RKO Story (New York: Arlington House/Crown, 1982), 9â€"10; Utterson, Andrew, Technology and Cultureâ€"The Film Reader (Oxford and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2005), 63â€"65; "Cinemerger," Time, May 2, 1927 (available online).] The prominence of "radio" in the corporate name "Radio-Keith-Orpheum" reflected RCA's 66% share in the concern. It was claimed that the broadcasting-tower logo of the production arm, "Radio Pictures," was suggested by Sarnoff himself.
Kennedy's primary role in the new company, of which he remained a major stockholder even after departing his executive position, was to drive up the share value. He and his associates did so successfully, pushing RKO's price higher even before film production had begun under the new name. Looking to get out of the film business a couple of years later, Kennedy arranged in late 1930 for RKO to purchase Pathé from him. On January 29, 1931, Pathé, with its Culver City studio, backlot (formerly De Mille's), and contract players, was merged into RKO as Kennedy sold off the last of his stock in the company he had been instrumental in creating.
[Goodwin, 422-423; Jewell, 32.] |
Poster for Rio Rita (1929), first smash hit for RKO (then releasing films under the "Radio Pictures" banner). |
The early years
Declaring that it would make only sound films, RKO began producing movies at the former FBO studios in early 1929, with William LeBaron in charge of production. Its first major hit was the lavish musical
Rio Rita, released that September. RKO, sparing no expense, included a number of
Technicolor sequences in the film. Opening to rave reviews, it was named one of the ten best pictures of the year by
Film Daily. Encouraged by its success, RKO produced several costly musicals incorporating Technicolor sequences in 1930, among them
Dixiana and
Hit the Deck. Following the example of the other major studios, RKO even planned to create its own musical revue,
Radio Revels.
[Bradley, Edwin M., The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996), 260; "R.-K.-O. Signs More Noted Names," Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1929; "Studios Plan Huge Programs," Los Angeles Times, July 21, 1929.] Promoted as the studio's most extravagant production to date, it was to be photographed entirely in Technicolor. A second lavish all-color musical was also planned, the first screen version of
Victor Herbert's operetta
Babes in Toyland.
[Los Angeles Times, May 31, 1930, A9.] Both of the projects were abandoned, however, as the public's taste for musicals temporarily subsided. The material already shot for
Radio Revels was incorporated into short subjects, yet RKO still had a contract with Technicolor to produce not just one, but two more features with the technology. Complicating matters, audiences had come to associate color with the momentarily out-of-favor musical genre due to a splurge of such productions from the major Hollywood studios. Fulfilling its obligations, RKO produced two all-Technicolor pictures,
The Runaround and
Fanny Foley Herself (both 1931), containing no musical sequences. Neither was a success.
Even as the U.S. economy foundered, RKO had gone on a spending spree, buying up theater after theater to add to its exhibition chain. By the early 1930s, RKO was producing over forty pictures a year, releasing them under the names "Radio Pictures" and, for a short time after the 1931 merger, "RKO Pathé."
Cimarron (1931), produced by LeBaron himself, would become the only RKO production to win the
Academy Award for Best Picture; nonetheless, it was a major money-loser on original release. Exceptions like
Cimarron and
Rio Rita aside, RKO's product was largely regarded as mediocre, so in autumn 1931 Sarnoff hired 29-year-old
David O. Selznick to replace LeBaron as production chief. In addition to implementing rigorous cost-control measures, Selznick signed and promoted several young actors who would carry RKO through the decade, among them
Fred Astaire,
Ginger Rogers, and
Katharine Hepburn. Selznick was a champion of the so-called unit production system that gave the
producers of individual movies much greater independence than they had under the prevailing central producer system. Instituting unit production at RKO, he predicted substantial benefits in both "cost and quality."
[Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 320â€"321.] To make films under the new system, he recruited prize behind-the-camera personnel, such as
director George Cukor and producer/director
Merian C. Cooper, and gave whiz kid producer
Pandro S. Berman increasingly important projects. Along with those signed by Selznickâ€"who would remain at the studio for less than two yearsâ€"RKO stars of this
pre-Code era included
Joel McCrea,
Ricardo Cortez, and
Mary Astor. The comedy team of
Bert Wheeler and
Robert Woolsey, often wrangling over sweetie pie Dorothy Lee, were bankable mainstays for years.
Irene Dunne made her debut as the lead in the 1930 musical
Leathernecking and was a headliner at the studio for the entire decade.
Constance Bennett,
Ann Harding, and Helen Twelvetrees came over with Pathé, which was dissolved as a separate production unit in 1932. The Pathé acquisition, though a defensible investment in the long term for its physical facilities, was yet another major expense borne by the fledgling RKO.
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Swedish poster for original 1933 release of King Kong, one of the great spectacles in Hollywood history. Most surviving posters are from the numerous re-releases of the film. Orginal posters carried the logo of "Radio Pictures" or, in some countries, "RKO Pathé." |
Despite Selznick's tenure as production chief, widely considered masterful, the shaky finances and excesses that marked the company's early days did not leave RKO in shape to withstand the
Depression; the success of Selznick-backed projects such as
A Bill of Divorcement (1932), with Cukor directing Hepburn's debut, and the monumental
King Kongâ€"largely Merian Cooper's brainchildâ€"couldn't prevent the company from sinking into
receivership in 1933, from which it would not emerge until 1940. Cooper took over as production head after Selznick's departure and oversaw the hit
Little Women, with Cukor again directing Hepburn. Directors such as
John Ford,
George Stevens, and
John Cromwell also made impressive films at RKO in the following yearsâ€"Ford's
The Informer and Stevens's
Alice Adams were each nominated for the 1935 Best Picture Oscar. Lacking the resources of the other major studios, many RKO pictures of the period made up in style what they lacked in production values, as exemplified by such Astaireâ€"Rogers musicals as
The Gay Divorcee (1934) and
Top Hat (1935). One of the figures most responsible for that style was Van Nest Polglase, chief of RKO's highly regarded
design department for almost a decade. From the studio's earliest days through 1935,
Max Steiner, seen by many historians as the most influential composer of the early years of sound cinema, made music for over 100 RKO films.
[Finler, Joel W., The Hollywood Story (New York: Crown, 1988), 184.]A corporate restructuring in the mid-1930s expanded the ownership team, with investor
Floyd Odlum buying 50% of RCA's stake in the company, already reduced over the previous half-decade; the
Rockefeller brothers also became major stockholders. From 1935 onward, the PathĂ© name was used only on newsreels and documentaries; all features went out under the revised name "RKO Radio Pictures." (In 1947, the PathĂ©-branded newsreel would be sold to Warner Bros.) While the Astaireâ€"Rogers team ran its course and RKO kept missing the mark in building Hepburn's career, major stars
Cary Grant and
Barbara Stanwyck joined the studio's rosterâ€"though Stanwyck would have little success during her few years there. Under new production chief Samuel Briskin, appointed in late 1935, RKO also entered into an important distribution deal with
Walt Disney. 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). (The latter, a Selznick coproduction with
MGM, was largely shot on RKO's Culver City backlot, known as Forty Acres.) RKO's own product, however, was widely seen as declining in quality and Briskin was gone by the end of 1937. Pandro Bermanâ€"who had filled in on three previous occasionsâ€"accepted the position of production chief on a noninterim basis. As it turned out, he would leave the job after a year-and-a-half, but his brief tenure resulted in some of the most notable films in the studio's history, including
Gunga Din,
Love Affair, and
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (all 1939).
Kane and rebound in the 1940s
Berman had left in a dispute over studio policy with new RKO president George J. Schaefer, handpicked by the Rockefellers and backed by Sarnoff. With Berman gone, Schaefer became in effect production chief, though other men nominally filled the role. Schaefer was particularly keen on signing up independent producers whose films RKO would distribute. 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, is seen as one of
Bette Davis's finest films, while the
Howard Hawksâ€"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.
[Jewell, 142.] That same year, 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. The next year saw the commercial failure of Welles's
The Magnificent Ambersonsâ€"like
Kane, critically lauded and overbudgetâ€"and the expensive embarrassment of his aborted documentary
It's All True. In June 1942, Schaefer 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.
Charles Koerner, former head of the RKO theater chain, had assumed the title of production chief some months prior to Schaefer's departure. With Schaefer gone, Koerner could actually do the job, bringing the studio much-needed stability until his death in February 1946. In 1943, Odlum took over a controlling interest in RKO, buying out both the Rockefellers and RCA, thus cutting David Sarnoff's ties to the studio that was largely his conception. With the studio on increasingly secure ground, Koerner sought to increase its output of handsomely budgeted, star-driven features. Aside from Grant (whose services were shared with
Columbia Pictures) and
John Wayne, however, the studio no longer had major stars under long-term contract, so Koernerâ€"and his eventual successor,
Dore Scharyâ€"made deals with the other studios to "loan out" their biggest names for top-drawer RKO productions. 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.
Gary Cooper appeared in RKO releases produced by Goldwyn and, later, the startup International Pictures, and
Claudette Colbert starred in a number of RKO coproductions.
Ingrid Bergman appeared under a variety of hats for RKOâ€"on loan out from Selznick in
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), in the coproductions
Notorious (1946) and
Stromboli (1950), and in the independently produced
Joan of Arc (1948). Freelancing
Randolph Scott appeared in one major RKO release annually from 1943 through 1948. In similar fashion, many leading directors made one or two films at the studio during this eraâ€"most notably, Alfred Hitchcock, with
Suspicion (1941) and
Notorious, and
Jean Renoir, with
This Land Is Mine (1943) and
The Woman on the Beach (1947). John Ford's
Fort Apache (1948), which appeared right before studio ownership changed hands again, was followed by
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and
Wagonmaster (1950); all three were coproductions between RKO and Argosy, the company run by Ford and RKO alumnus Merian C. Cooper. The best-known director under contract to RKO for much of the 1940s was
Edward Dmytryk, who first came to notice with the enormous success of
Hitler's Children (1943), a sleeper hit made at minimal expense.
More so than the other Big Five studios, RKO relied on
B-pictures to fill up its schedule. These low-budget films served as training ground for new directors, among them
Jacques Tourneur,
Robert Wise,
Mark Robson, and
Anthony Mann. A number of RKO Bs, notably the movies created by producer
Val Lewton's horror unit, such as
Cat People (1942),
I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and
The Body Snatcher (1945), are highly regarded today.
Tim Holt was RKO's B
Western star, appearing in over fifty movies for the studio.
Film noir, to which lower budgets lent themselves, became something of a house style at RKO; indeed, the RKO B
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) is widely seen as initiating noir's classic period. 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. Albert D'Agostinoâ€"another long-termer who took over as head of the design department from Polglase in 1941â€"and his team, including
art directors Jack Okey and Walter Keller and
set decorator Darrell Silvera, are similarly credited. The studio's 1940s list of contract players reads like a noir who's-who:
Robert Mitchum (who would graduate to major star status),
Gloria Grahame,
Robert Ryan,
Jane Greer,
Lawrence Tierney, and
George Raft among them. Tourneur, Musuraca, Mitchum, and Greer, along with D'Agostino's design group, would join to make
Out of the Past (1947), now considered one of the greatest of all film noirs.
Nicholas Ray began his directing career with the absorbing RKO noir
They Live by Night (1948), the first of a number of important films he made for the studio.
HUAC, Hughes, and decline
Nineteen forty-six was the most profitable year in the history of RKO, but 1947 brought a number of unpleasant harbingers for all of Hollywood. The British government, followed by others, imposed limits on how much capital American movie companies could withdraw annually, curtailing one of the studios' primary sources of earnings.
Television was beginning to drain audiences away from the movies; across the board, attendanceâ€"and profitsâ€"fell. The phenomenon that would become known as
McCarthyism was building up steam, 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;
blacklisted as members of the so-called
Hollywood Ten, they were fired by RKO per the terms of the
Waldorf Statement, the industry's "antisubversive" declaration. Ironically, the studio's major success of the year was
Crossfire, a Scottâ€"Dmytryk fim. Floyd Odlum concluded it was time to cash in his RKO holdings, and he put his shares on the market.
It was widely assumed that British film magnate
J. Arthur Rank would be the buyer of Odlum's interest in RKO. Defying expectations, however, in May 1948 eccentric multimillionaire and occasional movie producer
Howard Hughes gained control by acquiring 25% of the outstanding stock. During his tenure RKO suffered its worst years since the early 1930s, as Hughes's capricious management style took a heavy toll. Production chief Schary quit almost immediately due to his new boss's interference. Within weeks of taking over, Hughes had dismissed three-fourths of the work force; production was virtually shut down for six months as Hughes ordered investigations into the politics of all remaining studio employees. Completed pictures would be sent back for reshooting if the stars, especially female, weren't presented to his liking, or if a film's anticommunist sentiments weren't sufficiently blatant. Offscreen, Robert Mitchum's arrest and conviction for marijuana possessionâ€"he would serve two months in jailâ€"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. 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. Under the consent decree he signed, Hughes split RKO's production-distribution business and its theater chain into two separate companies in 1951, with the obligation to sell off one or the other by a certain date. Hughes's decision was one of the crucial steps in the collapse of classical Hollywood's
studio system.
[The Independent Producers and the Paramount Case, 1938â€"1949: Part 6 "The Supreme Court Verdict That Brought an End to the Hollywood Studio System, 1948" (see "The First Studio Is Dissolved" and "The Mighty Paramount Is Broken"); part of the Society Of Independent Motion Picture Producers research archive. Retrieved 7/22/06.]While Hughes's time at RKO was marked by dwindling production and a slew of expensive flops (as well as further
witch hunts for suspected Reds), the studio continued to turn out some good films under production chiefs Sid Rogell and Sam Bischoff, each of whom 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.) There were B noirs such as
The Set-Up and
The Window (both 1949), whose reputation has only grown over the decades, and
The Thing (1951), a thrilling science-fiction drama coproduced with Howard Hawks's Winchester Pictures. The company also began a close working relationship with
Ida Lupino. She would star in two memorable suspense films with Robert Ryanâ€"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. 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). 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.
In September 1952, Hughes and his corporate president, Ned E. Depinet, sold their RKO 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. During the turmoil, Samuel Goldwyn ended his 11-year-long distribution deal with RKO. Nineteen fifty-two had been disastrous for the studio financially, and Hughes's divestiture of the RKO theaters the following year did nothing to help. 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. Looking to forestall a major legal imbroglio, in early 1954 Hughes offered to buy out all of RKO's other stockholders. By the end of the year, at a cost of $23.5 million, he 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% 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.
[Jewell, 244-245.] Thus stalemated, in July 1955, Hughes turned around and sold RKO to
General Tire and Rubber Company for $25 million. Hughes retained the rights to pictures he had personally produced, including those made at RKO; he also kept the contract of his discovery
Jane Russell. For Hughes, this was the effective end of a quarter-century's involvement in the movie business.
General Tire and the end of RKO Pictures
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 based around WNAC-AM in Boston, in 1943. In 1950, it purchased the West Coast regional Don Lee Broadcasting System, and two years later, the Bamberger Broadcasting Service, owner of the WOR TV and radio stations in New York City. General Tire then merged its broadcasting interests into a new division, General Teleradio. Thomas O'Neill, son of General Tire's founder William O'Neill and chairman of the broadcasting group, saw that the company's new television stations, indeed all TV outlets, were in need of programming. In 1953, O'Neill had approached Hughes about buying RKO's film library; with the 1955 purchase of the studio that library was his, and rights to the approximately 740 RKO films the studio retained clear title to were quickly put up for sale. The asking price of $15.5 million convinced the other major studios that their libraries held profit potentialâ€"a turning point in the way Hollywood did business.
C&C Television Corp., a subsidiary of beverage maker Cantrell & Cochrane, bought the RKO rights and was soon offering the films to independent stations with ads for C&C Cola already edited into the pictures. RKOâ€"now consolidated with General Tire's other media interests as RKO Teleradioâ€"retained the broadcast rights for the cities where it owned TV stations. By 1956, RKO's classic movies were playing widely on television, and for some half-forgotten films like
Citizen Kane, it meant rediscovery by the public.
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Emblem of RKO's demise. Poster for Jet Pilot, a Hughes pet production launched in 1949, wrapped in May 1951, finally released in 1957 after Hughes's interminable tinkering. RKO was by then out of the distribution business. The movie was released by Universal-International. |
The new owners of RKO made a half-hearted effort to run the studio, hiring veteran producer William Dozier to head production. Most RKO pictures of this era are either remakes of earlier successes or inflated B-movies. Years of mismanagement had driven away many directors, producers, and stars; convinced that RKO was sinking, Disney followed Goldwyn in ending his arrangement with RKO and setting up his own distribution firm in 1954. After a year and a half of mixed success, General Tire shut down production at RKO for good at the end of January 1957 and changed the name of the company to
RKO General. The Hollywood and Culver City facilities were sold later that year for $6.5 million to
Desilu Productions, owned by
Desi Arnaz and
Lucille Ball, who had been an RKO contract player from 1935 to 1942. 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, owned by
CBS Corporation), which it remains to this day. The renovated Culver City studio is now owned and operated as an independent production facility. Forty Acres, the Culver City backlot, was razed in 1976.
[RKO Forty Acres part of the Bonanza: Scenery Of The Ponderosa website. Retrieved 7/23/06.]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. By the end of the year, all that remained of the once ambitious studio was the parent firm, RKO General. It became the holding company for all of General Tire's broadcasting, soft-drink bottling, and hotel enterprises. The original
Frontier Airlines was also a subsidiary for a time. Years afterward, Thomas O'Neill claimed that his family's company had broken even on its investment in RKO Pictures, with the sale of the film library and studio lots, along with the profits from its own productions, letting General Tire walk away cleanly.
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Poster for Syncopation (1929), RKO's first release. |
1920s
*
Syncopation (1929; first RKO release)
*
Street Girl (1929; first official RKO production)
*
Rio Rita (1929; with
Technicolor sequences)
1930s
*
Cimarron (1931)
*
The Runaround (1931; first all-Technicolor RKO production)
*
Bird of Paradise (1932)
*
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
*
What Price Hollywood? (1932)
*
Flying Down to Rio (1933)
*
King Kong (1933)
*
Little Women (1933)
*
Morning Glory (1933)
*
The Gay Divorcee (1934)
*
The Informer (1934)
*
Of Human Bondage (1934)
*
Alice Adams (1935)
*
Becky Sharp (1935; first feature entirely in new
three-strip Technicolor)
*
The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)
*
Roberta (1935)
*
Top Hat (1935)
*
Swing Time (1936)
*
Shall We Dance (1937)
*
Stage Door (1937)
*
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
*
Gunga Din (1939)
*
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
*
Love Affair (1939)
1940s
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He might've looked like he didn't give a damn, but insiders knew Robert Mitchum as one of Hollywood's hardest-working actors. Poster for The Lusty Men (1952), directed by Nicholas Ray. |
*
Kitty Foyle (1940)
*
My Favorite Wife (1940)
*
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)
*
Ball of Fire (1941; distribution only)
*
Citizen Kane (1941)
*
The Little Foxes (1941; distribution only)
*
Suspicion (1941)
*
Cat People (1942)
*
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
*
The Pride of the Yankees (1942; distribution only)
*
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
*
Mr. Lucky (1943)
*
This Land Is Mine (1943)
*
The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
*
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946; distribution only)
*
It's a Wonderful Life (1946; distribution only)
*
Notorious (1946)
*
The Spiral Staircase (1946)
*
The Bishop's Wife (1947; distribution only)
*
Crossfire (1947)
*
Out of the Past (1947)
*
Fort Apache (1948)
*
I Remember Mama (1948)
*
Joan of Arc (1948; distribution only)
*
They Live by Night (1948)
*
The Big Steal (1949)
*
The Set-Up (1949)
*
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
*
The Window (1949)
1950s
*
His Kind of Woman (1951)
*
Rashomon (1951; U.S. distribution only)
*
The Thing (1951)
*
Angel Face (1952)
*
The Lusty Men (1952)
*
Macao (1952)
*
The Narrow Margin (1952)
*
On Dangerous Ground (1952)
*
The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
*
While the City Sleeps (1956; distribution only)
*
The Naked and the Dead (1958)
*RKO Hollywood Studios - 780 Gower Ave.,
Hollywood, Los Angeles/established by
Robertsonâ€"Cole in 1921; now owned by
CBS Paramount Television*RKO-Pathé Culver City Studios - 9336 Washington Blvd.,
Culver City/established by
Thomas H. Ince in 1919; now owned by PCCP Studio City Los Angeles
*RKO Forty Acres (
backlot) - Culver City/established by Ince in 1919; razed in 1976
*RKO Encino Ranch (backlot) -
Encino, Los Angeles/established by RKO in 1929; razed in 1954
*
Estudios Churubusco -
Churubusco, Mexico City/established by RKO and
Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta in 1945; now owned by Mexican government
*RKO Building (offices) - 1270 Sixth Ave., New York/
Art Deco skyscraper in
Rockefeller Center, built in 1931â€"32; now known simply as 1270 Avenue of the Americas Building
The classic RKO General station lineup consisted of
WOR-AM-FM-TV in
New York,
KHJ-AM-FM-TV in
Los Angeles,
KFRC-AM-FM in
San Francisco,
WHBQ-AM-FM-TV in
Memphis, the
Yankee Network and its flagships WNAC-AM-FM-TV in
Boston, and
CKLW-AM-FM-TV in
Detroit/
Windsor. (The Canadian government later tightened rules on foreign ownership of radio and TV outlets, forcing RKO to sell off its Windsor cluster in 1970.) The radio stations became famous as some of the leading
adult contemporary,
rock, and
top 40 stations in the world. However, RKO General's most notable legacy is what may be the longest licensing dispute in television history.
The start of licensing troubles
RKO General's legal saga began in 1965 when it applied for renewal of its license for KHJ-TV in Los Angeles. Fidelity Television, a local group, challenged the renewal, charging RKO with second-rate programming. Later, and more seriously, Fidelity claimed RKO General engaged in reciprocal trade practices, making vendors purchase advertising time on RKO stations if they wanted to sell General Tire products. RKO and General Tire executives testified before the
Federal Communications Commission, rejecting the accusations. An administrative judge found in favor of Fidelity, but the FCC remanded the matter for further findings in 1972. While the KHJ hearings were underway, RKO faced a license challenge for WNAC-TV in Boston. The FCC conditioned renewal of RKO's license for KHJ on the WNAC proceeding. When RKO applied for renewal of WOR-TV in New York, the FCC conditioned this renewal on the WNAC case as well.
On June 21, 1974, an administrative law judge renewed the WNAC license despite finding that General Tire had engaged in reciprocal trade practices. The following year, one of the companies competing for the station asked the FCC to revisit the case, alleging that General Tire bribed foreign officials, maintained a
slush fund for American campaign contributions, and misappropriated foreign corporate funds. RKO expressly denied these and other allegations of corporate wrongdoing on General Tire's part during a series of proceedings that began in 1975. Two years later, however, as part of a
Securities and Exchange Commission settlement, General Tire admitted to an eye-popping litany of corporate misconduct. Nonetheless, the RKO proceedings dragged on.
After a half-decade in the most recent round of hearings and investigations, the FCC stripped RKO of WNAC's license on June 6, 1980. Factors in the decision were the reciprocal trade practices of the 1960s, false financial filings by General Tire, and gross misconduct by General Tire in nonbroadcast fields. The ultimate basis for the revocation, however, was RKO's dishonesty before the Commission, which found that RKO had displayed a "lack of candor" regarding General Tire's misdeeds, thus threatening "the integrity of the Commission's process." The FCC ruling meant that RKO lost the KHJ and WOR licenses as well. RKO appealed the decision to the District of Columbia U.S. Court of Appeals. While it ordered a rehearing of the proceedings for KHJ and WOR, the court upheld the WNAC revocation solely on the grounds of the company's dishonesty. RKO General again appealed, but finally chose to settle the case, selling WNAC's assets to New England Television, a new company resulting from the merger of two of the original competitors for the station. As part of the settlement, the FCC granted a full license to New England Television, which renamed the station WNEV-TV. The station has since become
WHDH-TV.
Reorganization and dismantlement
In 1983, General Tire persuaded Congress to pass a law requiring the FCC to automatically renew the license of any
VHF television station voluntarily relocating to a state without such a broadcaster.
New Jersey was the only state fitting that description at the time. Consequently, RKO General officially changed WOR-TV's city of license from New York to
Secaucus, New Jersey, where it remains today. For all practical purposes, however, WOR remained a New York television station. Ironically,
WOR-AM was first licensed to nearby
Newark and didn't move to New York until 1941. A year after the renewal of the WOR-TV license, General Tire reorganized its farflung corporate interests into a holding company,
GenCorp, with General Tire and RKO General as its leading subsidiaries. The WOR move did little to relieve the regulatory pressure on RKO General, and GenCorp put the station on the market in 1986.
MCA won a bidding war with
Group W for the station, closing sale in April 1987; the station was subsequently renamed
WWOR-TV.
The WOR-TV sale came just in the nick of time for RKO. Later that year, FCC administrative law judge Edward Kuhlmann found RKO unfit to be a broadcast licensee on the basis of an extensive pattern of deceptive practices and recommended that the FCC strip the company of its licenses. Among other things, RKO was found to have misled advertisers about its ratings, engaged in fraudulent billing, lied to the FCC about a destroyed audit report, and filed false financial statements during the WNAC proceedings. Kuhlmann described RKO's conduct as the worst case of dishonesty ever brought before the Federal Communications Commission.
The group by this time included WOR-AM and
WRKS-FM (the former WOR-FM) in New York, KHJ-TV and KRTH-AM-FM (the former KHJ-AM-FM) in Los Angeles, WHBQ-AM-FM-TV in Memphis, and six other radio stations. GenCorp and RKO planned to appeal, claiming that they had fired every party responsible for the misconduct. However, the FCC, making clear that it would almost certainly reject any appeals and strip the licenses, urged RKO to sell the stations before that became necessary. RKO's parent company, GenCorp, then battling a hostile takeover bid by an investor group, was hungry for cash as a result of paying a premium on its own shares to stave off the attack, so liquidating an asset on the verge of being lost seemed prudent.
Over the next three years, RKO dismantled its broadcast operations. WOR-AM went to Buckley Broadcasting, WRKS to
Summit Communications, and KRTH-AM-FM to Beasley. KHJ-TV went to
Disney and became
KCAL-TV. The group's last broadcast holding, the Memphis cluster, was sold in 1990. Though the entire group was estimated to be worth at least $750 million, RKO was forced to part with its stations at considerably less than market value.
Television stations formerly owned by RKO
Radio stations formerly owned by RKO
(a partial listing)
Beginning with 1981's
Carbon Copy, RKO General became involved in the coproduction of a number of feature films (and one TV movie) under the rubric of "RKO Pictures." Collaborating on an average of about two pictures per year, RKO frequently worked with major namesâ€"including
Jack Nicholson (
The Border [1982]) and
Meryl Streep (
Plenty [1985])â€"but met with little success. In 1986,
Half Moon Street became the first RKO solo production in almost three decades; more solo ventures, including the Vietnam War drama
Hamburger Hill, appeared the next year, but production ended as GenCorp underwent a massive reorganization following its attempted takeover. The company's flagship tire division was sold to Germany's
Continental Tire. With RKO General dismantling its broadcast business, the original RKO
trademark,
remake rights, and other remaining assets were spun off as RKO Pictures Inc., which was acquired by Wesray Capital and linked with their
Six Flags amusement parks to form RKO/Six Flags Entertainment, Inc. Two years later, RKO Pictures was spun off yet again; former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury
William E. Simon and Ray Chambers became the majority stockholders.
In a process stretching from 1990 into the following year, RKO Pictures was acquired by its present owners: actress and
Post Cereals heiress
Dina Merrill and her husband, producer Ted Hartley, who merged it with their Pavilion Communications to form the present RKO Pictures LLC.
["Ted Hartley...and the Rebirth of RKO Studios" detailed 1999 article by Joseph DiSante based on interview with Hartley. Retrieved 7/26/06. Note that while the article refers to Hartleyâ€"Merrill's "RKO Pictures Inc.," SEC filings establish that the company is, at least currently, structured as an LLC.] Hartley and Merrill announced that the new RKO Pictures would return to moviemaking full-time. With the first RKO production under their ownership,
False Identity (1990), the company also stepped into the distribution business. In 1992, the new RKO made its first significant contribution to cinema, distributing the well-regarded independent production
Laws of Gravity, directed by
Nick Gomez. For the next five years, however, the company neither produced nor distributed a single film as Hartley and Merrill sorted out the ownership rights of RKO's vast library. RKO Pictures reemerged in 1998 with
Mighty Joe Young, a remake of a
1949 RKO movie that was itself something of a
King Kong redux. During the current decade, the company has been involved as a coproducer on TV movies and modestly budgeted features at the rate of about one annually. In 2002, RKO produced a stage version of the 1937 Astaireâ€"Rogers vehicle
Shall We Dance, under the title
Never Gonna Dance.
In 2003, RKO Pictures entered into a legal battle with Wall Street Financial Associates (WSFA) concerning a Short Form Acquisition Agreement dated that March 3. Ted Hartley and Dina Merrill, the majority interest holders in RKO Pictures, claimed that the owners of WSFA fraudulently induced them into signing an acquisition agreement by concealing their "cynical and rapacious" plans to acquire RKO Pictures 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.
[Entertainment Law Digest summary of "New Filingâ€"RKO Acquisition": RKO Pictures v. Wall Street Financial Associates, LLC; LA Superior Court SC077345. Complete filing available at ELD, July 2003. Retrieved 8/8/06.] 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.
[Internetstudios Com Inc 10QSB SEC small business quarterly report filing dated June 30, 2004. For more on InternetStudios.com see StockLemon Report on InternetStudios. Both retrieved 7/22/06.] At present, the company is evidently focusing on its remake rights, with
Are We Done Yet?, based on
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), in production and a new version of
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) announced.
Today, 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, remakes,
sequels, and
prequels connected with the RKO library. The television, video, and most of the theatrical distribution rights, however, are in other hands. For example, the U.S. and Canadian TVâ€"and, consequently, videoâ€"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.
[FindLawâ€"U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, Saltzman v CIR ruling in docket nos. 96-4195, 96-4203â€"argued October 3, 1997; decided December 11, 1997. Retrieved 8/10/06.] 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 Entertainment. During RKO Pictures' brief Wesray episode, Turner acquired many of the distribution rights that had returned to RKO via MBP, as well as the TV rights originally held back from C&C for the cities where RKO owned stations. Finally, Turner sold out to
Time Warner, which controls and distributes the bulk of the RKO library today, though RKO Pictures retains the copyright. In the UK, many of the rights to the RKO library are currently held by
Universal Studios. The German rights were acquired in 1969 by Leo Kirch on behalf of his KirchMedia; in 1971,
RAI, the Italian public broadcasting service, acquired the rights to the RKO library for that country. The Walt Disney features originally distributed by RKO are controlled by Disney and its subsidiary
Buena Vista. The Hartleyâ€"Merrill RKO Pictures has reprinted some RKO titles in the
public domain, offering them to television with a modernized version of the original RKO opening logo, which was first used theatrically for the 1998
Mighty Joe Young remake.
All
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." The closing logo is also a well-known trademark, a triangle enclosing a thunderbolt.
|
The classic closing logo of RKO Radio Pictures. |
Note: 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)â€"and not
IMDb.comâ€"is used as the final arbiter of whether specific films made between 1929 and 1957 were RKO solo productions, coproductions, or completely independent productions. Year of release is per IMDb-provided release date, independently verified in case of conflict.
RKO Radio Pictures history
*
C&C RKO 16mm Prints most extensive available discussion of RKO film library, by David Chierichetti
*
The RKO Logo essay by Rick Mitchell; part of
Hollywood: Lost and Found website
*
RKO Pictures Logos detailed, quirky descriptions by Nicholas Aczel and Sean Beard
*
The Andy Griffith Show and the "Real" Mayberry history of RKO's "Forty Acres" backlot by Jack Easton; part of
Radok News website
*
RKO Theater Chain list of classic movie houses belonging to RKO chain; part of
Cinema Treasures website
RKO General history
*
RKO General, Inc. v. FCC (1981) December 4, 1981, decision by U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit
RKO Pictures LLC
*
RKO Pictures the Merrill-Hartley company's website
*
Ted Hartley personal website of RKO Pictures LLC's chairman and CEO
