United Artists Corporation (UA) is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks.^[1]

The current United Artists formed in November 2006 under a partnership between producer/actor Tom Cruise and his production partner, Paula Wagner, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., an MGM company. Paula Wagner left the studio on August 14, 2008.^[2] Cruise owned a small stake in the studio until late 2011.^[3] It is now a fully owned subsidiary of MGM, which itself is owned by MGM Holdings.

History[link]

The early years[link]

Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith in 1919

The first United Artists logo, used until the 1967 sale to Transamerica

UA was incorporated as a joint venture on February 5, 1919, by four of the leading figures in early Hollywood: Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith. Each held a 20% stake, with the remaining 20% held by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo.^[4] The idea for the venture originated with Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford, and cowboy star William S. Hart a year earlier as they were traveling around the U.S. selling Liberty bonds to help the World War I effort. Already veterans of Hollywood, the four film stars began to talk of forming their own company to better control their own work as well as their futures.

They were spurred on by established Hollywood producers and distributors who were tightening their control over actor salaries and creative decisions, a process that evolved into the rigid studio system. With the addition of Griffith, planning began, but Hart bowed out before things had formalized. When he heard about their scheme, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, is said to have observed, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The four partners, with advice from McAdoo (son-in-law and former Treasury Secretary of then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams as its first managing director.

List of UA stockholders in 1920

The original terms called for Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith and Chaplin to independently produce five pictures each year. But by the time the company got under way in 1920–1921, feature films were becoming more expensive and more polished, and running times had settled at around ninety minutes (or eight reels). It was believed that no one, no matter how popular, could produce and star in five quality feature films a year. By 1924, by which time Griffith had dropped out, the company was facing a crisis: either bring in others to help support a costly distribution system or concede defeat. The veteran producer Joseph Schenck was hired as president. Not only had he been producing pictures for a decade, but he brought along commitments for films starring his wife, Norma Talmadge, his sister-in-law, Constance Talmadge, and his brother-in-law, Buster Keaton. Contracts were signed with a number of independent producers, most notably Samuel Goldwyn, Alexander Korda and Howard Hughes. Schenck also formed a separate partnership with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name. They also began international operations, first in Canada, then in Mexico, and by the end of the 1930s, United Artists was represented in over 40 countries.

D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin (seated) and Douglas Fairbanks at the signing of the contract establishing United Artists motion picture studio in 1919. Lawyers Albert Banzhaf (left) and Dennis F. O'Brien (right) stand in the background.

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

Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (1940s and 1950s)[link]

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

The Society aimed to advance the interests of independent producers in an industry overwhelmingly controlled by the studio system. SIMPP also fought to end ostensibly anti-competitive practices by the seven major film studios – Loew's, Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros./First National – that controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of films.

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

In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court Paramount Decision ordered the major Hollywood movie studios – Loew's/MGM, Paramount, Warner Bros./First National, 20th Century Fox and RKO – to sell their theater chains and to eliminate certain anti-competitive practices. This effectively brought an end to the studio system.

By 1958, many of the objectives that led to the creation of the SIMPP had been obtained and SIMPP closed its offices.

The 1950s and 1960s[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

On February 16, 1951, two lawyers-turned-producers Arthur Krim (of Eagle-Lion Films) and Robert Benjamin approached Pickford and Chaplin with a wild idea: let them take over United Artists for five years. If, at the end of those five years, UA was profitable, they would be given an option to buy the company. Since UA was barely alive, Pickford saw nothing to lose and agreed. Chaplin was against the deal, but changed his mind in late 1952 when the US government revoked his re-entry visa while he was in London for the UK premiere of Limelight. He sold his remaining shares of UA several years later.

In taking over UA, Krim and Benjamin created the first studio without an actual "studio". Primarily acting as bankers, they offered money to independent producers. UA leased space at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studio, but did not own a studio lot as such. Thus UA did not have the overhead, the maintenance, or the expensive production staff that ran up costs at other studios.

Among their first clients were Sam Spiegel and John Huston, whose "Horizon Productions" gave UA one major hit, The African Queen (1951) and one slightly less successful one, Moulin Rouge (1952), based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec. Others followed, among them Stanley Kramer, Otto Preminger, Hill-Hecht-Lancaster Productions, and a number of actors, newly freed from studio contracts and anxious to produce or direct their own films.

UA production-head Arnold Picker selected the properties the company would back. With UA's new success, Pickford saw a chance to exit gracefully, though she still held out for top dollar, walking away with $1.5 million in 1955. That same year, UA won its first Best Picture Oscar, for the film Marty. It starred Ernest Borgnine, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

UA went public the following year, and as the other mainstream studios fell into decline, UA prospered, adding relationships with the Mirisch brothers, Billy Wilder, Joseph E. Levine and others. In 1961, United Artists released West Side Story, an adaptation of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim stage musical, which won a record ten Academy Awards (including Best Picture).

In 1958 United Artists Records was created, initially to release soundtracks from UA films, but it later diversified into many types of music. In 1968, UA Records was merged with Liberty Records, along with their many subsidiary labels such as Imperial Records and Dolton Records. In 1972 the group was consolidated into one entity as United Artists Records. It was later taken over by EMI.

Also in 1958 UA acquired Ilya Lopert's Lopert Pictures Corporation a company that released foreign films in the United States to release foreign films that may have attracted criticism or cause censorship problems.^[5] In 1964 UA released the controversial Billy Wilder American made film Kiss Me, Stupid under the Lopert name. Lopert later became vice-president of United Artists in Paris.

In 1959, United Artists offered its first ever television series, The Troubleshooters (after failing to sell several pilots in the previous few years), an adventure/drama on NBC, starring Keenan Wynn and Bob Mathias, as employees of an international construction company.^[6] In 1960, United Artists purchased Ziv Television Programs and, using the idea of financial backing for television, UA's television division was responsible for shows such as CBS's Gilligan's Island and three ABC programs, The Fugitive with David Janssen, Outer Limits, a science fiction series, and The Patty Duke Show with Patty Duke and William Schallert. The television unit also had begun to build up a substantial – and profitable – rental library, having purchased Associated Artists Productions, owners of Warner Bros. pre-1950^[7][8] features, shorts and cartoons, as well as the Popeye cartoons, purchased from Paramount Pictures a few years earlier. (See note below at Film archives for more on this).

In 1963 United Artists released two Stanley Kramer films, the epic comedy It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and the drama A Child is Waiting. In 1964, UA introduced U.S. film audiences to The Beatles by releasing producer Walter Shenson's A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965). (The group had already made wildly successful television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show).

At the same time it backed two expatriate North Americans in Britain, who had acquired screen rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. For $1 million, UA backed Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No (which was a sensation in 1962) and launched the James Bond series. The franchise has outlived UA's time as a major studio, still running half a century later. Other successful projects backed in this period included Blake Edwards's Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, which made a star of Clint Eastwood.

In 1964, the French subsidiary Les Productions Artistes Associés released its first production, That Man From Rio. On the basis of its fantastic string of film and television hits in the 1960s, the company was an attractive property, and in 1967 Krim and Benjamin sold control of UA to the San Francisco-based insurance giant, the Transamerica Corporation.

UA released another Best Picture Oscar winner in 1967, In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, and a nominee for Best Picture, The Graduate, an Embassy production that UA distributed overseas.

The 1970s[link]

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For a time the flow of successful pictures continued, including the 1971 screen version of Fiddler on the Roof. (However, the 1972 film version of Man of La Mancha was a failure.) New talent was encouraged, including Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Sylvester Stallone, Saul Zaentz, Miloš Forman, and Brian De Palma. In 1973, UA took over the sales and distribution of MGM's films in Anglo-America, while Cinema International Corporation took over international distribution rights.

In 1975, Harry Saltzman sold UA his 50% stake in Danjaq, LLC, the holding-company for the Bond films. UA was to remain a silent partner, putting up money, while Albert Broccoli took producer credit. Danjaq and UA have remained the public co-copyright holders for the Bond series ever since, and the 2006 Casino Royale release shares the copyright with Columbia Pictures, part of the consortium that now owns MGM/UA.

However, Transamerica was not pleased with UA's frequent releases of films rated X by the Motion Picture Association of America, such as Midnight Cowboy and Last Tango in Paris; in these instances, Transamerica demanded the byline "A Transamerica Company" be removed from the UA logo on the prints and in all advertising. At one point, the parent company expressed their desire to phase out the UA name and replace it with Transamerica Films. Finally in 1978, following a dispute over administrative expenses, UA's top executives, including Arthur B. Krim, chairman, Eric Pleskow, president and chief executive officer, Robert S. Benjamin, chairman of the finance committee, walked out. Within days they announced the formation of Orion Pictures, with backing from Warner (Orion would eventually be a part of MGM along with United Artists, while Warner retained the rights to the pre-1982 Orion library along with acquiring the rights to a few post-1982 Orion films.) The departures of Krim, Pleskow and Benjamin concerned several Hollywood figures enough that they took out an ad in a trade paper warning Transamerica that it had made a fatal mistake in letting them go.

[edit] The Heaven's Gate fiasco

The new leadership of UA agreed to back Heaven's Gate, the pet project of director Michael Cimino, who had won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for his 1978 film The Deer Hunter. A western starring Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Walken, Heaven's Gate had an unusually protracted shooting schedule (Cimino reportedly wanted 50 takes for a single scene, for instance) which generated adverse publicity about runaway costs and Cimino's autocratic style. The almost four-hour film opened to scathing reviews and alienated audiences. Cimino pulled it in favor of a 149-minute version, but the damage was done. It turned out to be a colossal box office bomb, netting only $3 million in earnings compared to a budget of $44 million. United Artists recorded a major loss for the year due almost entirely to the Heaven's Gate fiasco. To Transamerica, it was only a blip on a multi-billion dollar balance sheet, but it soured the relationship forever. To the greater Hollywood community, it also signaled that UA was a company that could no longer produce bankable pictures. The Heaven's Gate fiasco may have saved the United Artists brand as UA's final head before the sale, Steven Bach, wrote in his book Final Cut that there was talk about renaming United Artists to Transamerica Pictures. Despite the financial ruin, UA's blockbuster franchise films (Pink Panther, James Bond, and eventually Rocky) were emphasized more heavily than the financially unsuccessful films.

United Artists Classics[link]

In 1981, United Artists Classics, which had formerly been a division of the company that re-released library titles, was turned into a first run art film distributor by Nathaniel T. Kwit Jr. Tom Bernard was hired as the division's head of sales, and Ira Deutchman^[9][10][11] as its head of marketing. Later the division added Michael Barker and Donna Gigliotti. Deutchman left to form Cinecom, and Barker and Bernard later went on to form Orion Classics and Sony Pictures Classics. The label mostly released foreign and independent films such as Ticket to Heaven and The Grey Fox, and occasional first-run reissues from the UA library, such as director's cuts of Joan Micklin Silver's Head Over Heels and Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way. When Barker, and Bernard left to form Orion, the label was briefly rechristened MGM/UA Classics before it was finally shut down in the late 1980s.

The 1980s and 1990s: MGM/UA[link]

Around 1980, Transamerica was retiring from the filmmaking business, and United Artists was put up for sale. MGM, led by Kirk Kerkorian (the company that United Artists had a 10-year distribution deal since 1974), made a bid for UA by estimating that MGM would pay UA $350 million in distribution fees if the expiring distribution deal was renewed and used the estimated amount to offer the $350 million^[12] to Transamerica to buy United Artists. Transamerica said yes and MGM absorbed UA. The studio, which was essentially bankrupt following the disaster of Heaven's Gate, cut its production schedule sharply. MGM and UA were merged into MGM/UA Entertainment Co. from 1981 to 1986. Because MGM was not able to drop out from CIC (which distributed MGM's films outside Anglo-America), which they had previously joined in 1973, UA's international operations were merged with CIC; the venture eventually changed their name to United International Pictures. MGM/UA would drop out from the venture in 2000, to have their films released internationally by 20th Century Fox.

UA was essentially dormant after 1990, releasing no films for several years. In part this was due to the continuing turmoil at MGM/UA; bought by Ted Turner in 1986, he could not get financial backing to complete the deal and, seventy-four days later, re-sold UA and the MGM trademark to Kerkorian, and sold the MGM studio lot to Lorimar (now the location of Sony Pictures Studios), while keeping almost all of the MGM/UA library for himself (with the exception of the United Artists library). (See below for a note on the film library.)

As a result of the MGM split from Turner, United Artists and what was left of MGM/UA (at the time called MGM Entertainment Co.) was subsequently reorganized, and became MGM/UA Communications Co. after Kerkorian bought back the MGM trademark. As a result, both MGM and UA became merely brands of MGM/UA Communications Co. In 1988, a planned $400-million split between MGM and UA was announced by Kerkorian. He hoped to end up with at least 57% of the new MGM and retain its share of UA (at the time called United Artists Pictures, Inc.). 25% of MGM would go to a company controlled by Burt Sugarman and producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber, and 18% would be offered for sale to public holders of MGM/UA stock, but the plan fell through. Around this time, Viacom, Gannett, Disney, Republic Pictures, General Electric, CBS, Time Inc., Hearst, News Corporation, TCI, Globo of Brazil, Aaron Spelling's Spelling Entertainment and Sony all tried to purchase MGM/UA. Nevertheless, the studio was able to manage box-office hits such as Rain Man (winner of the 1988 Oscar for Best Picture), Baby Boom, and The Living Daylights. However, during this period, the company's fortunes languished greatly, losing money while its market share declined to 8% by the end of the 1980s. The sale of MGM/UA to an Australian company Qintex/Australian Television Network (owners of the Hal Roach library both MGM and UA distributed in the 1930s) in 1989 also fell through, due to the company's bankruptcy later that year. Eventually, in 1990, came the sale to Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti, who attempted to purchase Pathé the previous year. Parretti had bought a smaller company and renamed it Pathé Communications anticipating a successful buy of the original French company, but failed in that attempt, so instead merged MGM/UA with his former company, resulting into MGM/Pathé Communications Co. Having bought MGM/UA by overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992, also resulting in the sale or closure of MGM/UA's string of US theaters. On July 2, 1992, MGM/Pathé Communications Co. was renamed to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Inc. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, and convinced John Calley, the well-respected and long-retired president of WB from the '70's, to run UA. Under his supervision, Calley revived two long-running franchises, the Pink Panther and James Bond films, and touched on an aspect of UA's past by giving the widest release ever to a film with an NC-17 rating, Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas's controversial Showgirls. MGM was sold by Credit Lyonnais in 1996, again to Kirk Kerkorian, resulting in the departure of Calley as UA president.

The 2000s[link]

During the 2000s, UA was repositioned as a specialty studio. MGM had just acquired The Samuel Goldwyn Company, which had been a leading distributor of arthouse films, and after that name was retired, UA assumed SGC's purpose. The distributorship, branding, and copyrights for UA's main franchises (James Bond, Pink Panther, and Rocky) were moved to MGM, although select MGM releases (notably the James Bond franchise co-held with Danjaq, LLC and the Amityville Horror remake) carry a United Artists copyright.

UA (re-christened United Artists Films) hired Bingham Ray, who previously founded October Films, to run the company in September 2001, and under his supervision produced and distributed many "art-house" films, among them Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine; 2002's Nicholas Nickleby and the winner of that year's Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, No Man's Land; and 2004's Undertow, directed by David Gordon Green, and Terry George's Hotel Rwanda, a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Entertainment.

On April 8, 2005, a partnership of Comcast, Sony and several merchant banks bought United Artists and its parent, MGM, for a total of $4.8 billion. Though only a minority investor, Sony closed MGM's distribution system and folded most of their staff into their own studio, and the movies UA had completed and planned for release (Capote, Art School Confidential, The Woods, and Romance and Cigarettes) were reassigned to Sony Pictures Classics.

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

Sony has a minority stake in MGM but otherwise MGM and UA will operate under the direction of Stephen Cooper (CEO of MGM and a minority owner himself).

The Tom Cruise era[link]

On November 2, 2006, MGM announced that actor Tom Cruise and his long-time production partner Paula Wagner were resurrecting UA^[13][14] (this announcement came after the duo were released from a fourteen-year production relationship at Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures earlier that year). Cruise, Wagner and MGM Studios created United Artists Entertainment LLC and the producer/actor and his partner owned a 30% stake in the studio,^[15] with the approval by MGM's consortium of owners.

The deal gave them control over production and development of films. Wagner was named CEO of United Artists, which was allotted an annual slate of four films with different budget ranges, while Cruise serves as a producer for the revamped studio as well as serving as the occasional star.

UA became the first motion picture studio granted a WGA waiver in January 2008 during the Writers' Strike.^[16]

On August 14, 2008, MGM announced Paula Wagner will leave United Artists to produce films independently.^[2] Her output as head of UA was two films, both starring Cruise, Lions for Lambs^[17] and Valkyrie, which despite mixed reviews was successful at the box office.^[18] Wagner's departure led to speculation that an overhaul at United Artists was imminent.^[2]

Since then, United Artists has merely served as a co-producer with MGM for two releases: the 2009 remake of Fame and Hot Tub Time Machine. Throughout 2010, continued debt and credit issues for MGM Holdings, Inc., United Artists' parent company had left the future of MGM and UA in doubt until it was resolved near the end of the year.

A 2011 financial report revealed that MGM reacquired its 100% stake in United Artists.^[15] MGM might continue to make new films under the UA brand.^[15]

Historical list of films[link]

• List of United Artists films

Film archives[link]

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

United Artists, through various strategic purchases, built up a substantial film and television library. Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the RKO and pre-1950^[7][8] Warner Bros. libraries. Having passed through numerous hands, these catalogs now belong to Time Warner's Turner Entertainment unit.

Since UA produced very few of the pictures it released, the copyrights of UA's output up until the 1970s belonged to the individual or company producing. UA managed to acquire full rights to a majority of these films later on. MGM-Pathé, now simply known as MGM (or, for legal purposes, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios), took over the copyrights to UA films (particularly the in-house productions) after the studio folded into the former company in 1990. Productions made after the company was revived by MGM in 1994 are copyrighted by UA. Still, the rights to many UA releases around this time reverted back to the producers.

Some UA films of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s fell into the public domain, to be picked up by Republic Pictures (today part of Paramount Pictures) or studios like Westchester Films (successor to Castle Hill Productions), and Classic Media (in most cases with distribution by Warner Brothers). A small fraction of UA's silent output is now owned by Kino International.

A number of United Artists' films from the 1920s through the 1940s that are in the public domain are seldom shown. Of the hundreds of films UA distributed over eighty years, those it still owns outright are most of its own productions from 1951 forward, plus a few pre-1951 films such as 1933's Hallelujah, I'm a Bum and Howard Hawks' Red River (1948) with parent company MGM handling distribution. Until the early '90s, many of those films were released on home video by Magnetic Video, which later became CBS/Fox Video, in the United States and Canada and by Warner Home Video internationally.

The Big Four (Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith)[link]

• Charlie Chaplin's films, features and shorts are controlled by his estate, with most rights handled by French distributor MK2 and Janus Films.

• Most of the films Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith made at United Artists now rest with film restoration company Film Preservation Associates.

• In 1931, Mary Pickford considered destroying her films, afraid they might seem ridiculous to future generations of viewers; however, her friend Lillian Gish managed to persuade her otherwise.^[19][20] The rights to all of her films are now held by the Mary Pickford Foundation.

Disney, Lantz, and Twentieth Century Pictures' productions[link]

• All of the Disney shorts released through United Artists from June 1932 to May 1937, as well as the 1943 film Victory Through Air Power, were always owned by The Walt Disney Company. A number of these had been re-released through RKO (replacing the original titles) prior to the launch of Buena Vista Distribution in 1953.

• All of the Walter Lantz cartoons distributed by UA during 1947 up to 1949 are now held by Lantz's original home, Universal.

• The Twentieth Century pictures released by UA between 1933 and 1935 rest with the successor company, 20th Century Fox.

Collaborations[link]

Films made by UA in co-production with other companies rest with several studios in certain territories or under contractual agreements.

• As of the present, UA owns domestic distribution (including television syndication, theatrical, and internet) and the copyright to The Return of the Pink Panther. All other rights reside under Universal Pictures' Focus Features division in partnership with ITC and its successor ITV Global Entertainment Ltd.. Ironically, MGM/UA's rights are the result of their theatrical distribution license for the ITC/ITV library.

• In another twist of irony, UA also owns theatrical distribution rights to the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep (another ITC production originally released by UA) by virtue of MGM's distribution rights to ITC's theatrical output.

• Worldwide rights to Always are now with Universal Pictures, the film's co-producing studio.

• Most ancillary rights to Convoy (an EMI Films production) are now with EMI's successor company, StudioCanal, although its copyright and US home video re-release issues are with MGM, but an official home video/DVD re-issue has yet to be announced.

Independent producers[link]

• Rights to the UA-released Hal Roach films are owned by his estate. They retain the original film elements and licensed the distribution rights to RHI Entertainment, even though most of these are in the public domain.

• McLintock!, made by John Wayne's Batjac Productions, is in the public domain (though the music score is still under copyright). Batjac retains the original film elements, and licensed Paramount Home Entertainment the distribution rights to release DVD versions authorized by Batjac and Wayne's estate.

• Rights to the UA-distributed Hopalong Cassidy films are held by the late William Boyd's company, U.S. Television Office.

• Rights to Stanley Kramer's pre-1953 productions for UA (ex. Champion, The Men, High Noon), as well as a majority of the films made by Enterprise Productions (ex. Body and Soul, Arch of Triumph) are currently owned by Republic Pictures under Paramount, with Trifecta handling television syndication and Lionsgate holding video/DVD rights. Another Kramer production, the 1950 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac, is in the public domain.

• Rights to the The Caddo Company/Howard Hughes films produced by Hughes for UA are now owned by Universal (except for a few like Two Arabian Knights and The Front Page, which are in the public domain; home video rights rest with independent home video distributors like Flicker Alley and Reelclassicdvd.com).

• The pre-1941 Samuel Goldwyn films released by UA (as well as the films made during his tenure at RKO) are owned by the Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. Family Trust. The Samuel Goldwyn Company (with HBO Home Video) handled North American home entertainment distribution rights, which were later transferred to MGM (which had purchased Goldwyn's parent Orion Pictures in 1997). In 2012, the Trust transferred North American distribution to Warner Bros.^[21] and the global license to Miramax.^[22]

• The U.S. rights to The African Queen are now owned by Paramount Pictures (after years of changing hands as the result of a series of management changes involving Paramount's parent company Viacom). As of the present, Paramount handles theatrical distribution, while Trifecta Entertainment & Media manages television syndication under Paramount's license. ITV Global Entertainment Ltd. handles distribution outside ITU region 2 countries and U.S. territories.

• Ancillary rights to The Final Countdown are now with Lionsgate (successor-in-interest to Producers Sales Organization), however the video rights are held by Blue Underground.

• Lionsgate also now owns US DVD rights to Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (under license from Paramount Pictures, which owns US distribution rights on behalf of the film's rights holder, American Zoetrope, Coppola's company). Trifecta (also under license from Paramount) handles television distribution rights. International distribution rights have been farmed out to a joint venture between StudioCanal and Miramax.

• Rights to Mike Todd's Around the World in Eighty Days and the UA-distributed Lorimar films are now with Warner Bros.. Warner Communications bought the rights to Days from Elizabeth Taylor, Todd's widow, and successor company Time Warner bought the Lorimar library after they bought out the company in 1990.

• Saul Zaentz and his namesake corporation retains the rights to his UA-distributed productions, which includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film The Lord of the Rings. Zaentz licensed the distribution of these films to Warner Bros.

• Several of Otto Preminger's UA films remain under the control of his estate, with Warner Bros. distributing. However, Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm is no longer under copyright (though the music score still is).

• Rights to the Mexican films originally released by UA are now with Laguna Films, while others are in the public domain or owned by independent companies. That's because the US copyright laws did not apply worldwide.

• The 1951 film version of Scrooge is now held by its original production company, Renown Film Productions, with VCI Entertainment handling video rights.

The Selznick library[link]

• Rights to Selznick International Pictures and other later productions from David O. Selznick through UA and Selznick Releasing Organization are held by ABC (which is also owned by Disney). This excludes Gone with the Wind, which was originally released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and is now owned by Time Warner (via subsidiary Turner Entertainment Company) with TW's Warner Bros. unit holding distribution rights.

• Like Gone with the Wind, The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) is also owned by Turner. Unlike the case of Gone with the Wind, which Selznick sold to MGM in 1944, It is assumed that The Prisoner of Zenda was bought by MGM themselves because they planned to produce a would-be 1952 remake of the film and wished to better the original film (a similar situation occurred when MGM filmed a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1941, having also bought the 1931 version from Paramount). When the pre-May 1986 MGM library was bought by Turner Entertainment, both productions were included in the roster as well.

• Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), Nothing Sacred (1937), A Star is Born (1937) and Made for Each Other are now in the public domain.

Pre-May 1986 MGM/UA library[link]

• The pre-May 1986 MGM films released through United Artists (and outside Anglo-America through Cinema International Corporation and United International Pictures) are also now with WB/Turner Entertainment.

• Some of the pre-May 1986 MGM/UA films made around the early 1980s still remain in the MGM library and were not picked up by Turner Entertainment due to most of these films produced by UA (ex.: Don Bluth's 1982 animated film The Secret of NIMH; the 1983 film WarGames; the foreign rights to the 1976 Sidney Lumet film Network and the James Bond, Pink Panther and Rocky franchises).

• However, a specific film from the official UA library, the 1937 film The Prisoner of Zenda, has managed to enter the Turner library, thus part of the Warner catalogs. (See above)

• One WB film in the a.a.p. package, Rope, had its rights reverted to director Alfred Hitchcock in later years. His estate then sold the rights to Universal Studios in 1983.

• The 1975 documentary, Bugs Bunny: Superstar, is also now with WB/Turner, as it featured several full cartoons in the a.a.p. package.

• Most of the a.a.p. library (The Popeye cartoons and most of the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library) are owned by WB/Turner (The only exception is Rope.)

The Beatles' films[link]

• Rights to A Hard Day's Night (1964) are controlled by The Weinstein Company, in conjunction with Miramax Films and Lionsgate (the latter company currently holding home video rights under Miramax).
• The rights to Help! (1965) and Let It Be (1970), also distributed by UA, are now owned by the surviving members of The Beatles and the estates of the deceased members through Apple Corps, with licensing from EMI.
• Yellow Submarine (1968) is owned by Subafilms, the Beatles' production company. MGM continued to distribute the film for many years; however Capitol Records assumed video distribution for a Blu-Ray release in 2012.

United Artists Television[link]

UA Films on video[link]

United Artists originally leased the home video rights to its films (including the pre-1950 Warner Bros. classics they owned at the time) to Magnetic Video, the first home video company. Magnetic was purchased by 20th Century Fox in 1981 and was renamed 20th Century-Fox Video that year. In 1982, 20th Century-Fox Video merged with CBS Video Enterprises (which had demerged with MGM/CBS Home Video after MGM merged with UA) giving birth to CBS/Fox Video. Although MGM owned UA around this time, the latter studio's licensing deal with CBS/Fox was still in effect; however, the newly-renamed MGM/UA Home Video started releasing some UA product, including a few recent films. In 1986, the pre-1950 WB and the pre-May 1986 MGM film and television libraries were purchased by Ted Turner after its short-lived ownership of MGM/UA, and as a result CBS/Fox lost home video rights to the pre-1950 WB films to MGM/UA Home Video. When the deal with CBS/Fox (inherited from Magnetic Video) expired in 1989, the UA films began to be issued through MGM/UA Home Video. Up until then, international distribution was handled by Warner Home Video, including in the UK, Europe, Japan, and South America.

In the late 1980s, UA licensed the video releases for its more obscure titles to a small specialty video distributor called Wood Knapp Video. This deal lasted in effect until the early 1990s.

United Artists Broadcasting[link]

United Artists owned and operated two television stations between the years of 1968 and 1977. Legal ID's for the company would typically say "United Artists Broadcasting: an entertainment service of Transamerica Corporation," along with the Transamerica "T" logo.

Additionally, United Artists Broadcasting also held the permit to KUAB-TV in Houston, Texas, which would have possibly launched sometime around 1969 on channel 20; the station would eventually launch in 1982 under different ownership as KTXH.^[23] United Artists also owned one radio station, WWSH in Philadelphia, from 1970 to 1977.

UAB/Transamerica left the broadcasting business in 1977 by selling WUAB to the Gaylord Broadcasting Company and WWSH to Cox Communications.

See also[link]

• List of United Artists films
• United Artists Television
• United Artists Records
• List of film production companies
• Production company

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

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

External links[link]

• Official website
• United Artists at the Internet Movie Database

Joe Harnell (August 2, 1924, The Bronx, New York City - July 14, 2005, Sherman Oaks, California) was an American easy listening composer and arranger.

Early life[link]

His father was a vaudeville performer who also played in jazz and klezmer ensembles. Harnell began playing piano at age six and was performing in his father's ensembles by age 14. He attended the University of Miami on a music scholarship in the early 1940s, and in 1943 joined the Air Force, playing with Glenn Miller's Air Force Band. He studied with Nadia Boulanger when stationed in Paris and then under William Walton at Trinity College of Music in London. After his discharge in 1946, he studied at Tanglewood under Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein.

Music career[link]

Eschewing the art-music world, Harnell sought work in pop and jazz, working as a for-hire pianist after returning to New York City in 1950. He played in Lester Lanin's band at this time and found work as an accompanist for singers such as Judy Garland, Maurice Chevalier, and Marlene Dietrich. From 1958 to 1961, he was Peggy Lee's full-time accompanist and arranger for the albums Anything Goes:Cole Porter and Peggy Lee & the George Shearing Quartet. In 1962, he was hurt in a car crash, and while he recovered, Kapp Records asked him to work on writing potential hits in the then-hot genre of bossa nova. Harnell's biggest success was with his arrangement of Fly Me to the Moon, which was a hit in the US in 1963 (#14 Pop, #4 AC)^[1] and which won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.^[2] The song also peaked at #6 in Joe's hometown, on WMCA in New York, on January 16, 1963. The album from which it was taken went to #3 on the Billboard 200.^[3] Harnell would go on to release nearly 20 easy listening albums, on Kapp, Columbia, and Motown among others.

Starting in 1964, Harnell worked with Grey Advertising as a jingle writer, and from 1967 to 1973, he worked as musical director of The Mike Douglas Show. In 1973, Harnell moved to Hollywood and worked in film score and television composition, composing for The Bionic Woman, The Incredible Hulk, Alien Nation, and V, for which he was awarded an Emmy in 1986.^[4] Harnell also wrote the iconic signature tune introducing United Artists movies in the 1980s, as well as the theme music for the NBC daytime soap Santa Barbara. Following this he became a faculty member at USC's Thornton School of Music as an instructor in film score composition.

Personal life[link]

Harnell published an autobiography entitled Counterpoint in 2000, co-authored with television producer/director Ira Skutch,^[5] and died of heart failure on July 14, 2005.^[4]

Joe Harnell's son, Jess Harnell is a voice actor, and is best known for his work as the voice of Wakko Warner on the Steven Spielberg-produced animated series Animaniacs.

Joe's Grandson, Jeremy, is an award-winning composer and visual artist working under the name JC Harnell. Winner of 2011 Peoples Music Award for Best Abstract/Experimental Artist.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Joseph Harnell at the Internet Movie Database
• http://www.joeharnell.com/home.html

Blake Edwards (July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.

Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures. He used his writing skills to begin producing and directing, with some of his most well-known films including Experiment in Terror, The Great Race, and the hugely successful Pink Panther film series with the British comedian Peter Sellers. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he also directed drama films, including Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses. His greatest successes, however, were his comedies, and most of his films were either musicals, melodramas, slapstick comedies, or thrillers.

In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.^[1]

Early life[link]

Born William Blake Crump in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His grandfather was J. Gordon Edwards, a director of silent movies, and his stepfather, Jack McEdwards,^[2] became a film production manager after moving his family to Los Angeles in 1925.^[3] In an interview with Village Voice in 1971, he said that he had "always felt alienated, estranged from my . . . father."^[4] After attending grammar and high school in Los Angeles, he began taking jobs as an actor during World War II. Edwards describes this period:

I worked with the best directors—Ford, Wyler, Preminger—and learned a lot from them. But I wasn't a very cooperative actor. I was a spunky, smart-assed kid. Maybe even then I was indicating that I wanted to give, not take, direction.^[4]

Edwards served in the United States Coast Guard where he experienced a severe back injury, which left him in pain for years afterward.^[3]

Career[link]

In the 1954-1955 television season, Edwards joined with Richard Quine to create Mickey Rooney's first television series, The Mickey Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan, a sitcom about a young studio page trying to become a serious actor. Edwards' hard-boiled private detective scripts for Richard Diamond, Private Detective became NBC's answer to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, reflecting Edwards's unique humor. Edwards also created, wrote and directed the 1959 TV series Peter Gunn, with music by Henry Mancini. In the same year Edwards produced, with Mancini's musical theme, Mr. Lucky, an adventure series on CBS starring John Vivyan and Ross Martin. Mancini's association with Edwards continued in his film work, significantly contributing to their success.

Operation Petticoat (1959)

Operation Petticoat was Edwards' first big-budget movie as a director. The film, which starred Tony Curtis and Cary Grant, became the "greatest box-office success of the decade for Universal [Studios]," and made Edwards a recognized director.^[3]

Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)

Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on the novel by Truman Capote, is credited with establishing him as a "cult figure" with many critics. Andrew Sarris called it the "directorial surprise of 1961," and it became a "romantic touchstone" for college students in the early 1960s.^[3]

Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

Days of Wine and Roses, a dark psychological film about the effects of alcoholism on a previously happy marriage, starred Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. It has been described as "perhaps the most unsparing tract against drink that Hollywood has yet produced, more pessimistic than Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend." The film gave another major boost to Edwards' reputation as an important director.^[3]

Edwards' most popular films were comedies, the melodrama Days of Wine and Roses being a notable exception. His most dynamic and successful collaboration was with Peter Sellers in six of the movies in the Pink Panther series.^[5] Five of the those involved Edwards and Sellers in original material, while Trail of the Pink Panther, made after Sellers died in 1980, was made up of unused material from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. He also worked with Sellers on the film The Party. Edwards later directed the comedy film 10 with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek.^[5]

Darling Lili (1969)

Darling Lili, starring Julie Andrews, is considered by many followers of Edwards' film as "the director's masterpiece." According to critic George Morris, "it synthesizes every major Edwards theme: the disappearance of gallantry and honor, the tension between appearances and reality and the emotional, spiritual, moral, and psychological disorder" in such a world. Edwards used difficult cinematography techniques, including long-shot zooms, tracking, and focus distortion, to great effect.^[3]

However, the film failed badly at the box office. At a cost of $17 million to make, few people went to see it, and the few who did weren't impressed. It brought Paramount Pictures to "the verge of financial collapse," and became an example of "self-indulgent extravagance" in filmmaking "that was ruining Hollywood."^[3]

In 2004, Edwards received an Honorary Academy Award for cumulative achievements over the course of his film career.^[6]

Pink Panther films[link]

Edwards is best known for directing most of the comedy film series The Pink Panther, and all of the entries starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. It was considered a fruitful, yet complicated relationship, with many disagreements during production. At various times in their film relationship, "he more than once swore off Sellers," as too hard to direct. However, in his later years, he admitted that working with Sellers was often irresistible:

"We clicked on comedy, and we were lucky we found each other, because we both had so much respect for it. We also had an ability to come up with funny things and great situations that had to be explored. But in that exploration there would oftentimes be disagreement. But I couldn't resist those moments when we jelled. And if you ask me who contributed most to those things, it couldn't have happened unless both of us were involved, even though it wasn't always happy."^[7]

The films were all highly profitable. The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), for example, cost just $2.5 million to make, but grossed $100 million, while The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), did even better.^[3]

Silent film style

Having grown up in Hollywood, the son of a studio production manager and grandson of a silent film director, Edwards had watched the films of the great silent clowns, including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy. Both he and Sellers appreciated and understood the comedy styles in silent films and tried to recreate it in their work together. After their immense success with the first two Pink Panther films, The Pink Panther (1963) and A Shot in the Dark (1964), which adapted many silent film aspects, including slapstick, they attempted to go even further in The Party (1968). Although the film is relatively unknown, some have considered it a "masterpiece in this vein" of silent comedy, even though it included minimal dialogue.^[8][9]

Personal life[link]

Edwards, the step-grandson of prolific silent-film director J. Gordon Edwards, married his first wife, actress Patricia Walker, in 1953; they divorced in 1967. She appeared in the comedy All Ashore (1953), for which Edwards was one of the screenwriters. Edwards' second marriage from 1969 until his death was to Julie Andrews. She appeared in a number of his films, including Darling Lili, 10, Victor Victoria and the autobiographical satire S.O.B., in which Andrews played a character who was a caricature of herself. In 1995, he wrote the book for the stage musical adaptation of Victor/Victoria, also starring Andrews.

Edwards described his struggle with the illness chronic fatigue syndrome for 15 years in the documentary I Remember Me (2000).^[10]

Edwards and Andrews had five children.^[11] The two eldest, Jennifer and Geoffrey, are from his previous marriage; middle child Emma is from Andrews' first marriage; and the youngest children are two adopted orphans from Vietnam, Amelia Leigh and Joanna Lynne. Edwards and Andrews adopted them in the early 1970s. All of the children, except Joanna, have appeared in his movies.

Death[link]

On December 15, 2010, Edwards died of complications of pneumonia at the Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.^[12] His wife and children were at his side.^[5]

Legacy[link]

Edwards was greatly admired as well as strongly criticized as a filmmaker during his career. On the negative side, general critique included this by American film author George Morris:

It has been difficult for many critics to accept Blake Edwards as anything more than a popular entertainer. Edwards' detractors acknowledge his formal skill but deplore the absence of profundity in his movies. Edwards' movies are slick and glossy, but their shiny surfaces reflect all too accurately the disposable values of contemporary life.^[3]

But others recognized him more for his significant achievements at different periods of his career. British film critic Peter Lloyd, for example, described Edwards, in 1971, as "the finest director working in the American commercial cinema at the present time." Edwards' biographers, William Luhr and Peter Lehman,^[13] in an interview in 1974, called him "the finest American director working at this time."^[14] They refer especially to the Pink Panther's Clouseau, developed with the comedic skills of Peter Sellers, as a character "perfectly consistent" with his "absurdist view of the world, because he has no faith in anything and constantly adapts." Critic Stuart Byron calls his early Pink Panther films "two of the best comedies an American has ever made." Polls taken at the time showed that his name, as a director, was a rare "marketable commodity" in Hollywood.^[3]

Edwards himself described one of the secrets to success in the film industry:

For someone who wants to practice his art in this business, all you can hope to do, as S.O.B. says, is stick to your guns, make the compromises you must, and hope that somewhere along the way you acquire a few good friends who understand. And keep half a conscience."^[3]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Blake Edwards at Find a Grave
• Blake Edwards at the Internet Movie Database
• Blake Edwards at the TCM Movie Database
• Blake Edwards at AllRovi
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Edwards, Blake
• My Day With Blake Edwards – A Tribute by Steven Ameche