RKO Essay, Research Paper

The history of RKO begins in Milwaukee in 1909, with the opening of a simple nickelodeon. As that business took off, it steadily grew and merged with other enterprises, and by 1912 it had metamorphosed into a releasing and distribution company known as Mutual Film Corporation, with Harry Aitken as president. D.W. Griffith released several features through Mutual in 1914, most notably his last film with them, the Poe-inspired horror tale The Avenging Conscience. Griffith's next effort, an adaptation of the Thomas Dixon novel The Clansman, began as a Mutual production but soon proved so costly that Griffith and Aitken had to form the Epoch Company to release the finished film, the Civil War classic The Birth Of A Nation (1915). In 1916 Charlie Chaplin joined Mutual, and over the next year and a half wrote, directed, and starred in a dozen two-reelers; he secured his status among the greatest makers of film comedy with such classics as One A.M. (1916), The Pawnshop (1916), The Rink (1916), Easy Street (1917), The Cure (1917), and The Immigrant (1917). By the 1920s Mutual had been absorbed by Film Booking Offices of America, which in turn was bought out in 1926 by financier Joseph P. Kennedy (father of American President John F. Kennedy), who became president and chairman of the board. Kennedy also became chairman of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum corporation, a theater chain, in 1928 and soon thereafter sold out his interests to a new electronics conglomerate, Radio Corporation of America, or RCA. The resulting merger created a film company ideally prepared to make talking films: Radio-Keith-Orpheum, or more simply RKO. Kennedy became president and director of the production company Path? Exchange, which merged into RKO in 1930. David Sarnoff, the RCA president, was named chairman of the board of RKO and in 1929 he made William LeBaron vice president in charge of production at the studio. LeBaron produced the lavish musical Rio Rita (1929), adapting a Florenz Ziegfeld theatrical production. Complete with a sequence in color, the film was RKO's first big hit, complete with dividend: Its comedy subplot featured the duo of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, who went on to make a series of feature comedies at RKO over the 1930s, including Kentucky Kernels (1934) and The Nitwits (1935) for director George Stevens. (The studio's stars in comedy shorts of the era include Clark and McCullough, with such two-reelers as The Druggist's Dilemma (1932) and Odor In The Court (1933); Edgar Kennedy, who made over a hundred RKO shorts from 1931 to 1948, starting with Rough House Rhythm (1931); and Leon Errol, who ran him a close second with 90 two-reelers from 1934 to 1951, including Truth Aches (1939).)In 1931 LeBaron was presented with an Academy Award for producing the year's "Best Picture," the sweeping Western Cimmaron, and RKO secured its stature as one of the five major Hollywood studios, an "integrated major" with its own theater chain, along with Fox, MGM, Paramount, and Warner Bros. But the studio was also feeling the chill of the Depression, and Sarnoff improved efficiency by bringing in independent producer David O. Selznick as vice president in charge of production. Selznick streamlined the operation of RKO, and was executive producer and/or supervisor on a series of films with director George Cukor, most notably A Bill Of Divorcement (1932), a powerful drama starring John Barrymore and newcomer Katharine Hepburn; What Price Hollywood? (1932), with Constance Bennett as the rising star and Lowell Sherman as the alcoholic crack-up; and the Alcott adaptation Little Women (1933), also with Hepburn. Selznick also brought in producer/director Merian C. Cooper to assist him, and green-lighted Cooper's new project: the horror classic King Kong (1933). It was a huge hit for RKO, and Cooper immediately reteamed with director Ernest B. Schoedsack and special-effects master Willis O'Brien for The Son Of Kong (1933); they'd also make the big-ape movie Mighty Joe Young (1949).Selznick left RKO early in 1933, and Cooper replaced him as vice president in charge of production. The parent company went into receivership that year, but production was able to continue. Cooper co-produced the stylish musical Flying Down To Rio (1933), in which two supporting players caused a stir: dancers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The pair began their own series when another former Selznick assistant, producer Pandro S. Berman, starred them in The Gay Divorcee (1934), directed by Mark Sandrich. They'd co-star in another seven RKO musicals over the decade, most notably Sandrich's Top Hat (1935) and George Stevens' Swing Time (1936). In 1934 Berman replaced Cooper and took charge of production. RKO declared bankruptcy that year and sold the majority of its holdings to Floyd Odlum; he and Leo Spitz reinvigorated the studio during the '30s, keeping Berman as head of production. Besides producing the hit musicals of Astaire and Rogers, Berman also worked with director Stevens on such films as Alice Adams (1935), a charming Booth Tarkington adaptation starring Katharine Hepburn; the musical A Damsel In Distress (1936), Astaire's first film at RKO without Rogers; and the classic adventure tale Gunga Din (1939). Berman's other notable productions of the '30s include the historical drama Mary Of Scotland (1936), directed by John Ford; the Marx Brothers comedy Room Service (1938); and the Victor Hugo adaptation The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1939), starring Charles Laughton and directed by William Dieterle. Other memorable '30s films from RKO include John Ford's classic drama of the 1922 Irish Rebellion, The Informer (1935) with Victor McLaglen, and his Sean O'Casey adaptation The Plough and The Stars (1936); producer/director Howard Hawks' screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby (1938); and producer/director George Stevens' drama of a British nurse, Vigil In The Night (1939) with Carole Lombard. Berman left RKO in 1939, and studio president George Schaefer, looking for new talent, brought in the Mercury Theater and its leader, the radio and stage actor/director Orson Welles. Welles made two classic films, Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), and co-directed the thriller Journey Into Fear (1943). He then started a film in South America, It's All True, and during his absence, Ambersons was butchered by studio editing; It's All True was then permanently shelved by RKO, and Welles was let go. Director Alfred Hitchcock made a trio of films at RKO in the '40s: an atypical comedy, Mr. And Mrs. Smith (1941), and two superb thrillers starring Cary Grant: Suspicion (1941) and Notorious (1946). Director Fritz Lang and producer/writer Nunnally Johnson made the first-rate thriller The Woman In The Window (1944). Jean Renoir directed and co-scripted the anti-Nazi drama This Land Is Mine (1943) with Charles Laughton and the romantic-triangle tale The Woman On The Beach (1946). Producer Val Lewton made a memorable series of stylish and intelligent horror films, starting with Cat People (1942), directed by Jacques Tourneur; his other notable productions include the Boris Karloff vehicles The Body Snatcher (1945), directed by Robert Wise, and Isle Of The Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946), both directed by Mark Robson. Producer/director Allan Dwan made the radio-inspired comedies Look Who's Laughing (1941) and Here We Go Again (1942), both with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and the musical Around The World (1943). The independent producer Samuel Goldwyn began releasing his films through RKO in the 1940s, most notably the farce Ball Of Fire (1941) and the Lou Gehrig biopic Pride Of The Yankees (1942), both starring Gary Cooper; the Bob Hope comedies They Got Me Covered (1943) and The Princess And The Pirate (1944); the Danny Kaye comedies Up In Arms (1944), Wonder Man (1945), The Kid From Brooklyn (1946), and The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (1947); and two classics directed by William Wyler: the Lillian Hellman adaptation The Little Foxes (1940) and the drama of returning World War II veterans, The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946). A steady stream of major films continued to appear from RKO after the end of World War II. Independent producer/director Frank Capra released his masterpiece, It's A Wonderful Life (1946), through RKO. George Stevens returned to make the nostalgic comedy I Remember Mama (1948), and even Orson Welles was readmitted to star in and direct the thriller The Stranger (1946). Contract actor Robert Mitchum became a star at RKO with such films as Undercurrent (1946), directed by Vincente Minnelli and co-starring Katharine Hepburn; the psychological western Pursued (1947), directed by Raoul Walsh; the indictment of anti-Semitism, Crossfire (1947), directed by Edward Dmytryk; the film noir Out Of The Past (1947), directed by Jacques Tourneur; and the caper film The Big Steal (1949), directed by Don Siegel. Dudley Nichols wrote and directed the Eugene O'Neill adaptation Mourning Becomes Electra (1948). Director Nicholas Ray debuted with the crime drama They Live By Night (1949). John Ford directed several excellent films for RKO at the end of the decade: the Graham Greene adaptation The Fugitive (1947), with Henry Fonda; the cavalry westerns Fort Apache (1948) with Fonda and John Wayne and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949) with Wayne; and the tale of Mormon pioneers, Wagon Master (1950). In 1948, the eccentric and already reclusive millionaire Howard Hughes purchased control of RKO. His unpredictable policies and oddball interferences resulted in numerous resignations from the studio staff, severely diminishing RKO's creative capabilities. Yet several noteworthy films managed to emerge from the studio during the early '50s. Howard Hawks produced the science-fiction classic The Thing (1951) and directed the western The Big Sky (1952) with Kirk Douglas. Robert Mitchum starred in the romantic drama Macao (1952), directed by Josef von Sternberg; the rodeo film The Lusty Men (1952), directed by Nicholas Ray; and the noir Angel Face (1952), directed by Otto Preminger. Allan Dwan directed Jane Russell as outlaw Belle Starr in Montana Belle (1952), and David Miller helmed the thriller Sudden Fear (1952) with Joan Crawford. Fritz Lang directed Marlene Dietrich in Rancho Notorious (1952) and Barbara Stanwyck in Clash By Night (1952). RKO lost millions under Hughes and stopped production in 1953. Stockholders sued Hughes for mismanagement, but the case was settled out of court when he bought the rest of RKO's outstanding shares at twice their market price; but in 1955 Hughes sold all of the company's assets to General Teleradio, netting himself a significant profit. RKO's corporate name was changed to RKO General, and the company began to abandon film production in favor of television broadcasting. The studio's later productions include the 1956 thrillers While The City Sleeps and Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, both starring Dana Andrews and directed by Fritz Lang; director John Frankenheimer's first film, The Young Stranger (1956); Samuel Fuller's "western" of Indian life, Run Of The Arrow (1957), and his account of Nazis in postwar Germany, Verboten! (1959); director Raoul Walsh's war film The Naked And The Dead (1958), from the novel by Norman Mailer; and the backstage drama Stage Struck (1958), directed by Sidney Lumet. But in 1958 the studio was sold to Desilu, and RKO's involvement in films came to an end. As a corporation, however, RKO endured. In 1989, Pavilion Communications, co-owned by actress Dina Merrill and former actor Ted Hartley, acquired RKO, and the company was renamed RKO Pavilion, with Merrill as creative director and Hartley as chairman. But their few releases of 1992 — the gritty crime film Laws Of Gravity, written and directed by Nick Gomez; the sperm-bank farce Frozen Assets — were a far cry from the glory days of RKO and failed to reignite the studio's stature. An era had ended, never to come again. But what an era it had been.

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