The Hollywood blacklist refers to the mid-20th century banning of suspected Communists from working in the United States entertainment industry. The blacklist began at the onset of the Cold War and Red Scare , and affected entertainment production in Hollywood , New York , and elsewhere. Actors , screenwriters , directors , musicians , and other professionals were barred from employment based on their present or past membership in, alleged membership in, or perceived sympathy with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), or on the basis of their refusal to assist Congressional or FBI investigations into the Party's activities.
271-513: Julius " Jules " Dassin ( / ˈ d æ s ɪ n , d æ ˈ s ɪ n / DASS -in, dass- IN ; December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008) was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor. A subject of the Hollywood blacklist , he subsequently moved to France, and later Greece, where he continued his career. He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and
542-506: A "security office" to oversee an ideological vetting system. "We are going to screen everyone in a creative or executive capacity", he declared. "The work of Communist sympathizers will not be used." As more credits were expunged, some in the industry began to question whether Hughes's hunt for subversives served primarily as a convenient rationale for further curtailing production and trimming expenses. In September, Hughes and his corporate president, Ned Depinet, sold their RKO studio stock to
813-711: A 65th-anniversary article in 2012, Wilkerson's son apologized for THR' s role in the blacklist and added that his father was motivated by revenge for his own thwarted ambition to own a film studio. In late September 1947, drawing upon the lists provided in The Hollywood Reporter , the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed forty-two persons working in the film industry to testify at hearings. The HUAC had declared its intention to investigate whether Communist agents were sneaking propaganda into American films. Of
1084-671: A British Academy of Film and Television Arts nomination for Best Film from any Source ; and Writers Guild of America Award nominations for Best Written American Drama and The Robert Meltzer Award. In 2007, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States National Film Preservation Board and was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress ' National Film Registry . Dassin's third and final film under his Mark Hellinger Productions contract
1355-473: 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. The studio's net loss in 1952 was over $ 10 million, and shooting had taken place for just a single in-house production over the last five months of the year. During the turmoil, Samuel Goldwyn ended his eleven-year-long distribution deal with RKO. Wald and Krasna escaped their contracts and
1626-510: A Reasonable Doubt , a remake of a 1956 RKO film directed by Fritz Lang, fared even worse critically, receiving a 7% rating on Rotten Tomatoes . A stage version of Top Hat toured Great Britain in the second half of 2011. The most recent RKO film coproductions are the well-received A Late Quartet (2012) and the 2015 flop Barely Lethal . Two months after Dina Merrill's May 2017 death, independent producer Keith Patterson sued RKO, Hartley, and his second-in-command, Mary Beth O'Connor, over
1897-737: A concert violinist and a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music . Beginning in 1934, Julius spent three years studying dramatic technique in Europe. He spent time in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, England, Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Switzerland and Greece, working odd jobs to sustain himself. After returning from Europe in 1936, Dassin joined the Children's Theatre, a division of the Federal Theatre Project during
2168-604: A consequence, they were fired by RKO per the terms of the Waldorf Statement , the major studios' pledge to "eliminate any subversives". Scott, Dmytryk, and eight others who also defied HUAC—dubbed the Hollywood Ten —were blacklisted across the industry. Ironically, the studio's major success of the year was Crossfire , a Scott–Dmytryk film. Odlum concluded it was time to exit the film business, and he put Atlas's remaining RKO shares—approximately 25 percent of
2439-408: A conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine the very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of democracy exists. Stander was clearly speaking of the committee itself. The hunt for subversives extended into every branch of the entertainment industry. In the field of animation, two studios in particular were affected: United Productions of America (UPA) was purged of
2710-464: A contract. Dassin connected best with Darryl F. Zanuck and opted to sign with 20th Century-Fox Film. In addition to Busman's Holiday , he was tied to two other film projects in the spring of 1948, both involving actress Paulette Goddard at 20th Century-Fox. The first was to be a film adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre 's latest novel and recently opened Broadway hit The Respectful Prostitute , for which Goddard and actor Burgess Meredith had negotiated
2981-401: 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
SECTION 10
#17327909962723252-561: A copy of Gerald Kersh 's novel Night and the City and rushed him to England to make the film unhindered by the HUAC hearings. Night and the City , later released in mid-1950, was filmed entirely on location in London between July and October 1949 and starred Richard Widmark , Gene Tierney , Googie Withers , Hugh Marlowe and Mike Mazurki . Dassin was already unofficially blacklisted during
3523-438: A designer's studio. It never had a stable of important actors, writers, or directors, but ... it was rich in artists and special-effects technicians. As a result, its most distinctive pictures contained a strong element of fantasy—not so much the fantasy of horror, which during the thirties was the province of Universal , but the fantasy of the marvelous and adventurous." As a group, the studio's craft divisions were among
3794-478: A dozen movies for the studio over two decades. From soon after its debut in early 1935 until July 1942, Louis de Rochemont 's innovative documentary series The March of Time was distributed by RKO; at its peak in the late 1930s and early 1940s, over twenty million filmgoers saw its two-reelers each month in eleven thousand US and foreign theaters. Lacking the financial resources of industry leaders MGM , Paramount , and Fox , RKO turned out many pictures during
4065-427: A famous pro- Loyalist speech by La Pasionaria about it being 'better to die on your feet than to live on your knees' into a pep talk delivered by a football coach." Others have argued that Communists did affect the film industry by suppressing production of works they politically opposed. In a Reason magazine article entitled "Hollywood's Missing Movies", Kenneth Billingsley cites a case where Trumbo "bragged" in
4336-429: A form of suicide on the installment plan." For all that transpired in the HUAC hearings, the proof that Communists actually used Hollywood films as vehicles for subversion remained hard to come by. Schulberg reported how his manuscript for the novel What Makes Sammy Run? (later a screenplay also) had been subject to ideological critique by Hollywood Ten writer John Howard Lawson , whose comments he had solicited. But
4607-762: A half months of location shooting, from June to August 1947. 107 different locations were shot in New York City, and to distract the crowd and keep them looking natural, Dassin hired a juggler to draw their attention away from the cameras. Dassin, Hellinger and associate producer Buck worked with several of the same cast and crew members from Brute Force on The Naked City , including actors Howard Duff, Ralph Brooks and Chuck Hamilton, assistant director Fred Frank, cinematographer William H. Daniels , art director John F. DeCuir , set decorator Russell A. Gausman and composer Miklós Rózsa. The film also starred Barry Fitzgerald , Don Taylor and Dorothy Hart . After overseeing
4878-562: A half-decade, with a planned slate of seventeen features. RKO released Fritz Lang's final two American films, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (both 1956), but years of mismanagement had driven away many directors, producers, and stars. The studio was also saddled with the last of the inflated B movies such as Pearl of the South Pacific (1955) and The Conqueror (1956) that enchanted Hughes. While
5149-539: A hit, and The Set-Up (1949), directed by Robert Wise and starring Robert Ryan , which won the Critic's Prize at the Cannes Film Festival . The Thing from Another World (1951), a science-fiction drama coproduced with Howard Hawks's Winchester Pictures, is seen as a classic of the genre. In 1952, RKO put out two films directed by Fritz Lang , Rancho Notorious and Clash by Night . The latter
5420-622: A large payout in April and later in the year signed a three-picture deal with MGM. Sarnoff and Kennedy began talks about setting up a holding company funded by RCA cash and KAO securities, but plans stalled as Sarnoff grew frustrated with Kennedy's reluctance to pay for the Photophone work proceeding, if slowly, at FBO and Pathé. An attempt by Kennedy to reorganize yet another studio that had turned to him for help, now ERPI-aligned First National, further strained his relationship with Sarnoff and raised
5691-442: A large portion of its staff, while New York-based Tempo was entirely crushed. HUAC investigations sometimes had the effect of destroying families. For example, screenwriter Richard Collins , after a brief period on the blacklist, became a friendly witness and abandoned his wife, actress Dorothy Comingore , who refused to name names. After divorcing Comingore, Collins gained custody of the couple's young son as well. The family's story
SECTION 20
#17327909962725962-440: A legal battle with Wall Street Financial Associates (WSFA). Hartley and Merrill claimed that the owners of WSFA fraudulently induced them into signing an acquisition agreement by concealing their "cynical and rapacious" plans to purchase RKO, with the intention only of dismantling it. WSFA sought a preliminary injunction prohibiting RKO's majority owners from selling their interests in the company to any third parties. The WSFA motion
6233-486: A less tense merger, engineered by Murdock, was finalized, establishing the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain. With Pathé's finances in a ditch, Murdock, at Walker's prodding, turned to Kennedy for help in reorganizing the studio and consolidating it with PDC. The two men found that they had mutual interests, in particular, removing Edward Albee , the "Czar of Vaudeville" and Murdock's nominal boss, from
6504-606: A limited budget. When released in mid-1942, the film was a moderate success and again Dassin was highlighted in the reviews. In mid-February 1942, it was reported that Dassin would direct a film titled Men at Sea from a Marine Corps story by Alma Rivkin (possibly a typo for Allen Rivkin ) starring Philip Dorn . The film was presumably abandoned. In April 1942, it was reported that Dassin would be one of eight directors, along with Fred Zinenmann, Fred Wilcox, Charles Lederer , Edward Cahn , Joseph M. Newman and David Miller , to film
6775-530: A man without any known political views or associations, suddenly had his career yanked out from under him because the American Legion confused him with Louis Pollack, a California clothier, who had refused to co-operate with HUAC." Orson Bean recalled that he had briefly been placed on the blacklist after dating a member of the Party, despite his own politics being conservative. During this same period,
7046-518: A massive reorganization following an attempted hostile takeover. With RKO General dismantling its broadcast business, RKO Pictures Inc., along with the original RKO studio's trademarks , remake rights, and other remaining assets, was put up for sale. After a bid by RKO Pictures' own management team failed, the managers made a deal with Wesray Capital Corporation —under the control of former US treasury secretary William E. Simon and investor Ray Chambers —to buy RKO through Entertainment Acquisition Co.,
7317-525: A memo, Selznick wrote, "I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is ... tremendous". Selznick's tenure was widely considered masterful: In 1931, before he arrived, the studio had produced forty-two features for $ 16 million in total budgets. In 1932, under Selznick, forty-one features were made for $ 10.2 million, with clear improvement in quality and popularity. He backed several major successes, including A Bill of Divorcement (1932), with Cukor directing Hepburn's debut, and
7588-479: A new subsidiary, General Teleradio. Thomas F. O'Neil , son of General Tire's founder William O'Neil and chairman of the broadcasting group, saw that the company's new television stations, indeed all TV outlets, were in need of programming. In September 1954, WOR-TV had launched the Million Dollar Movie program, running a single film for a week, twice every night plus Saturday and Sunday matinees;
7859-409: A newly created purchasing entity. The sale was completed in late 1987, and Wesray linked RKO with its Six Flags amusement parks to form RKO/Six Flags Entertainment Inc. In 1989, RKO Pictures, which had produced no films while under Wesray control, was sold off yet again. Actress and Post Cereals heiress Dina Merrill and her husband, producer Ted Hartley , acquired a majority interest and merged
8130-547: A nominal profit of a bit more than $ 500,000 in 1941. Many of RKO's other artistically ambitious pictures were also dying at the box office and it was losing its last exclusive deal with a major star as well. Rogers, after winning an Oscar in 1941 for her performance in the previous year's Kitty Foyle , held out for a freelance contract like Lombard's or Grant's. No star appeared in more RKO films than Rogers: thirty between 1931 and 1943, then one-offs in 1946 and 1956. On June 17, 1942, Schaefer tendered his resignation. He departed
8401-415: A now fabled performance as Quasimodo in the latter, returned periodically to the studio, headlining six more RKO features. For Maureen O'Hara , who made her American screen debut in the film, it was the first of ten pictures she made for RKO through 1952. Carole Lombard signed freelance deals for headlining roles in four films between 1939 and 1941—the last of her pictures to come out before her death in
Jules Dassin - Misplaced Pages Continue
8672-464: A number of powerful newspaper columnists covering the entertainment industry, including Walter Winchell , Hedda Hopper , Victor Riesel , Jack O'Brian , and George Sokolsky , regularly suggested names that should be added to the blacklist. Actor John Ireland received an out-of-court settlement to end a 1954 lawsuit against the Young & Rubicam advertising agency, which had ordered him dropped from
8943-559: A number of times, at various hearings of the United States House of Representatives House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and by different witnesses, some as early as 1947. He was also linked to several Communist-front organizations. On October 22, 1947, while Dassin was still working on The Naked City , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) chief supervisor and executive producer James Kevin McGuinness testified before
9214-433: A number of unpleasant harbingers for all of Hollywood. The British government imposed a 75 percent tax on films produced abroad; along with similarly confiscatory taxes and quota laws enacted by other countries, this led to a sharp decline in foreign revenues. The postwar attendance boom peaked sooner than expected and television emerged as a competitor for audience interest. Across the board, profits fell—a 27 percent drop for
9485-471: A number of well-received films he made for RKO. RKO, and the movie industry as a whole, had its most profitable year ever in 1946. A Goldwyn production released by RKO, The Best Years of Our Lives , was the most successful Hollywood film of the decade and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. But the legal status of the industry's reigning business model was increasingly being called into doubt:
9756-562: A package deal, but things fell through. Irving Rapper ultimately directed the film at Columbia Pictures. During the summer of 1948, Dassin directed Magdalena on Broadway, a play produced by Edwin Lester , which ran for 88 performances from September 20, 1948, to December 4, 1948. By the time that Magdalena closed, Dassin was already back in Hollywood, having signed a contract with Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox. Dassin's inaugural project for
10027-538: A pair of four-film series, the comedic Great Gildersleeve (1943–44) and noirish Dick Tracy (1945–47). Film noir , to which lower budgets lent themselves, became something of a house style at the studio; indeed, the RKO B Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) is widely seen as initiating noir's classic period. Its cinematographer , Nicholas Musuraca , who began at FBO in the 1920s and stayed with RKO through 1954,
10298-623: A plane crash. After costarring with Ginger Rogers for the eighth time in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Fred Astaire departed the studio. The studio's B Western star of the period was George O'Brien , who made eighteen RKO pictures, sixteen between 1938 and 1940. The Saint in New York (1938) successfully launched a B detective series featuring the character Simon Templar that ran through 1943. The Wheeler and Woolsey comedy series ended in 1937 when Woolsey became ill (he died
10569-455: A project, Dassin took over the directorial duties on a comedy film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost . Original director Norman Z. McLeod had departed after five weeks of shooting, following a clash with producer Arthur Field and the cast, which included Charles Laughton , Robert Young and Margaret O'Brien . The film finished shooting in December 1943 and was released in
10840-420: A promissory document that he would never work for a rival Hollywood studio. In a later interview conducted in December 1946, Dassin revealed that he was ashamed of some of the directorial duties he was forced to accept while at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Dassin had hoped to return to work on the New York stage but instead took a thirteen-month voluntary hiatus from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, filling his time by reading books on
11111-486: A remake of a 1949 RKO movie that was itself a King Kong knockoff; the Disney coproduction was distributed by Buena Vista. In the early 2000s, the company was involved as a coproducer of TV movies and modestly budgeted features, about one a year. In 2003, it coproduced a Broadway stage version of the 1936 Astaire–Rogers vehicle Swing Time , under the title Never Gonna Dance . That same year, RKO Pictures entered into
Jules Dassin - Misplaced Pages Continue
11382-469: A repeat performance on The Kate Smith Hour , this time starring Henry Hull , which was broadcast live on January 3, 1941. He was also one of the several actors who formed the Actors' Laboratory Theatre . Wanting to prove that he could direct motion pictures, Dassin approached Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the spring of 1941 offering his services for free. He told the studio that he would direct any film for free;
11653-606: A school play. Julius was given a small part but when came time to speak his only line, he fainted due to stage fright. He also learned to play the piano at a young age. During his youth he attended Camp Kinderland , a left-wing Yiddish youth camp. Julius attended Morris High School in the Bronx . He started acting professionally in 1926, at the age of fourteen, with the Yiddish Art Theatre in New York City. On October 13, 1929, newspaper columnist Mark Hellinger printed
11924-449: A sequence for a planned patriotic anthology film at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer titled Now We Are 21 . The film was to be produced by B. F. Zeidman and scripted by Peter Ruric from a story by Jerry Schwartz. Actors such as Gene Kelly , Ray McDonald , Virginia O'Brien , James Warren , Tatricia Dane, Johnny Davis and Barry Wilson were to appear in the film, but it was never made. Joan Crawford , one of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's biggest stars at
12195-428: A seven-year contract and cast her in the big-budget musical Flying Down to Rio (1933). Rogers was paired with Fred Astaire , making his second film. Billed fourth and fifth respectively, the picture turned them into stars. Hermes Pan , assistant to the film's dance director, became one of Hollywood's leading choreographers through his subsequent work with Astaire. Along with Columbia Pictures , RKO became one of
12466-678: A spending spree, buying up theater after theater to add to its exhibition chain. In October 1930, the company purchased a 50 percent stake in the New York Van Beuren studio, which specialized in cartoons and live shorts. Looking to get out of the film business, Kennedy arranged for RKO to purchase Pathé, in a deal that protected his associates' bond investments while it crushed many small stockholders who had bought in at artificially high prices. (Indeed, Kennedy, who had previously sold all of his Pathé holdings, started buying back bonds, which he turned around for substantial gains.) The deal
12737-409: A stage production of William Shakespeare 's Richard III on Broadway. The play was to be directed by and starring John Carradine , though it is unknown if this production came through. Dassin was also employed by Frank Tuttle as one of the lecturers for Hollywood School for Writers' new film directing class, along with Fred Zinnemann, Irving Pichel and László Benedek . In mid-November 1942, he
13008-516: A starring vehicle for Susan Peters , newly promoted Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starlet. Gene Kelly was first cast as the male lead in January 1944, though he was replaced by Robert Young in February 1944. Other cast members included Fortunio Bononova , Katharine Balfour , Felix Bressart , Alexander Granach , Peggy Maley , Marta Linden , Morris Ankrum , Sharon McManus and Betty Lawler. Secrets in
13279-608: A story given to him by Dassin in the New York Daily News ; nearly twenty years later, the two would work together in Hollywood. On July 11, 1933, Julius' older brother Louis was arrested in Meriden, Connecticut when he confessed to the theft of $ 12,000 from the Puritan Bank and Trust Company, where he worked as a teller and treasurer. On September 10, 1933, when he was 21 years old, Julius married Beatrice Launer,
13550-707: A subsidiary created three years earlier, RKO Pictures Inc. In collaboration with Universal Studios, RKO put out five films over the next three years. Although the studio frequently worked with major names—including Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas , Jack Nicholson in The Border , and Nastassja Kinski in Cat People (all 1982)—it met with little success. Corporate restructuring brought RKO General under
13821-529: A subsidiary of AT&T 's Western Electric division. The industry's two largest companies, Paramount and Loew's / MGM , along with First National Pictures —third of the silent era "Big Three" major studios , but by then in marked decline—and Universal Pictures , were poised to contract with ERPI and its Vitaphone and Movietone systems for sound conversion as well. Seeking a customer for Photophone, then general manager of RCA David Sarnoff approached financier Joseph P. Kennedy in late 1927 about using
SECTION 50
#173279099627214092-462: 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 made a strong comeback over the next half-decade. By the end of June 1942, Floyd Odlum had taken over a controlling interest in the company via his Atlas Corporation , edging aside the Rockefellers and Sarnoff. Charles Koerner , former head of
14363-688: A wheelchair. Peter's character in Secrets in the Dark was to be rewritten as a paraplegic, but the film was instead permanently shelved. When Secrets in the Dark was first postponed in early April 1944, Dassin started acting in night plays at the Actors' Laboratory Theatre as part of the War Charities benefits. The first play in which he acted was Night Lodging , followed by The Lower Depths . In May 1944, Dassin teamed up with Arthur Lubin to set up
14634-545: A witch hunter if the witches are Communists. I am a Red-baiter . I would like to see them all back in Russia." Unlike the friendly witnesses, other leading Hollywood figures—including directors John Huston , Billy Wilder , and William Wyler ; and actors Lauren Bacall , Lucille Ball , Humphrey Bogart , Bette Davis , Henry Fonda , John Garfield , Judy Garland , Sterling Hayden , Katharine Hepburn , Danny Kaye , Gene Kelly , Myrna Loy , and Edward G. Robinson —protested
14905-506: A young actress who would quickly become one of the studio's big stars, Katharine Hepburn . John Barrymore was also enlisted for a few memorable performances. In November 1931, just as Selznick was assuming his new post, the separate Pathé distribution network was folded into RKO's. After less than a year of largely independent operation out of Culver City, the Pathé feature film division soon followed (due to exhibition contracts, features from
15176-628: Is a central figure in creating the look of classic noir. Design chief Albert D'Agostino —another long-termer, who succeeded Van Nest Polglase in 1941—and art director Walter Keller, along with others in the department, such as art directors Carroll Clark and Jack Okey and set decorator Darrell Silvera , are similarly credited. The studio's 1940s list of contract players was filled with noir regulars: Robert Mitchum (who graduated to major star status) and Robert Ryan each made no fewer than ten film noirs for RKO. Gloria Grahame , Jane Greer , and Lawrence Tierney were also notable studio players in
15447-584: Is really sportsmanlike. I don't think this is American. I don't think this is American justice. Parks ultimately testified, becoming, albeit reluctantly, a "friendly witness", and found himself blacklisted anyway. The legal tactics of those refusing to testify had changed by this time. Instead of relying on the First Amendment, they invoked the Fifth Amendment 's shield against self-incrimination (although, as before, Communist Party membership
15718-412: Is today referred to as the Waldorf Statement . The statement said the ten uncooperative witnesses would be fired or suspended without pay and not re-employed until they were cleared of contempt charges and had sworn that they were not Communists. The first Hollywood blacklist was in effect. The HUAC hearings failed to turn up any proof that Hollywood was secretly disseminating Communist propaganda, but
15989-711: Is unknown which, or if a studio bought out Dassin's remaining one-picture deal, though news reports hinted towards Universal-International Pictures or Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In late December 1947, before Bogart, Selznick and Marie had decided upon continuing the Mark Hellinger Productions firm, Dassin took the opportunity of his non-exclusive contract to partner with stage actor and producer Luther Adler in an independent film venture. Adler had recently purchased Jack Iams' novel Prophet by Experience in September 1947 and hired Ben Hecht to adapt it and write
16260-622: The Daily Worker about quashing films with anti-Soviet content: among them were proposed adaptations of Arthur Koestler 's anti- totalitarian books Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar , which described the rise of communism in Russia, and Victor Kravchenko 's I Chose Freedom . Authors Ronald and Allis Radosh make a similar point in Red Star over Hollywood that prominent anti-Communist books were only influential "in
16531-536: The Academy Award for Best Picture ; it cost a profligate $ 1.4 million, however, and lost nearly half that on its first release. Cimmaron' s female principal, Irene Dunne , was the studio's one major homegrown star of this early pre-Code era; having made her screen debut as the lead in the 1930 musical Leathernecking , she would headline at the studio for the entire decade, under contracts that gave her an unusual amount of power. Other significant actors of
SECTION 60
#173279099627216802-618: The FBI . The following year, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA), a political action group co-founded by Walt Disney, issued a pamphlet written by Ayn Rand and entitled "Screen Guide for Americans". It advised film producers on the avoidance of "subtle communistic touches" in their films. The pamphlet's advice was encapsulated in a list of ideological prohibitions, such as "Don't Smear
17073-815: The Great Depression . It was during this time that he joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The troupe put on children's plays at the Adelphi Theatre in New York City. During this time, he played the role of Zar in The Emperor's New Clothes in September 1936, and the role of Oakleaf in Revolt of the Beavers , which ran from May 20, 1937, to June 19, 1937. The later play was criticized as strongly communist. He later joined up with
17344-653: The San Fernando Valley as a movie ranch for exteriors and large-scale standing sets. With RKO Productions' films handled by sibling subsidiary RKO Distributing Corp., the studio released a limited slate of twelve features in its first year; in 1930, the figure more than doubled to twenty-nine. That July, RKO Productions Inc. was renamed RKO Radio Pictures Inc. RKO Pictures Ltd. was set up to handle British distribution. Encouraged by Rio Rita ' s success, RKO produced several costly musicals incorporating Technicolor sequences, among them Dixiana and Hit
17615-635: The Screen Directors' Guild . Dassin received a Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival for his film Du rififi chez les hommes . He was later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen for his film Never on Sunday , and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for his Broadway production of Illya Darling . Julius Dassin
17886-659: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bigelow v. RKO that the company was liable for damages under antitrust statutes for having denied an independent movie house access to first-run films —a common practice among all of the Big Five. With profits at a high point, Floyd Odlum cashed in by selling off about 40 percent of his shares in the company to a group of investment firms. After Koerner's death, Radio-Keith-Orpheum president N. Peter Rathvon and RKO Radio Pictures president Ned E. Depinet had exchanged positions, with Depinet moving to
18157-803: The Yankee Network , a New England regional radio network, 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 radio and television stations in New York City. The latter acquisition gave General Tire majority control of the Mutual Broadcasting System , one of America's leading radio networks. General Tire then merged its broadcasting interests into
18428-500: The optical printer and lifelike matte work, an art that reached its apex with 1941's Citizen Kane . Pan Berman had received his first screen credit in 1925 as a nineteen-year-old assistant director on FBO's Midnight Molly . He departed RKO in December 1939 after policy clashes with studio president George J. Schaefer , handpicked the previous year by the Rockefellers and backed by Sarnoff. With Berman gone, Schaefer became in effect production chief, though other men—including
18699-617: The "alien minded Russian Jews in Hollywood." Mississippi congressman John E. Rankin , an HUAC member, held a press conference to declare that "one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of this Government has its headquarters in Hollywood ... the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States." Rankin promised, "We're on the trail of the tarantula now, and we're going to follow through." Reports of Soviet repression in Eastern and Central Europe in
18970-506: The Actors' Laboratory Theatre. The production, which unfolds a narrative of a girl's 18th birthday, was staged at the Phoenix Theater starring actress Karen Morley . The cast also included Howard Duff , Jocelyn Brando and Don Hanmer . In August 1946, it was reported that Dassin had been signed to direct the film noir Repeat Performance for Eagle-Lion Films , through a loan-out arrangement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The picture
19241-703: The Artef Players, a Yiddish Proletarian Theater company in 1937, serving as an actor, set designer, set builder, stage director and even ticket salesman. Beginning on October 5, 1937, he appeared in Moyshe Kulbak's play The Outlaw , which had been adapted by Chaver Paver at The Artef Theatre He also appeared in Artef Players' Recruits and 200,000 . On November 5, 1938, Dassin's wife Beatrice gave birth to their first child, son Joseph . In October 1939, he acted in Chaver Paver's Clinton Street , which
19512-458: The Beach (1947). RKO and Orson Welles had an arm's-length reunion via The Stranger (1946), an independent production he starred in as well as directed. Welles later called it his worst film, but it was the only one he ever made that turned a profit in its first run. In December 1946, the studio released Frank Capra 's It's a Wonderful Life ; while it would eventually be recognized as one of
19783-518: The Big Five saw their profits dwindle in 1948—from Fox, down 11 percent, to Loew's/MGM, down 62 percent—but at RKO they virtually vanished: from $ 5.1 million in 1947 to $ 0.5 million, a drop of 90 percent. The production-distribution end of the RKO business, now deep in the red, would never make a profit again. Offscreen, Robert Mitchum's arrest and conviction for marijuana possession—he served two months in jail—was widely assumed to mean career death for RKO's most promising young star, but Hughes surprised
20054-539: The Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness without due process of law ... I can tell names and cite instances and I am one of the first victims of it ... [This is] a group of ex-Fascists and America-Firsters and anti-Semites, people who hate everybody, including Negroes, minority groups, and most likely themselves ... [T]hese people are engaged in
20325-409: The Dark and The Outward Room ). The motion picture was based on Millen Brand 's novel The Outward Room and from the existing play version The World We Make , which had been adapted by Sidney Kingsley . The plot was that of a middle-class girl who escapes from an insane asylum and develops a love affair with a blue collar steel worker, and in turn overcomes her phobias. The property was developed as
20596-471: The Dark was to start shooting on February 20, 1944, with cinematographer Robert Planck , but was pushed back to early March 1944 due to production delays. On April 1, 1944, Peters was admitted into Santa Monica Hospital for abdominal pain and underwent major surgery. Her recovery took several months, postponing the films' production indefinitely. Reports varied as to how much footage was shot; some reported as little as ten-day of filming, while others stated that
20867-565: The Deck , both scripted and directed, like Rio Rita , by Luther Reed . Following the example of the other major studios, RKO had planned to create its own musical revue , Radio Revels . Promoted as the studio's most extravagant production to date, it was to be photographed entirely in Technicolor. The project was abandoned, as the public's taste for musicals temporarily subsided. From more than sixty Hollywood musicals in 1929 and over eighty
21138-576: The Disney association was beneficial, RKO's own product was widely seen as declining in quality and Briskin was gone by the end of the year. Pandro Berman—who had filled in on three previous occasions—accepted the position of production chief on a noninterim basis. He left the job before the decade's turn, but his brief tenure resulted in some of the most notable films in studio history, including Gunga Din , with Grant and McLaglen; Love Affair , starring Dunne and Charles Boyer ; and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (all 1939). Charles Laughton , who gave
21409-477: The Fight and Flying Padre . In early 1952, Hughes fought off a lawsuit by screenwriter Paul Jarrico , who had been caught up in the latest round of HUAC hearings; Hughes had fired him and removed his name from the credits of a recent release, The Las Vegas Story , a money-losing melodrama starring Jane Russell. The studio owner subsequently ordered 100 RKO employees on "leave of absence" while he established
21680-865: The Free Enterprise System", "Don't Smear Industrialists", "Don't Smear Wealth", "Don't Smear the Profit Motive", "Don't Deify 'the Common Man'", and "Don't Glorify the Collective." On July 29, 1946, William R. Wilkerson , publisher and founder of The Hollywood Reporter (THR), titled his front-page "Tradeviews" column, "A Vote for Joe Stalin ". In the column, Wilkerson named as Communist sympathizers Dalton Trumbo , Maurice Rapf , Lester Cole , Howard Koch , Harold Buchman, John Wexley , Ring Lardner Jr. , Harold Salemson , Henry Meyers, Theodore Strauss, and John Howard Lawson . Over
21951-511: The HUAC and formed the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA). A sizable CFA delegation flew to Washington, D.C. on a chartered plane in October to voice their opposition to the government's political harassment of the film industry. A few CFA members, such as Hayden, had privately assured Bogart they were not Communists. During the HUAC hearings, a local Washington paper reported that Hayden
22222-658: The HUAC released a report in 1938 claiming that communism was pervasive in the movie industry. Two years later, Dies privately took testimony from a former Communist Party member, John L. Leech, who named forty-two movie professionals as Communists. After Leech repeated his charges in supposed confidence to a Los Angeles grand jury, many of the names were leaked to the press, including those of stars Humphrey Bogart , James Cagney , Katharine Hepburn , Melvyn Douglas and Fredric March , among other Hollywood figures. Dies said he would "clear" those who cooperated by meeting with him in what he termed "executive session". Within two weeks of
22493-612: The HUAC when it was discovered he had written some music reviews for a Communist newspaper. After he refused to name names, pointing out that he had never attended a Communist Party meeting, he found himself composing music for movies such as Cat Women of the Moon . While there were film artists like Parks and Dmytryk who eventually cooperated with the HUAC, other friendly witnesses gave damaging testimony with less apparent hesitation or reluctance, most notably director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg . Their willingness to describe
22764-417: The HUAC. He described an incident at MGM in 1941, shortly after Dassin had joined the studio, when an attempt was made to halt the production of Tennessee Johnson , a biographical picture about the life of former U.S. President Andrew Johnson . McGuinness explained that after the death of the original producer of the picture, J. Walter Ruben , he took over the production as part of his executive function. He
23035-534: The Hollywood studios except for RKO seemingly bowed to the theater owners and prohibited radio appearances by their contract actors. The ban soon crumbled. Selznick spent a mere fifteen months as RKO production chief, resigning over a dispute with new corporate president Merlin Aylesworth concerning creative control. One of his last acts at RKO was to approve a screen test for a thirty-three-year-old, balding Broadway song-and-dance man named Fred Astaire . In
23306-512: The Hollywood studios from 1946 to 1947. In July, RKO Pathé's signature newsreel was sold to Warner Bros. for a reported $ 4 million. The phenomenon later called McCarthyism was building strength, and in October, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began hearings into Communism in the motion picture industry. Two of RKO's top talents, Dmytryk and producer Adrian Scott , refused to cooperate. As
23577-580: The House committee's investigation as unconstitutional – political pressure mounted on the film industry to demonstrate its "anti-subversive" bona fides. Late in the hearings, Eric Johnston , president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), vowed to the committee that he would never "employ any proven or admitted Communist because they are just a disruptive force, and I don't want them around." On November 17,
23848-550: The May 1948 issue of Photoplay magazine, that vigorously denied he was a Communist sympathizer. The Tenney Committee , which had continued its state-level investigations, summoned songwriter Ira Gershwin to explain his involvement with the First Amendment Committee because involvement alone was sufficient to arouse suspicion. A number of non-governmental organizations participated in enforcing and expanding
24119-669: The Movie Citations of the Month Award for Best Director. Less than a year after its release, Dassin revealed that he did not like the film. In early May 1947, Dassin was announced as the director of Hellinger's next production, The Naked City (originally announced as Homicide ) Dassin planned to push the realism and documentary-style filming technique of the police story flic further by shooting it entirely on location in New York City. The production received full cooperation from New York City's Homicide Squad during its two and
24390-572: The RKO Pathé line of newsreels and shorts, was likewise changed from "Radio Pictures" to "RKO Radio Pictures". In February 1937, Selznick, now a leading independent producer, took over RKO's Culver City studio and Forty Acres , as the backlot was known, under a long-term lease. Gone with the Wind , his coproduction with MGM , was largely shot there. In addition to its central Hollywood studio, RKO production now revolved around its Encino ranch . While
24661-478: The RKO name (an initialism of Radio-Keith-Orpheum ). Two years later, another Kennedy concern, the Pathé studio, was folded into the operation. By the mid-1940s, RKO was controlled by investor Floyd Odlum . RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid- to late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at
24932-533: The RKO theater chain and allied with Odlum, had assumed the title of production chief some time prior to Schaefer's departure. With Schaefer gone, Koerner could actually do the job. Announcing a new corporate motto, "Showmanship in Place of Genius: A New Deal at RKO", a snipe at Schaefer's artistic ambitions in general and his sponsorship of Welles in particular, Koerner brought the studio much-needed stability until his death in February 1946. The change in RKO's fortunes
25203-505: The Red-baiting activities of J. Edgar Hoover 's FBI. Adversaries of HUAC such as lawyer Bartley Crum – who defended Hollywood Ten members in front of the committee – were themselves branded as Communist sympathizers and targeted for investigation. The FBI tapped Crum's phones, opened his mail, and placed him under continuous surveillance. As a consequence, he lost most of his clients and, unable to cope with
25474-459: The Rising Sun , released a few months later, was similarly profitable. Much more than the other Big Five studios, RKO relied on B pictures to fill up its schedule. Of the thirty-one features released by RKO in 1944, for instance, ten were budgeted below $ 200,000, twelve were in the $ 200,000 to $ 500,000 range, and only nine cost more. In contrast, a clear majority of the features put out by
25745-634: The Saint and the Falcon were so similar that Saint creator Leslie Charteris sued RKO. The Falcon was first played by George Sanders , who had appeared five times as the Saint. He bowed out after four Falcon films and was replaced by his brother, Tom Conway . Conway had a nine-film run in the part before the series ended in 1946. Johnny Weissmuller starred in six RKO Tarzan pictures for producer Sol Lesser between 1943 and 1948 before being replaced by Lex Barker for five more. Producer Herman Schlom oversaw
26016-536: The Screen Actors Guild voted to make its officers swear a loyalty pledge asserting each was not a Communist. On November 24, the House of Representatives voted 346 to 17 to approve citations against the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress. The next day, after a meeting of 50 film industry executives at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, MPAA President Johnston issued a press release that
26287-582: The Screen Writers Guild or CPUSA, citing their First Amendment right to freedom of speech , opinion, and association. Most of the Ten challenged the legitimacy of the committee itself. John Howard Lawson said during his testimony: "I am not on trial here, Mr. Chairman. This committee is on trial here before the American people. Let us get that straight." Among the questions they declined to answer
26558-502: 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 theater operation excepted, on December 31, 1936, most of the domestic RKO subsidiaries, including RKO Distributing Corp. and its exchanges, were folded into RKO Radio Pictures Inc. Following the shift in print advertising a few years earlier, the screen brand on RKO's output, aside from
26829-848: The Soldier Shows Stock Company, a project to put on plays featuring wounded war veterans at Torney General Hospital in Palm Springs, California. In June 1944, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer announced that Dassin had been assigned to direct the company's 20th Anniversary film, Some of the Best . The five-reel picture was to include excerpts from prior Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films, spanning 1924–1943, along with wrap-around pieces starring Lewis Stone . Dassin, however, became weary of his directorial duties at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and asked Louis B. Mayer to be released from his exclusive contract. Mayer sternly refused, even after Dassin offered to sign
27100-578: The Things You Are in late 1945, but its original title was restored in time for release in November 1945. It was announced that once Dassin completed the shooting of A Letter for Evie , he would fly to Europe to direct a series of plays sponsored by the Actors' Laboratory Theatre. The plays were to star soldiers as part of war-time moral-building entertainment. Again, he was denied a leave of absence from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and in early August 1945
27371-407: The U.S. Congress now under Democratic control, HUAC launched a second investigation of communism in Hollywood. As actor Larry Parks said when called before the panel, Don't present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer. For what purpose? I don't think it is a choice at all. I don't think this
27642-494: The United States, sixteen months after its original 1950 Japanese release. The only smash hits released by RKO in the 1950s came out during this period, but neither was an in-house production: Goldwyn's Hans Christian Andersen (1952) was followed by Disney's Peter Pan (1953). The first two shorts directed by a twenty-two-year-old photographer from the Bronx were both released in 1951 by RKO Pathé— Stanley Kubrick 's Day of
27913-543: The aegis of the new holding company GenCorp , and starting with the Meryl Streep vehicle Plenty (1985), RKO Pictures took on more projects as sole studio backer. In January 1986, Paramount signed a two-year distribution agreement with the company. Films such as the erotic thriller Half Moon Street (1986) and the Vietnam War drama Hamburger Hill (1987) followed, but production ended as GenCorp underwent
28184-447: The author was entirely free to accept it or reject it as he or she pleased without incurring the slightest "consequence" or sanction.'" Much of the onscreen evidence of Communist influence uncovered by the HUAC was flimsy at best. One witness remembered Stander, while performing in a film, whistling the left-wing " Internationale " as his character waited for an elevator. "Another noted that screenwriter Lester Cole had inserted lines from
28455-537: The beach and working on local plays. On July 30, 1944, Dassin's wife Beatrice gave birth to their third child, daughter Julie. In November 1944, actor Ralph Bellamy approached Dassin to direct The Democrats , a play he was producing on Broadway. The Democrats was written by Melvin Levy and was so co-star Frances Dee . Although the production received good publicity throughout the month of November 1944, it would appear that it never came to fruition, perhaps because Dassin
28726-479: The best known actors to name names. Time Out Film Guide argues that On the Waterfront is "undermined" by its "embarrassing special pleading on behalf of informers." Radio-Keith-Orpheum RKO Radio Pictures Inc. , commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO , was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood 's Golden Age . The business
28997-399: The blacklist had no official end date, it was generally recognized to have weakened by 1960, the year when Dalton Trumbo – a CPUSA member from 1943 to 1948 and one of the "Hollywood Ten" – was openly hired by director Otto Preminger to write the screenplay for Exodus (1960). Several months later, actor Kirk Douglas publicly acknowledged that Trumbo wrote
29268-430: The blacklist were played out metaphorically on the big screen in various ways. As described by film historian James Chapman, " Carl Foreman , who had refused to testify before the committee, wrote the western High Noon (1952), in which a town marshal (played, ironically, by friendly witness Gary Cooper ) finds himself deserted by the good citizens of Hadleyville (read: Hollywood) when a gang of outlaws who had terrorized
29539-634: The blacklist; in particular, the American Legion , the conservative war veterans' group, was instrumental in pressuring the studios to ban Communists and fellow travelers. In 1949, the Americanism Division of the Legion issued its own blacklist – a roster of 128 people who it claimed were part of the "Communist Conspiracy". Among the names on the Legion's list was that of playwright Lillian Hellman . Hellman had written or contributed to
29810-429: The blacklisted Dalton Trumbo inadvertently received screen credit for having written, years earlier, the story on which the screenplay for Columbia Pictures ' Emergency Wedding was based. But "lapses" of that kind were not repeated. There were no more instances of film accrediting of blacklisted individuals until 1960. For example, the name of Albert Maltz , who had written the original screenplay for The Robe in
30081-479: The business and renamed it List Industries. Hughes soon found himself the target of no fewer than five separate lawsuits filed by minority shareholders in RKO, accusing him of malfeasance in his dealings with the Chicago group and a wide array of acts of mismanagement. "RKO's contract list is down to three actors and 127 lawyers", quipped Dick Powell . Leery of the studio's mounting problems and sparring with it over
30352-468: The cases arrived before the Supreme Court . Among the submissions filed in defense of the Ten was an amicus curiae brief signed by 204 Hollywood professionals. After the court denied review, the ten men began serving their prison sentences in 1950. One of them, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo , said during an interview for the documentary film Hollywood On Trial (1976): As far as I was concerned, it
30623-416: The cast of the television sitcom The Aldrich Family , in which she had been cast as Mrs. Aldrich. NBC had received between 20 and 30 phone calls protesting her being in the show. General Foods , the sponsor, said that it would not sponsor programs in which "controversial persons" were featured. Though the company later received thousands of calls protesting the decision, it was not reversed. In 1951, with
30894-423: The collapse of plans to create multiple TV series based on RKO properties, starting with Citizen Kane . According to Patterson's suit, O'Connor controls access to Hartley and holds both his healthcare proxy and an option to acquire RKO and its intellectual property at a deep markdown after his death. As of November 2022, Hartley, then 98 years old, was still making public appearances connected with his avocation as
31165-801: The committee in late September to testify about their Communist affiliations and associates. The contempt citation included a criminal charge that led to a highly publicized trial and conviction, with a maximum of one year in jail in addition to a $ 1,000 fine ($ 12,700 today). The Congressional action prompted a group of studio executives, acting under the aegis of the Association of Motion Picture Producers , to suspend without pay these ten film artists – initially labeled "The Unfriendly Ten" but soon changed to "The Hollywood Ten" – and to pledge that "thereafter no Communists or other subversives would 'knowingly' be employed in Hollywood." The blacklist eventually expanded beyond ten into
31436-486: The company and all of its assets in early February 1948. The story properties and actor, director and cinematographer contracts were sold to other studios via the William Morris Agency . This lead Bogart, Lord and Marie to form their own film production company, Santana Productions , and secure a financing and distribution deal with Columbia Pictures with some of the properties they managed to purchase. It
31707-503: The company and honoring the late producers' namesake with the previously planned films in development. However, difficulty lay in finding a new executive producer to head the production; Jerry Wald was first approached but was unable to free himself from his Warner Bros. contract. Robert Lord was then offered the post and freed himself from his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract to accept the new position. Unfortunately, Hellinger's widow, former actress Gladys Glad Hellinger, decided to liquidate
31978-473: The company with their Pavilion Communications. After a brief period as RKO/Pavilion, the business was reorganized as RKO Pictures LLC. With the inaugural RKO production under Hartley and Merrill's ownership, False Identity (1990), the company also stepped into the distribution business. In 1992, it handled the well-regarded independent production Laws of Gravity , directed by Nick Gomez . RKO's next significant film came in 1998 with Mighty Joe Young ,
32249-510: 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. With negotiations between the two at a stalemate, in July 1955, Hughes turned around and sold RKO Radio Pictures Inc. to the General Tire and Rubber Company for $ 25 million, leaving himself and Odlum
32520-400: The corporate offices in New York and Rathvon relocating to Hollywood and doubling as production chief while a permanent replacement was sought for Koerner. On the first day of 1947, producer and Oscar-winning screenwriter Dore Schary , who had been working at the studio on loan from Selznick, took over the role. RKO appeared in good shape to build on its recent successes, but the year brought
32791-631: The decade until reaching 66,000 in 1939. Although the CPUSA lost substantial support after the Moscow show trials of 1936–1938 and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, the organization's membership was still well above its pre-1933 levels. With this as a backdrop, the U.S. government began turning its attention to possible links between the CPUSA and Hollywood. Under then-chairman Martin Dies, Jr. ,
33062-470: The decade. Cooper sought to more tightly align costs and prospective grosses, impacting the budgets for " programmers " such as the Wheeler and Woolsey comedies: under Selznick, Hold 'Em Jail and Girl Crazy (both 1932) had cost an average of $ 470,000; under Cooper, Diplomaniacs (1933) was shot for just $ 242,000. Ginger Rogers had already made several minor films for RKO when Cooper signed her to
33333-399: The directors under long-term contract to RKO in the 1940s, the best known was Edward Dmytryk , who first came to notice with the remarkably profitable Hitler's Children (1943). Shot on a $ 205,000 budget, placing it in the bottom quartile of Big Five studio productions, it was one of the ten biggest Hollywood hits of the year. Another low-cost war-themed film directed by Dmytryk, Behind
33604-491: The division continued to come out under the combined brand until the following November). RKO Pathé was now effectively the studio's newsreel-and-shorts subsidiary. In January 1932, Variety named Constance Bennett as one of the industry's top six female "money stars". From September, the start of the industry's exhibition season, print advertising for the company's features displayed the revised name "RKO Radio Pictures". The New York City–based corporate headquarters moved into
33875-429: The early 1930s, as his capricious management style took a heavy toll. Production chief Schary quit almost immediately due to his new boss's interference and Rathvon soon followed. Within weeks of taking over, Hughes had dismissed three-fourths of the work force; production was virtually shut down for six months as the conservative Hughes shelved or canceled several of the " message pictures " that Schary had backed. All of
34146-417: The editing of the film in Hollywood during September and October 1947, Dassin flew back to New York City in early November 1947 to work on the pre-production of the stage play Strange Bedfellows . Unbeknownst to Dassin, Hellinger and Buck wound up re-cutting the film in his absence; the director only finding out at the film's premiere on March 3, 1948, when he saw a highly edited version of his film projected on
34417-624: The editors of Counterattack had direct access to the files of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and HUAC; the results of that access became widely apparent with the June 1950 publication of Red Channels . This Counterattack spinoff listed 151 people in entertainment and broadcast journalism, along with records of their involvement in what the pamphlet meant to be taken as Communist or pro-Communist activities. A few of those named, such as Hellman, were already being denied employment in
34688-482: The end of the month, he closed the deal, arranging to sell off his FBO and KAO shares, options, and convertibles at enormous profit. On October 23, 1928, RCA announced the creation of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp. holding company, with Sarnoff as board chairman. The new administration made clear that Kennedy's services were no longer needed and he stepped down from his board and executive positions in
34959-446: The era that belied their economies with high style in an Art Deco mode, exemplified by such Astaire–Rogers musicals as The Gay Divorcee (1934), their first pairing as leads, and Top Hat (1935). One of the figures most responsible for that style was another Selznick recruit: Van Nest Polglase , supervisor of RKO's highly regarded design department for almost a decade. Film historian James Naremore has described RKO as "chiefly
35230-548: The exhibition circuit from Glen Alden in 1971. Now little more than a name and beneficiary of General Tire's doubtful largesse, RKO announced in early 1958 that it would continue as a financial backer, coproducing independently made pictures. Fewer than half a dozen resulted. The final RKO film, Verboten! , a coproduction with director Samuel Fuller 's Globe Enterprises, was released, fitfully, beginning in March 1959, first by Rank and then Columbia . That same year, "Pictures"
35501-508: The feature film department by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at the same time as Fred Zinnemann and Fred Wilcox . His feature film debut at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the low-budget spy thriller Nazi Agent (originally announced under the titles Salute to Courage , House of Spies and Out of the Past ), under the supervision of producer Irving Asher and starring Conrad Veidt , in the dual roles of twin brothers, and Ann Ayars . Released in early 1942,
35772-467: The field. Freelancer George Raft starred in two noir hits: Johnny Angel (1945) and Nocturne (1946). Tourneur, Musuraca, Mitchum, and Greer, along with D'Agostino's design group, joined to make the A-budgeted Out of the Past (1947), now considered one of the greatest of all film noirs. Nicholas Ray began his directing career with the noir They Live by Night (1948), the first of
36043-520: The film industry was a serious one, and he named specific ex-employees as probable Communists. Reagan, who was then president of the Screen Actors Guild , testified that a small clique within his union was using "communist-like tactics" in attempting to steer union policy, but that he did not know if those (unnamed) members were Communists or not, and that in any case he thought the union had them under control. Adolphe Menjou declared: "I am
36314-406: The film received immediate critical acclaim and was a box office success, with Dassin being compared to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock. Dassin followed with the romantic comedy The Affairs of Martha (originally announced under the title Once Upon a Thursday ), starring Marsha Hunt and Richard Carlson , and under the supervision of producer Irving Starr . The film was made in early 1942 on
36585-531: The film was nearly completed. By the time that Peters had recovered in the summer of 1944, Dassin was on a voluntary leave from the studio, so Peters was instead assigned to Keep Your Powder Dry (originally announced as Women in Uniform ) for director Edward Buzzell . When Dassin finally returned to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in mid-1945, Peters had undergone another series of surgeries (due to an accidental shotgun discharge on January 1, 1945), which put her in
36856-435: The final release of Carole Lombard's lifetime, was a modest success and Suspicion a substantial one, with an Oscar-winning turn by Joan Fontaine . That May, having granted twenty-five-year-old star and director Orson Welles virtually complete creative control over the film, RKO released Citizen Kane . While it opened to strong reviews and went on to be hailed as one of the greatest movies ever made, it lost money at
37127-514: The first feature-length talking picture. Its success prompted Hollywood to convert from silent to sound film production en masse. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) controlled an advanced optical sound-on-film system, Photophone , recently developed by General Electric , RCA's parent company. Its path to joining the anticipated boom in sound movies had a major hurdle: Warner Bros. and Fox , Hollywood's other vanguard sound studio, were already financially and technologically aligned with ERPI,
37398-401: The first time. The $ 15.2 million RKO made on the deal convinced the other major studios that their libraries held profit potential—a turning point in the way Hollywood did business. The new owners of RKO made an initial effort to revive the studio, hiring veteran producer William Dozier to head production. In the first half of 1956, the production facilities were as busy as they had been in
37669-526: The first times the HUAC heard of film directors being Communists; up till then, the Committee had concentrated on left-wing writers in the Screen Writers' Guild . Dassin was named as one of the seven directors—along with Frank Tuttle , Herbert Biberman , John Berry , Bernard Vorhaus and Dmytryk himself—who had attended a Communist meeting at Berry's house for the purpose of electing themselves to
37940-785: The following year). RKO filled the void by releasing independently produced features such as the Dr. Christian series and the Laurel and Hardy comedy The Flying Deuces (1939). The studio soon had its own new B comedy stars in Lupe Vélez and Leon Errol : The Girl from Mexico (1939) was followed by seven frantic installments of the Mexican Spitfire series between 1940 and 1943. The studio's technical departments maintained their reputation as industry leaders; Vernon Walker's special effects unit became famous for its sophisticated use of
38211-450: The following year, the number dropped to eleven in 1931. Rio Rita star Bebe Daniels , who had joined the new studio as its top female name after the final months of her contract at Paramount were bought out, fell victim to the shifting market. Her big musical follow-up, Dixiana , had been a big money loser, and in January 1931 her contract was sold to Warner Bros. RKO, meanwhile, was in a contractual bind that it could not get out of: it
38482-409: The format proved hugely successful and non- network -affiliated stations around the country were eager to emulate it. With the purchase of RKO, the studio's library was under O'Neil's control and he quickly put the rights to the 742 films to which RKO retained clear title up for sale. C&C Television Corp., a subsidiary of beverage maker Cantrell & Cochrane , won the bidding in December 1955 and
38753-585: The former RKO Hollywood studio, FBO's old home, is now part of the Paramount lot. The renovated Culver City studio, where DeMille once reigned, is now owned and operated as an independent production facility. Forty Acres, the Culver City backlot, was razed in the mid-1970s. List Industries, the former RKO Theatres Corp., was bought by Glen Alden Corp. in 1959. Glen Alden acquired another chain in 1967, creating RKO–Stanley Warner Theatres. Cinerama purchased
39024-459: The former head of the industry censorship board , Joseph I. Breen—nominally filled the role. Schaefer, announcing his philosophy with a new studio slogan, "Quality Pictures at a Premium Price", was keen on signing up independent producers whose films RKO would distribute. 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
39295-630: The grand jury leak, all those on the list except for actress Jean Muir had met with the HUAC chairman. Dies "cleared" everyone except actor Lionel Stander , who was fired by the movie studio, Republic Pictures , where he was under contract. Two major film industry strikes during the 1930s had exacerbated tensions between Hollywood producers and unionized employees, particularly the Screen Writers Guild , which formed in 1933. In 1941, producer Walt Disney took out an ad in Variety ,
39566-434: The greatest films of Hollywood's Golden Age, at the time it lost more than half a million dollars for RKO. John Ford's The Fugitive (1947) and Fort Apache (1948), which appeared right before studio ownership changed hands again, were followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Wagon Master (1950); all four were coproductions between RKO and Argosy, the company run by Ford and RKO alumnus Merian C. Cooper. Of
39837-538: The guild's board of directors. Dmytryk explained that, at the time, the Communist Party wanted to get as many people as it could on the board of directors of the Screen Writers' Guild, Screen Actors' Guild, and Screen Directors' Guild in order to eventually control the policy of those guilds, particularly in relation to forging a coalition of the various unions. Hollywood blacklist Even during
40108-426: The hearings swept onto the blacklist those who had never even been politically active, let alone suspected of being Communists: [O]n March 21, 1951, the name of the actor Lionel Stander was uttered by the actor Larry Parks during testimony before HUAC. "Do you know Lionel Stander?" committee counsel Frank S. Tavenner inquired. Parks replied he knew the man, but had no knowledge of his political affiliations. No more
40379-399: The hearings – and (b) the graylist – those who were denied work because of their political or personal affiliations, real or imagined. The consequences of being on either list were largely the same. The graylist also refers more specifically to those who were denied work by the major studios but could still find jobs on Poverty Row : Composer Elmer Bernstein , for instance, was called before
40650-412: The holding company of Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC), a smaller studio than FBO but more prestigious. Famed director Cecil B. De Mille —PDC studio chief and owner of its Culver City production facility—had been draining the company's resources for his well-appointed productions, and it had been finding little success in getting its films into first-run theaters , which were largely tied up by
40921-425: The hundreds. On June 22, 1950, a pamphlet-style book entitled Red Channels was published. Focused on the field of broadcasting, it identified 151 entertainment industry professionals as "Red Fascists and their sympathizers" who had infiltrated radio and television. It wasn't long before those named, along with a host of other artists, were barred from employment in the entertainment field. The Hollywood blacklist
41192-469: 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, which had won a crucial Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. Under the consent decree he signed, Hughes agreed to dissolve
41463-530: The industry trade magazine, declaring his conviction that "Communist agitation" was behind a cartoonists and animators' strike . According to historians Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, "In actuality, the strike had resulted from Disney's overbearing paternalism, high-handedness, and insensitivity." Inspired by Disney, California State Senator Jack Tenney , chairman of the state legislature's Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities , launched an investigation of "Reds in movies". The probe fell flat, and
41734-408: The industry was nonetheless transformed. The fallout from the inquiry was a factor in the decision by Floyd Odlum , the primary owner of RKO Pictures , to leave the industry. As a result, the studio passed into the hands of Howard Hughes . Within weeks of taking over in May 1948, Hughes fired most of RKO's employees and virtually shut the studio down for six months while he had the political views of
42005-458: The industry's leading artists and craftsmen whose work was never seen. From the studio's earliest days through late 1935, Max Steiner , regarded by many historians as the most influential composer of the early years of sound cinema, made music for over 100 RKO films. His score for The Informer brought Steiner his third Oscar nomination and first win. Murray Spivack , head of the studio's audio special effects department, made important advances in
42276-406: The latter would emerge in mid-1935; RKO would not until 1940. Cooper took over as production head after Selznick's departure and oversaw two hits starring Hepburn: Morning Glory (1933), for which she won her first Oscar , and Little Women (1933), director Cukor's second collaboration with the actress. Among the studio's in-house productions, the latter was the biggest box-office success of
42547-482: The latter, starring John Wayne, was the biggest hit produced at the studio during the decade, that bar was low—it placed only eleventh among the year's top earners. A major money loser in standard terms, its $ 4.5 million in North American rentals not coming close to covering its $ 6 million production cost, Hughes had paid RKO Teleradio millions to buy back the rights. In March 1956 came the news that RKO Pathé
42818-424: The lavish Rio Rita , including a number of Technicolor sequences. Opening in September to rave reviews, it was named one of the ten best pictures of the year by Film Daily . Cinema historian Richard Barrios credits it with initiating the "first age of the filmed Broadway musical". By the end of the year, RKO was making use of an additional production facility—five hundred acres had been acquired near Encino in
43089-421: The lead role in a TV series it sponsored. Variety described it as "the first industry admission of what has for some time been an open secret – that the threat of being labeled a political non-conformist, or worse, has been used against show business personalities, and that a screening system is at work determining these [actors'] availabilities for roles." The Hollywood blacklist had long gone hand in hand with
43360-645: The lead. But when Peters suffered a gun shot wound accident on January 1, 1945, Dassin pulled out of the project. Director Edward Cahn was ultimately hired for the job and recast the female lead role with Signe Hasso , successfully completing the picture. Returning to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in May 1945, after thirteen months away from cameras, Dassin was assigned to direct the romantic comedy film A Letter for Evie for producer William H. Wright. The picture began shooting in early June 1945 and included Marsha Hunt, Hume Cronyn , John Carroll , Norman Lloyd and Pamela Britton . A Letter for Evie briefly changed title to All
43631-520: The leads and planned to shoot the entire picture using real locations, from New York City to Florida. Impressed by the success and filming style of The Naked City , Todd approached Dassin to direct Busman's Holiday . Although the picture was ultimately never made, Dassin had become an increasingly sought-after director. On April 3, 1948, he returned to Hollywood to meet with executives from three different studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century-Fox Film and Columbia Pictures, each of which had offered him
43902-403: The majors. In early 1927, despite months of DeMille's strenuous objections, an agreement was reached to merge PDC into Pathé , a lower-level studio known for its newsreel and churn out of cheap shorts . Investment banker Elisha Walker , whose Blair & Co. firm owned the controlling interest in Pathé, brought on Keith-Albee general manager John J. Murdock as studio president. In January 1928,
44173-472: The merged businesses, leaving him with co-ownership and management of Pathé and the PDC assets that it had absorbed. RCA owned the governing stock interest in RKO, 22 percent (in the early 1930s, its stake rose as high as 60 percent). On January 25, 1929, the new company's production arm, presided over by former FBO vice-president Joseph I. Schnitzer, was unveiled as RKO Productions Inc. A week later, it filed for
44444-479: The mid-1940s, was nowhere to be seen when the movie was released in 1953. As William O'Neill notes, pressure was maintained even on those who had ostensibly been cleared: On December 27, 1952, the American Legion announced that it disapproved of a new film, Moulin Rouge , starring José Ferrer , who used to be no more progressive than hundreds of other actors and had already been grilled by HUAC. The picture itself
44715-490: The monumental King Kong (1933)—largely Merian Cooper's brainchild, brought to life by the astonishing special effects work of Willis O'Brien . Still, the shaky finances and excesses that marked the company's pre-Selznick days had not left RKO in shape to withstand the Depression . Most of the other major studios were in similar straits. In January 1933, both RKO and Paramount were forced into receivership , from which
44986-475: The more experienced director Jacques Tourneur . The Lewton unit's moody, atmospheric work—represented by films such as Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Body Snatcher (1945)—is now highly regarded. Richard Dix concluded his lengthy RKO career with the 1943 Lewton production The Ghost Ship . Tim Holt , who succeeded George O'Brien as RKO's cowboy star, appeared in forty-six B Westerns and more than fifty movies altogether for
45257-472: The motion picture, TV, and radio fields; the publication of Red Channels meant that scores more were placed on the blacklist. That year, CBS instituted a loyalty oath which it required of all its employees. Jean Muir was the first performer to lose employment because of a listing in Red Channels . In 1950, Muir was named as a Communist sympathizer in the pamphlet, and was immediately removed from
45528-436: The names of friends who posed as the actual writers (those who allowed their names to be used in this fashion were called "fronts"). Of the 204 who signed the amicus brief on behalf of the Hollywood Ten, 84 were themselves blacklisted. There was a general chilling effect in the entertainment business. Humphrey Bogart, who had been a key member of the Committee for the First Amendment, felt compelled to write an essay, printed in
45799-449: The new RKO Building , an Art Deco skyscraper that was one of the first Rockefeller Center structures to open. Hollywood on the Air , an RKO-produced program for NBC radio that promoted films from multiple studios, sparked independent exhibitors' ire at the free access to cinema stars it gave listeners—especially in the middle of prime moviegoing Friday night. Toward the end of 1932, all of
46070-531: The news hit that Dassin was free from contractual obligations with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, writer-turned-producer Mark Hellinger scooped up the director, signing him to a non-exclusive three-picture freelance contract with his film production company, Mark Hellinger Productions . The contract gave Dassin the freedom to choose his own three projects to direct at Mark Hellinger Productions, without an expiry date. The producer had an existing financing and distribution deal with Universal-International Pictures , where Dassin
46341-536: The next two months, Wilkerson published more columns containing names of other suspected Communists and " fellow travelers " working in Hollywood. His daily column earned the moniker "Billy's Blacklist" or simply "Billy's List". When Wilkerson died in 1962, his THR obituary stated that he had "named names, pseudonyms and card numbers and was widely credited with being chiefly responsible for preventing communists from becoming entrenched in Hollywood production – something that foreign film unions have been unable to do." In
46612-442: The old parent company, Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp., and split RKO's production-distribution business and its exhibition chain into two entirely separate corporations—RKO Pictures Corp. and RKO Theatres Corp.—with the obligation to promptly sell off one or the other. While Hughes delayed the divorcement procedure until December 1950 and did not actually sell his stock in the theater company for another three years, his decision to acquiesce
46883-402: The other committee members that "we oughta fold." Besides the twenty-three friendly witnesses, there were also nineteen "unfriendly" or "hostile witnesses" who announced they would not cooperate with the HUAC. Many of the nineteen were alleged to be CPUSA members. Thirteen of them were Jewish. When the hearings for the "Hollywood Nineteen" commenced on Monday, October 27, the nation's attention
47154-410: The other studios to loan out their biggest names or signed one of the growing number of freelance performers to short-term, " pay or play " deals. Thus RKO pictures of the mid- and late forties offered Bing Crosby , Henry Fonda , and others who were out of the studio's price range for extended contracts. John Wayne appeared in 1943's A Lady Takes a Chance while on loan from Republic Pictures ; he
47425-630: The other top four studios were budgeted at over half a million dollars. A focus on B pictures limited the studio's financial risk; while it also limited the potential for reward (Dmytryk's extraordinary coups aside), RKO had a history of making better profits with its run-of-the-mill and low-cost product than with its A movies. The studio's low-budget films offered training opportunities for new directors, as well, among them Mark Robson , Robert Wise , and Anthony Mann . Film editors Robson and Wise received their first directing assignments with producer Val Lewton , whose specialized B horror unit also included
47696-656: The outstanding stock—on the market. For her performance in The Farmer's Daughter (1947), a coproduction with Selznick's Vanguard Films, Loretta Young won the Best Actress Oscar the following March. It was the last major Academy Award for an RKO picture. In May 1948, eccentric aviation tycoon and occasional movie producer Howard Hughes spent $ 8.8 million to gain control of the company, beating out British film magnate J. Arthur Rank for Odlum's stake. During Hughes's tenure, RKO suffered its worst years since
47967-529: The people subpoenaed by the HUAC, twenty-three were deemed "friendly", some of whom had previously testified in closed HUAC sessions in Los Angeles. The October hearings in Washington, D.C. began with appearances by fourteen friendly witnesses, among them Walt Disney , Jack L. Warner , Gary Cooper , Ronald Reagan , Robert Taylor , and Adolphe Menjou . Disney asserted that the threat of Communists in
48238-474: The period included Joel McCrea , Ricardo Cortez , Dolores del Río , and Mary Astor . Richard Dix , Oscar-nominated for his performance in Cimarron , would serve as RKO's standby B-movie leading man until the early 1940s, while Tom Keene was top-billed in twelve low-budget Westerns between 1931 and 1933. The comedy team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey , often wrangling over ingenue Dorothy Lee ,
48509-435: The period of its strictest enforcement from the late 1940s to late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit nor was it easily verifiable. Instead, it was the result of numerous individual decisions implemented by studio executives and was not the result of formal legal statute. Nevertheless, the blacklist directly damaged or ended the careers and incomes of scores of persons working in film, television, and radio. Although
48780-600: The picture. Sarnoff's vision of a new big-league studio was coming into focus—and both Kennedy and Walker had similar notions. Assisted by Murdock and with Blair & Co.'s backing, Kennedy quickly maneuvered to interlock KAO and FBO, selling the exhibitor a substantial stake in his studio while buying up copious amounts of KAO stock. Within months, he had installed himself as chairman of the theater chain's new board of directors. When Albee, still KAO president, visited his office, Kennedy reportedly asked, "Didn't you know, Ed? You're washed up. You're through." DeMille departed with
49051-581: The political leanings of their friends and professional associates effectively brought a halt to dozens of careers and compelled a number of artists to depart for Mexico or Europe to find employment. Director Jules Dassin was among the best known of these. Briefly a Communist, he dropped out of the Party in 1939. He was blacklisted after Dmytryk and fellow filmmaker Frank Tuttle named him at HUAC hearings. Dassin left for France, and spent much of his remaining career in Greece. Scholar Thomas Doherty describes how
49322-610: The prevailing central producer system. "Under the factory system of production you rob the director of his individualism", said Selznick, "and this being a creative industry that is harmful to the quality of the product made." Instituting unit production, he predicted, would also result in cost savings of 30–40 percent. To make films under the new system, Selznick recruited prize behind-the-camera personnel, such as director George Cukor and producer/director Merian C. Cooper , and gave producer Pandro S. Berman , aged twenty-six, increasingly important projects. Selznick discovered and signed
49593-553: The previous October to take the place of The March of Time after Time Inc. switched its distribution to Twentieth Century-Fox. In June 1944, a subsidiary, RKO Television Corporation, was established to produce content for the fledgling medium. Talk Fast, Mister , an hour-long drama shot at the RKO Pathé studio in Manhattan and broadcast by the DuMont Laboratories –owned New York station WABD on December 18, 1944,
49864-477: The primary homes of the screwball comedy . As film historian James Harvey describes, compared to their richer competition, the two studios were "more receptive to experiment, more tolerant of chaos on the set. It was at these two lesser 'majors' ... that nearly all the preeminent screwball directors did their important films— [Howard] Hawks and [Gregory] La Cava and [Leo] McCarey and [George] Stevens ." The relatively unheralded William A. Seiter directed
50135-439: The production of Night and the City and was not allowed back on the studio property to edit the film nor oversee the musical scoring. Nevertheless, Zanuck and producer Julian Blaustein hired Dassin to direct one more 20th Century-Fox Film, Half Angel , a Technicolor comedy starring Loretta Young , and scheduled to begin shooting in mid-June 1950. However, after political pressure from Hollywood and Washington, D.C., Dassin
50406-491: The rare intellectual atmosphere of the East Coast" but were kept apart from Hollywood's consideration. In 1952, the Screen Writers Guild – founded in 1933 by three future members of the Hollywood Ten – amended its screen credit rules to authorize the studios to omit the names of any individuals who had failed to clear themselves before Congress. This agreement prevented a recurrence of what happened in 1950. That's when
50677-412: The release of the forthcoming nature documentary The Living Desert , the Disney company exited its long-standing arrangement with RKO and set up its own distribution firm, Buena Vista . Contractual obligations meant that one last Disney feature would be released by RKO in 1954, and it continued to handle Disney shorts into 1956. Looking to forestall the impending legal imbroglio, by early 1954 Hughes
50948-486: The remaining employees investigated. Then, just as RKO swung back into production, Hughes made the decision to settle a long-standing federal antitrust suit against the Big Five studios . This was one of the crucial steps in the collapse of the studio system that had governed Hollywood for a quarter-century. In early 1948, all of the Hollywood Ten were convicted of contempt. Following a series of unsuccessful appeals,
51219-554: The screen rights, hoping to play the leads. Dassin, who had promised to direct, was the only director Goddard wanted. By June 1948, Dassin was set to direct Anna Lucasta at Columbia Pictures, a play written by Philip Yordan about a young prostitute whose family tries to use her to steal money from a potential husband. Goddard was scheduled to play the lead in the film and reportedly insisted that Dassin be hired to direct. During negotiations with 20th Century-Fox, Zanuck considered loaning Linda Darnell to Columbia Pictures as part of
51490-516: The screen. Furthermore, Hellinger died suddenly on December 21, 1947, months before the film was premiered and released to theatres by Universal-International Pictures. Although Dassin was unhappy about the final cut of The Naked City , the film was a huge success (one of the top movies of 1948), and it was nominated for and won several accolades, including Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White , an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story ;
51761-662: The screenplay for Spartacus (1960). Despite Trumbo's breakthrough in 1960, other blacklisted film artists continued to have difficulty obtaining work for years afterward. The first systematic Hollywood blacklist was instituted on November 25, 1947, the day after ten left-wing screenwriters and directors were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The ten men— Alvah Bessie , Herbert Biberman , Lester Cole , Edward Dmytryk , Ring Lardner Jr. , John Howard Lawson , Albert Maltz , Samuel Ornitz , Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo —had been subpoenaed by
52032-399: The screenplay. The story dealt with a hermit who is taken out of seclusion by a magazine writer, and who has a unique set of experiences in the outside world. Adler, who was solely to act as producer in his new film production company, approached Dassin to direct the picture and negotiations were underway for a financing and distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. For reasons unknown, the film
52303-499: The screenplays of approximately ten motion pictures up to that point; she was not employed again by a Hollywood studio until 1966. Another influential group was American Business Consultants Inc., founded in 1947. In the subscription information for its weekly publication Counterattack , "The Newsletter of Facts to Combat Communism", it declared that it was run by "a group of former FBI men. It has no affiliation whatsoever with any government agency." Notwithstanding that claim, it seems
52574-414: The second female lead in her film. Dassin was notified of this new assignment on May 19, 1942, and the press reported that he had been promoted to become an "A movie" director. On the first day of shooting, Dassin yelled "cut" while Crawford was performing, which deeply upset the actress and led her to rush into Mayer's office. Dassin was called into Mayer's office and told that his career as a film director
52845-438: The shell of RKO Pictures Corp. and what were now, according to Fortune , its "sole assets ... $ 18 million in cash." For Hughes, this was the effective end of a quarter-century's involvement in the movie business. Historian Betty Lasky describes Hughes's relationship with RKO as a "systematic seven-year rape." In taking control of the studio, General Tire restored RKO's close ties to broadcasting. General Tire had bought
53116-628: The significance of such interactions may have been exaggerated. As historian Gerald Horne notes, many Hollywood screenwriters had joined or associated with the local CPUSA chapter not because of allegiance to communism, but because the CPUSA chapter "offered a collective to a profession that was enmeshed in tremendous isolation at the typewriter. Their 'Writers' Clinic' had 'an informal "board" of respected screenwriters' – including Lawson and Ring Lardner Jr. – 'who read and commented upon any screenplay submitted to them. Although their criticism could be plentiful, stinging, and (sometimes) politically dogmatic,
53387-512: The stress of ceaseless harassment, committed suicide in 1959. Intimidating and dividing the left is now seen as a central purpose of the HUAC hearings. Fund-raising for once-popular humanitarian efforts became difficult, and despite the sympathies of many in the industry there was little open support in Hollywood for causes such as the Civil Rights Movement and the opposition to nuclear weapons testing . The struggles attending
53658-527: The strongest in the industry. Costumer Walter Plunkett , who worked with the company from the close of the FBO era through the end of 1939, was known as the top period wardrobist in the business. Sidney Saunders, innovative head of the studio's paint department, was responsible for significant progress in rear projection quality. On June 13, 1935, RKO premiered the first feature film shot entirely in advanced three-strip Technicolor , Becky Sharp . The movie
53929-424: The studio as well. The deal that brought the team to RKO had called for them to produce sixty features over five years; in just shy of half that time, they succeeded in making four. The Encino ranch shut down permanently in 1953 and the property was sold off. In November, Hughes finally fulfilled his obligations under the 1948 consent decree, divesting RKO Theatres; Albert A. List purchased the controlling interest in
54200-610: The studio did excellent box office: The Little Foxes , directed by William Wyler and starring Bette Davis, and the Howard Hawks–directed Ball of Fire also garnered four Oscar nominations apiece; the latter was Barbara Stanwyck's biggest 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 with his films. David O. Selznick loaned out his leading contracted director for two RKO pictures in 1941: Alfred Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith ,
54471-426: The studio instead offered to pay him to direct a short film. Dassin made his directorial debut with a short film of Edgar Allan Poe 's The Tell-Tale Heart . Filmed in June 1941 and released on October 25, 1941, the success of the picture led to his hasty promotion as a feature film director and the signing of an exclusive five-year contract in early November 1941. Dassin was promoted from the short story department to
54742-576: The studio was Thieves' Highway (originally announced as Thieves' Market and Hard Bargain ), starring Richard Conte , Lee J. Cobb and Valentina Cortese . In November 1949, the film won the Photoplay Award for Best Picture of the Month. Contrary to an often-cited 1958 Time magazine article, Dassin was not blacklisted because of a single denunciation from a particular witness at a congressional hearing. Instead, his name had been mentioned
55013-407: The studio was acquired by the General Tire and Rubber Company in 1955. It soon broke new business ground as the first major studio to sell the bulk of its film library's TV rights. The original RKO Pictures ceased production in 1957 and was effectively dissolved two years later. In 1978, broadcaster RKO General , the corporate heir, launched a production subsidiary, RKO Pictures Inc. , which revived
55284-520: The studio's first significant contribution to the genre, The Richest Girl in the World (1934). The drama Of Human Bondage (1934), directed by John Cromwell , was Bette Davis 's first great success. Stevens's Alice Adams and director John Ford 's The Informer were each nominated for the 1935 Best Picture Oscar—the Best Director statuette won by Ford was the only one ever given for an RKO production. The Informer' s star, Victor McLaglen , also took home an Academy Award; he would appear in
55555-522: The studio, beginning in 1940. That same year, Chester Lauck and Norris Goff brought their famous comic characters Lum and Abner from radio to the screen for the first of six independently produced RKO releases. Between 1943 and 1946, the studio teamed contract actors Wally Brown and Alan Carney for comedies that openly mimicked the work of the wildly popular Abbott and Costello ; Brown and Carney 's eight pairings did not approach their prototypes' success. The Falcon detective series began in 1941;
55826-563: The studio. Ann Sothern played the lead in seven RKO films between 1935 and 1937, paired five times with Gene Raymond . Stars Barbara Stanwyck and Cary Grant each signed on for several pictures. Both were sound-era trendsetters, working as freelancers under nonexclusive studio deals. Stanwyck had appeared in major studio films since 1929 without a binding long-term contract, as subsequently would several other top-billed women, including Dunne, Bennett, and Harding. When Grant went freelance after wrapping up his Paramount contract in late 1936, it
56097-504: The studio. Cary Grant was a mainstay for years, with credits including touchstones of the screwball comedy genre with which RKO was identified. The work of producer Val Lewton 's low-budget horror unit and RKO's many ventures into the field now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics and historians. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history: King Kong and producer/director/star Orson Welles 's Citizen Kane . RKO
56368-427: The summer of 1944. Between the filming of scenes, Laughton often asked Dassin to play Russian classical songs on the piano, of which both were fond. The Canterville Ghost was very well received by critics and won a Retro Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 2020. In January 1944, producer Edwin H. Knopf selected Dassin to direct the suspense drama Secrets in the Dark (originally announced as Strangers in
56639-403: The supervision of producer Harry E. Edington. During the filming of Mr. and Mrs. Smith , Dassin's wife Beatrice gave birth to their second child, daughter Richelle. By January 1941, after six months without a proper directorial job, Dassin was released from his RKO Radio Pictures contract. Dassin returned to radio work in Hollywood, presenting his previously adapted Gogol story The Overcoat for
56910-438: The system for his Film Booking Offices of America (FBO). A Kennedy-led investment group had acquired the modest-sized, low-budget-focused studio the previous year, and he had turned it into a steady profit maker. Negotiations resulted in RCA acquiring a substantial interest in FBO; Sarnoff had apparently already conceived of a plan for the studio to attain a central position in the film industry, maximizing Photophone revenue. Next
57181-443: The theatrical brand with its first releases three years later. In 1989, this business, with its remaining assets, including the studio trademarks and the remake rights to many classic RKO films, was sold to new owners, who established the small independent company RKO Pictures LLC . The original studio's film library is now largely controlled by Warner Bros. Discovery . In October 1927, Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer ,
57452-443: The threat that Photophone would be locked out of the industry entirely. Though Kennedy's deal with First National collapsed within weeks, the RCA executive saw that it was time to make his move. In September, while Kennedy was traveling in Europe, Sarnoff began negotiations with Walker, whose firm was now heavily invested in KAO, to merge the exhibition circuit with Film Booking Offices under RCA control. Soon after Kennedy's return at
57723-457: 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 Ambersons —like Kane , critically lauded and overbudget—and the expensive embarrassment of his aborted documentary It's All True . The three Welles productions combined to drain $ 2 million from the RKO coffers, major money for a corporation that had reported an overall deficit of $ 1 million in 1940 and
57994-433: The time, watched a private screening of Nazi Agent , after which she rushed to Louis B. Mayer's office insisting that Dassin direct her upcoming World War II drama vehicle , Reunion in France (originally announced simply as Reunion ). The picture was being produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and was to co-star Philip Dorn and John Wayne . Crawford also requested that Ann Ayars, who co-starred in Nazi Agent , be given
58265-501: The town several years earlier (read: HUAC) returns." Cooper's lawman cleaned up Hadleyville, but Foreman was forced to leave for Europe to find work. Meanwhile, Kazan and Schulberg collaborated on a movie widely seen as justifying their decision to name names. On the Waterfront (1954) became one of the most honored films in Hollywood history, winning eight Academy Awards , including Oscars for Best Film, Kazan's direction, and Schulberg's screenplay. The film featured Lee J. Cobb , one of
58536-487: The trademark "Radio Pictures". While the main FBO studio in Hollywood was refitted for sound, production of shorts began in New York at the RKO Gramercy studio Sarnoff had just opened. RCA's radio network, NBC , began broadcasting a weekly variety show , The RKO Hour , that became a prime promotional vehicle for the studio's films. The first two features released by the new company were musicals: The melodramatic Syncopation , which actually completed shooting before FBO
58807-417: The use of rerecording technology first heard in King Kong . In October 1935 the ownership team expanded, with financier Floyd Odlum leading a syndicate that bought 50 percent of RCA's stake in the company; the Rockefeller brothers , also major stockholders, increasingly became involved in the business. While RKO kept missing the mark in building Hepburn's career, other actors became regular headliners for
59078-415: The war's aftermath added more fuel to what became known as the " Second Red Scare ". The growth of conservative political influence and the Republican triumph in the 1946 midterm elections , which saw the GOP take control of both the House and Senate , led to a major revival of institutional anti-communist activity, publicly spearheaded by the HUAC but with an investigative push by J. Edgar Hoover and
59349-580: The year, it turned a $ 3.7 million profit for RKO, the most in the company's history. Bergman returned 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 more films for RKO during this era, including Alfred Hitchcock once more, with Notorious , and Jean Renoir , with This Land Is Mine (1943), reuniting Laughton and O'Hara, and The Woman on
59620-461: Was a bankable constant for almost a decade. Exceptions like Cimarron and Rio Rita aside, RKO's product was largely regarded as mediocre, so in October 1931 Sarnoff hired twenty-nine-year-old David O. Selznick to replace LeBaron as production chief. In addition to implementing rigorous cost-control measures, Selznick championed the unit production system, which gave the producers of individual movies much greater independence than they had under
59891-432: Was a completely just verdict. I had contempt for that Congress and have had contempt for several since. And on the basis of guilt or innocence, I could never really complain very much. That this was a crime or misdemeanor was the complaint, my complaint. In September 1950, Hollywood Ten member Edward Dmytryk announced that he had once been a Communist and was prepared to give evidence against others who had been as well. He
60162-403: Was a project of the renowned Jerry Wald – Norman Krasna production team, lured by Hughes from Warner Bros. with great fanfare in August 1950. The company also began a close working relationship with Ida Lupino . She starred in two suspense films with Robert Ryan—Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground (1952, though shooting had been completed two years earlier) and Beware, My Lovely (1952),
60433-428: Was a sponsor of the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions ' Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace , held from March 25–27, 1949, which the HUAC also cited as subversive. In the late spring of 1949, Zanuck called Dassin into his office to warn him that he was on the verge of being blacklisted , but that he still had enough time to make one more movie for 20th Century-Fox. Zanuck gave Dassin
60704-589: Was also responsible for notable coproductions such as It's a Wonderful Life and Notorious , and it distributed many celebrated films by animation pioneer Walt Disney and leading independent producer Samuel Goldwyn . Though it often could not compete financially for top star and director contracts, RKO's below-the-line personnel were among the finest, including composer Max Steiner , cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca , and designer Van Nest Polglase . Maverick industrialist Howard Hughes took over RKO in 1948. After years of disarray and decline under his control,
60975-410: Was an executive board member of the Actors' Laboratory Theatre . The Committee did not assert that the Actors' Lab was Communist, but rather that its board of directors was made up almost exclusively of CPUSA members or Communist sympathizers, including Dassin. Second, he had been a member of the Artists' Front to Win the War—a gathering on October 16, 1942 that the HUAC cited as subversive. Third, Dassin
61246-422: Was an undeniable plus side to the merger: when Pathé's Constance Bennett , Ann Harding , and Helen Twelvetrees joined the Radio family in early 1931, they were bigger box office draws than anyone on the RKO roster. The studio's production schedule surpassed forty features a year, released under the names "Radio Pictures" and, until late 1932, "RKO Pathé". Cimarron (1931) became the only RKO production to win
61517-485: Was approached by theatre producer Mike Todd who was preparing to venture into the film producing business. Todd planned to make a series of low-budget, $ 500,000 pictures and had secured a financing and distribution deal with 20th Century-Fox Film . The first picture in Todd's new deal was Busman's Holiday , an original story based on newspaper accounts of a Bronx bus driver who took off for Florida with his family using his company's bus. Todd cast Joan Blondell as one of
61788-497: Was assigned to direct another romantic comedy, Young Ideas (originally announced as Faculty Row ), under the supervision of producer Robert Sisk . The film was shot from mid-December 1942 to early 1943 and starred Susan Peters , Herbert Marshall and Mary Astor . The film was released in the summer of 1943 and received favorable reviews as a light comedy. In March 1943, Dassin joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . In September 1943, after several months without
62059-528: Was assigned to direct the romantic comedy thriller (with strong film noir tones), Two Smart People (originally announced as Time for Two ) for producer Ralph Wheelwright . The picture began filming in September 1945 and starred Lucille Ball , John Hodiak and Lloyd Nolan , and was released in late 1946. Following Two Smart People , Dassin would spend more than a year without successfully shooting another film. In March 1946, Dassin and Joseph Losey co-directed Viola Brothers Shore 's stage play Birthday for
62330-442: Was based on the life of Toulouse-Lautrec and was totally apolitical. Nine members of the Legion had picketed it anyway, giving rise to the controversy. By this time, people were not taking any chances. Ferrer immediately wired the Legion's national commander that he would be glad to join the veterans in their "fight against communism". The group's efforts dragged many others onto the blacklist: In 1954, "[s]creenwriter Louis Pollock,
62601-409: Was being dissolved. On January 22, 1957, after a year and a half without a notable success, RKO announced that it was closing its domestic distribution offices— Universal would take over most future releases—and that a reduced production wing would move to the Culver City lot. In fact, General Tire shut down RKO production for good. Overseas distribution exchanges were dispensed with: RKO Japan Ltd.
62872-485: Was born in Middletown, Connecticut , on December 18, 1911, to Bertha ( née Vogel ) and Samuel Dassin, a barber. His parents were both Jewish immigrants from Odessa , Russian Empire (now Ukraine ). Julius had seven siblings, including four brothers, Louis C., Benjamin, Irving and Edward; and three sisters. In 1915, when Julius was three years old, the Dassin family moved to Harlem, New York. He attended public grammar school where he received his first acting role in
63143-422: Was committed to producing two more features with Technicolor's system, even as audiences had come to associate color with the momentarily out-of-favor musical genre. 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. Despite these issues—and the foundering US economy—RKO had gone on
63414-465: Was coproduced with Pioneer Pictures, founded by Cooper—who departed RKO after two years helming production—and John Hay "Jock" Whitney , who brought in his cousin Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney ; Cooper had successfully encouraged the Whitneys to purchase a major share of the Technicolor business as well. Although judged by critics a failure as drama, Becky Sharp was widely lauded for its visual brilliance and technical expertise. RKO also employed some of
63685-427: 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. The company's minimal involvement in new film production continued to focus on its remake rights: Are We Done Yet? , based on Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), was released in April 2007 to dismal reviews. In 2009, Beyond
63956-402: Was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928. RCA executive David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone , and in early 1929 production began under
64227-466: Was in fact a Communist. After returning to Hollywood, Bogart shouted at Danny Kaye, "You fuckers sold me out." The CFA was attacked for being naïve. Under pressure from Warner Bros. to distance himself from the purported Hollywood Reds , Bogart negotiated a statement, syndicated in Hearst newspapers under the title "As Bogart Sees It Now", which did not denounce the CFA but said his trip to D.C. had been "ill-advised, even foolish." Billy Wilder told
64498-421: Was later dramatized in the film Guilty by Suspicion (1991), in which the character based on Comingore "commits suicide rather than endure a long mental collapse." In real life, Comingore succumbed to alcoholism and died of a pulmonary disease at age 58. According to historians Paul Buhle and David Wagner, "premature strokes and heart attacks were fairly common [among blacklistees], along with heavy drinking as
64769-412: Was marked by both diminished production and a slew of expensive flops, the studio continued to turn out some well-received films under production chiefs Sid Rogell and Sam Bischoff , though both became fed up with Hughes's interloping and each in turn quit after less than two years. Bischoff was the last man to hold the job under Hughes. There were B noirs such as The Window (1949), which turned into
65040-483: Was mocked in Variety headlines. The wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union brought the CPUSA newfound credibility. During the war, Party membership climbed back up to 50,000. As World War II drew to a close, however, perceptions changed again, with communism increasingly becoming a focus of American fears and hatred. In 1945, Gerald L. K. Smith , founder of the neofascist America First Party , began giving speeches in Los Angeles assailing
65311-523: Was never exhibited beyond that. He then wrote sketches for radio, at times directing his own radio plays, and became a stage director and producer. In April 1939, Dassin adapted Nicolai Gogol 's story The Overcoat for the CBS variety program The Kate Smith Hour , which starred Burgess Meredith and was broadcast live on April 20, 1939. In early 1940, Dassin staged and directed the play Medicine Show for producer Martin Gabel , starring Isabel Bonner , Philip Bourneuf and Norman Lloyd . Although it
65582-606: Was never made. While still in New York City, Dassin was hired by producers John Houseman and William R. Katzell to direct Allan Scott 's play Joy to the World ; a comedy about a ruthless Hollywood producer. The play began rehearsals on January 26, 1948, and opened on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre on March 18, 1948. It would run for 124 performances, until July 3, 1948. The cast included Alfred Drake , Marsha Hunt, Morris Carnovsky , Mary Welch , Lois Hall , Peggy Maley , Myron McCormick , Clay Clement , Bert Freed , Kurt Kasznar and Theodore Newton . In February 1948, Dassin
65853-429: Was not illegal). While this usually allowed a witness to avoid "naming names" without being indicted for contempt of Congress, "taking the Fifth" in one's HUAC testimony guaranteed membership on the industry blacklist. Historians sometimes distinguish between (a) the "official blacklist" – i.e., the names of those who were called by the HUAC and, in whatever manner, refused to cooperate or were identified as Communists in
66124-401: Was offering to buy out all of RKO's other stockholders. Before the end of the year, at a cost of $ 23.5 million, Hughes had gained near-total control of RKO Pictures Corp., 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's acquisition of the 95 percent ownership of RKO stock he needed to write off
66395-530: Was one of the crucial steps in the collapse of classical Hollywood's studio system . Shooting at RKO picked up again in early 1949, but from an average of around thirty films annually before Hughes's takeover, production fell to just twelve that year. Sporting the new title of managing director of production, Hughes quickly became notorious for meddling in minute filmmaking matters and promoting actresses he favored—including two under personal contract to him, Jane Russell and Faith Domergue . While his time at RKO
66666-449: Was over. To his surprise, Crawford invited the young director to have dinner at her house later that night and the two became dear friends; the next day, Dassin resumed his directorial duty on the film. The film opened to theatres in December 1942 but received mixed opinions from critics who found its pace too slow. After completing Reunion in France , it was reported that Dassin received a leave of absence from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to act in
66937-426: Was reincorporated as RKO, premiered on March 29, 1929. The comedic Street Girl debuted July 30. This was billed as RKO's first "official" production and its first to be shot in Hollywood. As with many early RKO films, the producer was studio chief William LeBaron , who had held the same position at FBO. A few nonsinging pictures followed, but RKO's first major hit was again a musical. The studio spent heavily on
67208-670: Was released early from jail. Following his 1951 HUAC appearance in which he described his past Party membership and named names, his directorial career recovered. The other nine remained silent and most were unable to obtain work in American film and television for many years. Adrian Scott , who had produced four of Dmytryk's films – Murder, My Sweet ; Cornered ; So Well Remembered ; and Crossfire – was one of those named by his former friend. Scott's next screen credit did not come until 1972 and he never produced another feature film. Some blacklisted writers managed to work surreptitiously, using pseudonyms or
67479-403: Was replaced by Richard Sale . On April 25, 1951, film director Edward Dmytryk , one of the " Hollywood Ten " who had been blacklisted in 1947 for refusing to answer questions from the HUAC, had a change of heart and decided to cooperate with the Committee and "name names". In his revised testimony, Dmytryk revealed that the Screen Directors' Guild included seven known Communists. It was one of
67750-430: Was riveted, especially given the presence in Washington, D.C. of movie stars from the First Amendment Committee. As it turned out, only eleven of the nineteen were called to testify. One of them, émigré playwright Bertolt Brecht , decided after legal advice to answer the HUAC's questions, though he did so evasively and fled the U.S. the very next day, never to return. The other ten refused to answer whether they were in
68021-401: Was rooted in events of the 1930s and early 1940s, encompassing the depths of the Great Depression , the Spanish Civil War , and the U.S.-Soviet alliance in World War II . The widespread economic hardships in the 1930s, as well as the rise of fascism in the world, caused a surge in Communist Party USA (CPUSA) membership. Levels had remained below 20,000 until 1933 and then steadily grew during
68292-448: Was said about Stander either by Parks or the committee – no accusation, no insinuation. Yet Stander's phone stopped ringing. Prior to Parks's testimony, Stander had worked on ten television shows in the previous 100 days. Afterwards, nothing. When Stander himself appeared before the HUAC, he began by pledging his full support in the fight against "subversive" activities: I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine
68563-506: Was secured on January 29, 1931, and the studio, with its contract players, well-regarded newsreel operation, and DeMille's old Culver City studio and backlot , became the semiautonomous RKO Pathé Pictures Inc. The acquisition, though a defensible investment in the long term for Pathé's physical facilities, was yet another major expense borne by the fledgling RKO, particularly as the reliably avaricious Kennedy had masked Pathé's considerable financial woes, just as he had with FBO and KAO. There
68834-410: Was securing a string of exhibition venues like those the leading Hollywood production companies owned. Kennedy began investigating the possibility of such a purchase. At that same time, the allied Keith-Albee and Orpheum theater circuits, built around the then fading medium of live vaudeville , were pursuing a transition into the movie business. In 1926 the exhibitors had acquired a 50 percent stake in
69105-763: Was set to direct one of Hollywood's biggest new stars, Burt Lancaster , in a violent prison film noir, Brute Force. With new freedom, and support from executive producer Hellinger and associate producer Jules Buck , Dassin announced that he would shoot the picture using realism and a documentary-style. He also employed a total of thirteen actors with whom he had worked at the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, including Hume Cronyn, Howard Duff, Roman Bohnen , Whit Bissell , Art Smith , Jeff Corey , Sam Levene , Charles McGraw , Will Lee , Ray Teal , Crane Whitley, Kenneth Patterson and James O'Rear. The cast also included noted Hollywood actors Charles Bickford , Yvonne De Carlo , Ann Blyth , Ella Raines and Anita Colby . Brute Force
69376-446: Was shot from March to April 1947 on the Universal-International Pictures lot, with reshoots taking place in early May 1947 to appease objections from the Motion Picture Association of America , shortly before a preview audience. The film, which featured a score composed and conducted by Miklós Rózsa , was released to theatres in July 1947 through Universal-International Pictures; that same month, Cosmopolitan magazine awarded Dassin with
69647-493: Was sold to Disney and the British Commonwealth Film Corporation in July 1957, and RKO Radio Pictures Ltd. in the UK was dissolved a year later. The Hollywood and Culver City facilities were sold in late 1957 for $ 6.15 million to Desilu Productions , owned by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball , who had been an RKO contract player from 1935 to 1942. Desilu was acquired by Gulf and Western Industries in 1967 and merged into G+W's other production company, neighboring Paramount Pictures ;
69918-473: Was soon offering the films to independent stations in a package called "MovieTime USA". RKO Teleradio Pictures—the newly renamed General Teleradio, under which RKO Radio Pictures now operated as a business division—retained the broadcast rights for the cities where it owned TV stations. By 1956, RKO's classic movies were playing widely on television, often in the Million Dollar Movie format, allowing many to see such films as Citizen Kane and King Kong for
70189-438: Was soon working regularly with RKO, making nine more movies for the studio. 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 , on loan out from Selznick, starred opposite Bing Crosby in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), a coproduction with director Leo McCarey . The top box-office film of
70460-412: Was staged at the Mercury Theatre, after Orson Welles ' troupe had left for Hollywood and the Radio-Keith-Orpheum circuit. Since the pay was poor with Artef Players, Dassin formed a theatre troupe to tour the Borscht Circuit in the Catskills as summer stock. Dassin acted in a movie scripted and directed by Jack Skurnick , which was shown to a small group at a space that Skurnick rented in New York but
70731-464: Was still rare for a leading man to do so while his star was on the rise. He ultimately appeared in fourteen RKO releases between 1937 and 1948. Soon after the appointment of a new production chief, Samuel Briskin, in late 1936, RKO entered into an important distribution deal with animator Walt Disney (Van Beuren consequently folded its cartoon operations). For nearly two decades, the studio released his company's features and shorts; Snow White and
71002-403: Was stripped from the corporate identity; the holding company for General Tire's broadcasting operation and the few remaining motion picture assets was renamed RKO General . In the words of scholar Richard B. Jewell, "The supreme irony of RKO's existence is that the studio earned a position of lasting importance in cinema history largely because of its extraordinarily unstable history. Since it
71273-552: Was the first made-for-TV movie . In collaboration with Mexican businessman Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta , RKO established Estudios Churubusco in Mexico City in 1945. With RKO on increasingly secure ground, Koerner sought to increase its output of handsomely budgeted, star-driven features. However, the studio's only remaining major stars with anything like extended deals were Grant, whose services were shared with Columbia Pictures, and O'Hara, shared with Fox. Lacking in-house stars, Koerner and his successors under Odlum arranged with
71544-449: Was the one now generally rendered as, "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party ?". The HUAC formally charged the ten men with contempt of Congress and began criminal proceedings against them in the full House of Representatives . In light of the Hollywood Ten's defiance of the HUAC – in addition to refusing to answer questions, they also tried unsuccessfully to read opening statements decrying
71815-417: Was the weakling of Hollywood's 'majors,' RKO welcomed a diverse group of individualistic creators and provided them ... with an extraordinary degree of freedom to express their artistic idiosyncrasies.... [I]t never became predictable and it never became a factory." Beginning with 1981's Carbon Copy , RKO General became involved in the coproduction of a number of feature films and TV projects through
72086-443: Was then presented with a petition, signed by Dassin, Ring Lardner Jr. , Donald Ogden Stewart , Hy S. Kraft and Richard Collins , which was addressed to MGM executive vice-president Al Lichtman , demanding that the picture be aborted for political reasons. All five signees were known Communists. The news hit the media quickly. In 1948 and 1949, Dassin's name was connected with at least three Communist-front organizations. First, he
72357-503: Was to be made under the supervision of writer-producer Marion Parsonnet and set to star Franchot Tone , Sylvia Sidney , Constance Dowling and Tom Conway . Unfortunately, disagreements about the budget and script caused the whole production to fall apart and the entire cast and crew resigned. The picture was eventually made with a completely new team a year later. Dassin was finally released from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer once his exclusive five-year contract expired in November 1946. As soon as
72628-435: Was unable to receive a leave of absence from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In December 1944, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer assigned Dassin to direct the crime-mystery film Dangerous Partners (originally announced as Paper Chase ) for producer Arthur Field. Dassin took over the directorial duties from Fred Zinnemann (who was then suspended from Metro-Goldywn-Mayer for refusing to finish the picture), and had anticipated casting Susan Peters in
72899-1131: Was up in limbo following Hellinger's death. The film production unit had undergone considerable changes in the months prior to Hellinger's passing, including the addition of Humphrey Bogart as vice-president, and the signing of a six-picture financing and distribution deal with David O. Selznick 's Selznick Releasing Organization . Mark Hellinger Productions owned the filming rights to several Ernest Hemingway stories, Forest Rosaire's novel East of Midnight , Arthur Cohn 's screenplay Disbarred , Gordon Macker's screenplay Race Track , Philip G. Epstein 's screenplay Mistakes Will Happen , and Jerry D. Lewis' screenplay Twinkle, Twinkle ; in addition to three films in development: Knock on Any Door , Criss Cross and Act of Violence . Any of these properties may have been picked for Dassin to direct in 1948. The company also held contracts with actors Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Don Taylor and Howard Duff, and with cinematographer William Daniels. Bogart, Selznick and secretary-treasurer A. Morgan Marie announced their plan to continue Mark Hellinger Productions in January 1948, by co-heading
73170-465: Was virtually immediate: corporate profits rose from $ 736,241 in 1942 (the theatrical division compensating for the studio's $ 2.34 million deficit) to $ 6.96 million the following year. The Rockefellers sold off their stock and, early in 1943, RCA dispensed with the last of its holdings in the company as well, cutting David Sarnoff's ties to the studio that was largely his conception. A new RKO Pathé "news magazine" series, This Is America , had been launched
73441-519: Was well received by critics, Medicine Show only ran for 35 performances at the New Yorker Theatre, from April 12, 1940, to May 11, 1940. In June 1940, Dassin was signed to a term contract with Hollywood film studio RKO Radio Pictures as a director. He was immediately assigned as an assistant director to learn the motion picture business, working under Garson Kanin on They Knew What They Wanted (1940) and Alfred Hitchcock on Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), both starring Carole Lombard and both under
#271728