My dad worked for RKO back in the 30’s. Someone asked me recently what RKO stood for. Embarrassed to admit I didn’t know.
Imagine the R stands for radio. The K and O stand for what?
RK-Who?
Rk-read the link.
Thanks. Wouldn’t have guessed that. Was thinking something along the lines of Radio Kino Something or other for the O
To the late night, double feature, picture show!
Really Kinky Orgasm.
Since that’s been settled, what did your dad do at RKO?
While we’re at it, I always take the opportunity to recommend RKO 281 - great movie.
Not sure exactly and he’s been deceased for 30 years now so can’t ask him. Think it had something to do with film distribution.
FWIW: the name of the RKO studios was a composite. The company was the brainchild of Joe Kennedy (father of JFK), who put it together with David Sarnoff, then head of RCA (Radio Corporation Of America). The Keith and Orphum (K & O) were vestiges of two great chains of vaudeville theaters (the kind that featured variety acts). They bought all the K & O theaters as well.
The company was founded around the time talking pictures came in (1928-29), and also absorbed two independent studios: one, Pathe, formerly a French company, its American studio had long been spun off and was having financial difficulties. FBO was the other. It was a smallish, largely British owned company best known for modestly budgeted westerns and action pictures.
RKO started big, and in the early talkie era was one of the top studios in the business, up there with MGM and Warners. As the years went by it began to (as we like to put it today) lose market share. David Sarnoff’s RCA involvement began to ebb (there were legal, mostly anti-trust issues regarding his involvement in the studio). When a young whippersnapper producer named David Selznick took charge of RKO he merged the Pathe division into the larger studio, retaining the old, prestigious name Pathe for newsreels only. Selznick left RKO in 1933, after which it went through a number of management changes.
The jewel (or jewels) in the crown of RKO were the theaters. They owned a huge chain of movie theaters second only to Paramount’s; and they had excellent distribution, nationally and internationally. On the other hand, they were often in financial hot water. Eventually Howard Hughes bought the company (in 1948) and began to run it into the ground. He sold it to General Tire several years later, which caused the new parent company, which was buying up radio and TV stations left and right, to change the name to RKO General. Shortly thereafter they sold the back lot to Desilu, a TV production company, and stopped distributing films altogether. They were the first major Hollywood studio to go out of business due to the rise of television as America’s new favorite form of entertainment,
If this all seems more than a little OT I’d like to say that RKO is and always has been my favorite Hollywood studio. They produced some of the greatest and most enduring movies of Hollywood’s golden age, including King Kong, The Informer, Gunga Din and Citizen Kane, among many others. They had maybe the finest technicians in the business, thus the studio was itself much in demand. Gone With the Wind, an independent production produced by David Selznick, distributed by MGM, was filmed almost entirely at RKO, on their famous 40 Acres lot, which is one of the reason why it looks so good. It’s a Wonderful Life was filmed at RKO as well; and it too looks grand. For two decades Walt Disney was affiliated with RKO, was their provider of cartoons. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was underwritten and released by RKO. No other studio in Hollywood would have taken such a risk at that time.
I have no desire to visit any of the Disney or Universal theme parks today, even the ones on the west coast, would give my eye teeth to be able to go back in time and take a tour of the RKO lot at its peak. It may not have been the biggest outfit in Hollywood, but it was the best studio of them all (in my humble opinion).
I recently watched RKO’s 1935 version of She, and then Hammer’s 1965, and really liked RKO’s better; Ursula Andress notwithstanding (I’ll be in my bunk - not with standing.)
Continuing my Merian C. Cooper jag, I watched The Most Dangerous Game. Although both films recycled much from RKO’s King Kong, they were still great to watch.
But the cult of Orson Welles holds that RKO made schlock until Welles came along and saved the day, only to be betayed by the anti-artistic poltroons, then Howard Hughes bought the studio as a showcase for Jane Russell’s tits. But that’s not true.
If there’s nothing standing, then why bother going to your bunk? 
RKO was one of the five major studios of the 1930s, with Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, and Fox. It fell on hard times after the war (while Columbia, Universal, and United Artists improved to become full majors at the same time).
You have it backwards – The Most Dangerous Game PRECEDED Kong, and they re-used Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and many of the jungle sets from TMDG for Kong.
I finally got a chance to see Cooper’s She recently, restored and colorized (as they originally wanted to do it. The colorization was overseen by Ray Harryhausen), and found it impressive. In this case, the movie DID recycle from Kong – A lot of effects work was duplicated, and Max Steiner wrote the score again, using many motifs from the score for Kong. They also re-used the giant doors that Kong burst through!
It’s also one of the few movies I’ve seen besides Kong that has the iconic radio tower at the opening . (I don’t recall if TMDG did so, too).
Yes, TMDG did also.
I’m surprised you, at your advanced age, wouldn’t say you’d seen tens, if not many more of the RKO tower openings.
Maybe I just am much more into movies from pre-1940. I’ve seen perhaps 20-50 with that opening.
That’s true. RKO went through good and bad phases. The last bad phase killed the studio. Prior to that it was on again, off again. The mid to late 30s were an off period. Things began to pick up around 1939-40, coninued through the war years and after. The period when Dore Schary was v.p. in charge of production was really good (roughly 1946-48), which included many “package deals” with Selznick. Schary left shortly after Howard Hughes bought the studio in 1948. Still, all was not lost and RKO continued to make good films fairly regularly, albeit on somewhat lower budgets, through 1952. It was downhill from then on.