In his undated column on RKO Pictures , SDSAB contributor **Ken **says RKO Pictures ceased production in 1953, yet a production company claiming lineage to the original RKO Pictures appears to have resumed production in 1981 , after a 28 year hiatus, and has produced films as recently as 2007. IMDB also lists the last production before the hiatus as 1951 (From Dangerous Depths
Incidentally, evidence of the old RKO studio can be seen at the corner of Gower and Melrose in Hollywood. Now a part of the Paramount lot, the building on that corner was the old RKO studio; the globe on the roofline once sported a small radio tower, the logo from RKO Pictures.
ZenBeam
February 28, 2009, 2:07pm
2
Wikipedia says “Radio-Keith-Orpheum”. That’s consistent with the RKO website
And with the column that’s linked to in the OP, which it would have been polite to read.
Well, so much for the edit window.
A better nitpick would to note that Joseph Kennedy was part of the deal with David Sarnoff:
Film Booking Offices of America (FBO), registered as FBO Pictures Corp., was an American film studio of the silent era, a midsize producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began in 1918 as Robertson-Cole, an Anglo-American import-export company. Robertson-Cole began distributing films in the United States that December and opened a Los Angeles production facility in 1920. Late that year, R-C entered into a working relationship with East Coast financier Joseph P. Kennedy...
The advent of sound film would drastically alter the studio’s course: Negotiations that began in late 1927 with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) on a deal for sound conversion led to RCA purchasing a major interest in FBO in January 1928. Four months later, as part of a strategy conceived with RCA head David Sarnoff, Kennedy acquired control of Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) a vaudeville exhibition chain with approximately one hundred theaters across the United States and the Pathé (U.S.) –De Mille filmmaking operations under its charge. On June 17, 1928, FBO’s The Perfect Crime, directed by Bert Glennon and starring Clive Brook and Irene Rich, debuted. It was the first feature-length “talkie” to appear from a studio other than Warner Bros. since the epochal premiere of Warners’ The Jazz Singer eight months before. The Perfect Crime, which went into general release on August 4, had been shot silently; using RCA’s sound-on-film PhotophoneRCA system, the dialogue was dubbed in afterward—a process then known as “synthetic sound.” On August 22, Kennedy signed a contract with RCA for live Photophone recording; more importantly, he also tendered the company an option to buy his governing share of FBO. Two months later, RCA had acquired controlling stock interests in both the studio and KAO.
On October 23, 1928, RCA announced it was merging Film Booking Offices and Keith-Albee-Orpheum to form the new motion picture business Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), with Sarnoff as chairman. Kennedy, who retained Pathé, was paid $150,000 for arranging the merger on top of the millions of dollars in profit he made from selling off his stock. Joseph I. Schnitzer, ranking FBO vice-president, was elevated to president of the new company’s production arm, replacing Kennedy. William LeBaron, the last FBO production chief, retained his position after the merger, but the new studio, dedicated to full sound production, cut ties with most of FBO’s roster of silent-screen performers. Movies that Film Booking Offices had either produced or arranged to distribute were released under the FBO banner through the end of 1929. The last official FBO production to reach American theaters was Pals of the Prairie, directed by Louis King and starring Buzz Barton and Frank Rice, released July 1, 1929.
Kennedy’s importance to Hollywood is mostly forgotten today because he bailed out just at the dawn of the talking picture era. A new book Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years, by Cari Beauchamp may help remedy that.
ZenBeam
February 28, 2009, 5:23pm
5
Whoops, thought I was in GQ.
