After United Artists, it was the fourth and last independent distributor of Walt Disney Productions' films until the founding of Disney-owned Buena Vista Film Distribution in 1953. It was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.
RKO Pictures is a company in the United States that makes and sells movies. Being a less stable studio that its famous competitors, the company never 'settled down,' never discovered its real identity" (Jewell, p. 10).Val Lewton was a significant figure in 1940s Hollywood, known primarily for producing a wartime cycle of innovative B-grade horror films for RKO. After a tumultuous period beginning with Howard Hughes’ purchase of the studio in 1948, RKO regained its bearings with its acquisition by Ted Hartley and Dina Merrill in 1989.Over the following two decades, RKO would go on to produce classics in nearly every genre, from dramas: Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (starring Jimmy Stewart), comedies: Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn), horror films: the original King Kong (starring Fay Wray), thrillers: Hitchcock’s Notorious (starring Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman), and perhaps the most influential film of all-time, designated by AFI as Number One on their list of the 100 Greatest Movies, Orson Welles’ masterpiece Citizen Kane. In its original incarnation, as RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. (a subsidiary of Radio-Keith-Orpheum, aka: RKO) it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. A teenage special ops agent coveting a "normal" adolescence fakes her own death and enrolls in a suburban high school.A world-renowned string quartet struggle to stay together in the face of illness, competing egos, and insuppressible lust.Hailee Steinfeld, Hailee Steinfeld, Samuel Jackson and Sofia TurnerStarring: Gavin Lee, Kristen Beth WilliamsCurrently in release by RKO and eOne Entertainment.Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken, Catherine Keener, Mark Ivanir, Imogen Poots, and Liraz CharhiRKO is one of the oldest continuously operating movie studios, and occupies a unique place in the history of film making.Based on the classic Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers musical.
The history of RKO (aka Radio-Keith-Orpheum, aka RKO Radio Pictures) is utterly unique among the Hollywood studios, particularly the Big Five integrated majors.
The key to RKO's wartime reversal was Koerner's diminished reliance on outside independents and heavy concentration on cost-efficient genre production.
By combining film production, distribution, and hundreds of theaters under one umbrella, they knew they had an innovative business model.
As RKO historian Richard Jewell writes: "RKO existed in a perpetual state of transition: from one regime to another, from one set of production policies to the next, from one group of filmmakers to an altogether different group. With a legacy that includes classic films like Citizen Kane, King Kong, and It’s a Wonderful Life, the modern RKO Pictures produces, finances and distributes both original entertainment and remakes of its classic films.
RKO Pictures was an American film production and distribution company. The reason for the formation of the company was an opportunity which RCA wanted to take … The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in October 1928.
Floyd Odlum (1892–1976) decided to take charge, sweepingout Schaefer and most of his executive corps in June 1942 (including the former Production Code Administration head Joe Breen, after a brief and disastrous run as production head), and hiring Charles Koerner to run the studio and oversee production.
RCA chief David Sarnoffengineered t…
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.,, American motion-picture studio that made some notable films in the 1930s and ’40s. ThisThe history of RKO (aka Radio-Keith-Orpheum, aka RKO Radio Pictures) is utterly unique among the Hollywood studios, particularly the Big Five integrated majors.
RKO Pictures is a company in the United States that makes and sells movies.