Screen Gems

Screen Gems is an American film production company owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Japanese multinational conglomerate, Sony Group Corporation. The Screen Gems brand has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation, initially as a cartoon studio, then a television studio, and later on as a film studio. Screen Gems currently serves as a Sony’s film production division that specializes in genre films, mainly horror.
Screen Gems is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
When producer Pat Sullivan came to Harry Warner to sign a contract with him on his and Otto Messmer's series Felix the Cat, he declined and instead told his soon-to-be former secretary Margaret J. Winkler that she should form her own company and take control of the distribution of the series. Winkler formed M.J. Winkler Productions and soon also took control of Max and Dave Fleischer's series Out of the Inkwell. By 1923 she and Sullivan were arguing, and that same year the Fleischer Brothers formed their own distribution company named Red Seal. Winkler saw an unreleased short called Alice's Wonderland, a cartoon produced and directed by Walt Disney, and became impressed with the short. The two agreed to make a series about the cartoon. In 1924, Charles Mintz married Winkler, and the latter's career began to decline. Mintz quickly assumed Winkler's role in the company, later rebranding it Winkler Pictures.
In 1925 Winkler's renewal contract for the Felix shorts was written, yet Winkler declined to renew due to her dispute with Sullivan. The following year the Alice Comedies stopped being distributed by Winkler. After Mintz become involved with the progress it was clear that Disney was unhappy with the production costs on cartoons, and he asked Disney and Ub Iwerks to develop a new character. The result was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the first animated character for Universal Pictures. In February 1928, when the character proved more successful than expected, Disney sought to meet with Mintz over the budget, wanting to spend more on the cartoons. Mintz refused, and hired away all of Walt Disney Studios's animators except Iwerks, Les Clark, and Johnny Cannon, who all refused to leave Disney. He moved the production of the Oswald cartoons to Winkler Pictures, along with Margaret Winkler's brother, George. After losing the Oswald contract to Walter Lantz, Mintz focused on Krazy Kat (a character from a comic strip by cartoonist George Herriman), which was the output of a Winkler-distributed property.
M.J. Winkler Productions became known as Winkler Pictures after Mintz took over in 1926 and partnered with Columbia Pictures for distribution in 1929. In 1931, when the studio moved from New York to California, it was renamed The Charles Mintz Studio.
The Charles Mintz studio became known as Screen Gems in 1933. The name was originally used in 1933, when Columbia Pictures acquired a stake in Charles Mintz's animation studio. The name was derived from an early Columbia Pictures slogan, "Gems of the Screen"; itself a takeoff on the song "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean". Mintz was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Short Subject. His first nomination was in 1935 for Holiday Land, and he was nominated again in 1937 for The Little Match Girl. For about a decade, Charles Mintz produced Krazy Kat, Scrappy, and the Color Rhapsody animated short series Columbia Pictures. Also, between 1937 to 1940, several Color Rhapsody films were subcontracted to Ub Iwerks with the use of his own animation studio.
The studio's color cartoons were well received, while some other cartoons were not, mainly the later Krazy Kat and Scrappy shorts. Animator Isidore Klein was particularly frustrated with the Krazy Kat cartoons as it bear little resemblance to Herriman's comic strip by the mid 1930s (despite attempting to make a more faithful cartoon with the 1936 short Lil' Ainjil, which Klein was disappointed by the final product). Furthermore, Columbia gave Mintz strict financial obligations where they advance a certain amount of money, resulting Mintz repeatedly running into cost overruns. In 1939, after becoming indebted to Columbia and suffering from declining health, Mintz relinquished ownership of his studio and the Screen Gems name to Columbia to settle longstanding financial problems. He would later pass away on December 30, 1939, from a heart attack. Krazy Kat was discontinued the following year, while the Scrappy cartoons ended a year afterwards.
By 1940, Columbia would oversee management of the studio following ownership. The studio's production manager, Jimmy Bronis, became the studio head but was shortly replaced by Mintz's brother-in-law, George Winkler. The following year, Columbia decided to hire Frank Tashlin, previously a writer for Walt Disney Productions and director for Leon Schlesinger Productions, as the studio head instead. Tashlin had a profound effect to the studio as he planned to revitalize it to greater heights. There, he would hire many displaced animators from the 1941 Disney animators' strike, as well as making the decision of firing the bulk of their initial in-house staff (including Arthur Davis, Manny Gould, Lou Lilly, Ben Harrison and Winkler). He would also direct the short The Fox and the Grapes. Based on the Aesop fable of the same name, the short would inadvertently spawn Columbia's most successful characters with The Fox and the Crow, a comic duo of a refined Fox and a street-wise Crow. Tashlin was later replaced by Ben Schwalb as producer in April 1942, but continued to work there as a creative supervisor.
Tashlin proved to be very influential to his staff, as he allowed and encouraged them to pursue the wildest of ideas under his supervision. However, his stay at Screen Gems would be short-lived, as he would later leave the studio in June following an argument with Columbia higher-ups. When interviewed by Michael Barrier, he said that the management "can't stay happy long when things are going well, so we ended up in another fracas and I left." He was replaced by Dave Fleischer (who produced the 1942 WWII short Song of Victory under Tashlin's supervision), previously the co-founder and head supervisor of Fleischer Studios. John Hubley described Fleischer as being very detached from his employees, calling him "one of the world's intellectual lightweights". He was also known for editing completed cartoons in a way that broke continuity. He was later fired and succeeded by a revolving door of producers, including musician Paul Worth, Three Stooges producer Hugh McCollum and ex-Schlesinger assistants Ray Katz and Henry Binder. The studio would also create several more recurring characters around this time, including Tito and His Burrito, Flippy, Flop the Cat, Igor Puzzlewitz, Willoughby Wren, and an adaptation of Al Capp's comic series Li'l Abner, with varying levels of success.
Tashlin's departure had an immediate effect to the studio in a direction standpoint, with animation historians noting that the quality of there cartoons had declined soon after. Film historian Leonard Maltin claimed that after Tashlin left, the studio "tried to maintain some spirit on-screen, with varying results. Screen Gems cartoons of the 1940s feature some of the least endearing cartoon characters ever created, and suffer from misguided story direction," which was seen in shorts such as Mass Mouse Meeting (1943) and Giddy-Yapping (1944). Hubley, who went on to direct Professor Tall and Mr. Small, He Can't Make It Stick and The Rocky Road to Ruin (all 1943) with Paul Sommer, said to have disliked his work at the studio, and that Columbia "hated" the cartoons they were making. Capp was also reportedly displeased with the quality of the Li'l Abner cartoons, which was discontinued after five cartoons, and the shorts produced by Katz and Binder were criticized for being "pale carbons of the Warner Brothers shorts," to the point of creating clone characters of Sylvester the Cat, and Daffy Duck, respectively.
In addition to Tashlin's departure, many of the ex-Disney animators that he hired also left for other studios; the inability to hire and maintain more experienced directors and storymen, as well as Columbia's mismanagement were also argued as other key factors to the studios diminished quality. Some staff members during this period included Bob Wickersham, Alec Geiss, Sid Marcus (one of the few pre-Tashlin artists who stayed in the studio), Howard Swift and Alex Lovy. Bob Clampett was also brought in as a gag writer before setting up his own brief animation studio for Republic Pictures, while Looney Tune writers Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce were said to have moonlighted for a few cartoons.
Screen Gems was, in an attempt to keep costs low, the last American animation studio to stop producing black and white cartoons. The final black-and-white Screen Gems shorts appeared in 1946, over three years after the second-longest holdouts (Famous Studios and Leon Schlesinger Productions). During that same year, Columbia, still dissatisfied of the studios output, decided to shut its doors for good, but continured to release a back catalog of shorts up until 1949. The studio name was later repurposed for a television division, while the former Seward Street facility, which Screen Gems occupied since 1940, was taken over by Walter Lantz Productions in 1947.
The Screen Gems cartoons were regarded as ones of varying quality, comparable to those produced by Famous Studios and Terrytoons. In spite of the studio's internal affairs, the Screen Gems' cartoons were still moderately successful, with three more cartoons achieving Academy Awards nominations. The cartoons produced and supervised by Tashlin were also praised for his attempts at revitalizing the studio. However, Screen Gems never achieved a level of success comparable to Walt Disney Productions, Warner Bros. Cartoons, Walter Lantz Productions and the MGM Cartoon Studio. The studio's purpose was assumed by an outside producer, United Productions of America (UPA), whose cartoons, including Gerald McBoing-Boing and the Mr. Magoo series, were major critical and commercial successes. Following UPA, a deal with Hanna-Barbera was made in 1957, which lasted until 1967.
In 1999, Columbia TriStar International Television produced Totally Tooned In- a syndicated TV package showcasing Columbia's classic cartoon library. With the aid of animation historian Jerry Beck, Columbia restored and remastered the majority of the color Screen Gems cartoons (as well as all the UPA cartoons) from their original 35mm elements. The show aired in several international markets before making its American television debut on Antenna TV on January 8, 2011. They would later be aired on Toon In With Me on the MeTV Network in November 2021. Despite these restoration efforts, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has no current plans to release these shorts on DVD or Blu-ray. Since CPE Holdings, Inc. became dormant on May 9, 2024, Sony Pictures Releasing now owns the theatrical distribution on behalf of Columbia Pictures, while Sony Pictures Television owns the television distribution on behalf of CPT Holdings, Inc. to the majority of the color Screen Gems cartoons (as well as all the UPA cartoons) library.
All series were distributed by Columbia unless otherwise noted.
Ralph Cohn, the son of Columbia co-founder Jack Cohn and nephew of Columbia head Harry Cohn, founded Pioneer Telefilms, a television commercial production company, in 1947. Ralph later wrote a 50-page memo arguing that Columbia should be the first major film studio to move into television. Although Harry wasn't convinced by the suggestion, Columbia invested $50,000 acquiring Pioneer and reorganized it as Screen Gems. The studio started its new business in New York on April 15, 1949.
By 1951, Screen Gems became a full-fledged television studio by producing and syndicating several popular shows (see below). Within a few months, Ralph Cohn had sold a half-hour dramatic anthology concept to the Ford Motor Company which became Ford Theatre, which was one of the first times a major Hollywood movie studio had produced content for television. They also produced seven episodes of the first season of Cavalcade of America.
The name "Screen Gems," at the time, was used to hide the fact that the film studio was entering television production and distribution. Many film studios saw television as a threat to their business, thus it was expected that they would shun the medium. However, Columbia was one of a few studios who branched out to television under a pseudonym to conceal the true ownership of the television arm. That is until 1955, when Columbia decided to use the woman from its logo under the Screen Gems banner, officially billing itself as a part of "the Hollywood studios of Columbia Pictures", as spoken in announcements at the end of some Screen Gems series.
By 1952, the studio had produced a series of about 100 film-record coordinated releases for television under the brand "TV Disk Jockey Toons" in which the films "synchronize perfectly with the records".
In 1954, the studio started producing Father Knows Best on CBS and The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin on ABC, which became their biggest successes at the time.
On July 1, 1956, studio veteran Irving Briskin stepped down as stage manager of Columbia Pictures and formed his own production company Briskin Productions, Inc. to release series through Screen Gems and supervise all of its productions. On December 10, 1956, Screen Gems expanded into television syndication by acquiring Hygo Television Films (a.k.a. Serials Inc.) and its affiliated company United Television Films, Inc. Hygo Television Films was founded in 1951 by Jerome Hyams, who also acquired United Television Films in 1955 that was founded by Archie Mayers.
During that year, the studio began syndicating Columbia Pictures' theatrical film library to television, including the series of two-reel short subjects starring The Three Stooges in 1957. Earlier on August 2, 1957, they also acquired syndication rights to "Shock Theater", a package of Universal Pictures horror films (later shifted to MCA TV), which was enormously successful in reviving that genre.
From 1958 to 1974, under President John H. Mitchell and Vice President of Production Harry Ackerman, Screen Gems delivered TV shows and sitcoms: Dennis the Menace, The Donna Reed Show, Hazel, Here Come the Brides, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gidget, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun, The Monkees, The Girl with Something Extra and The Partridge Family.
It was also the first distributor for Hanna-Barbera Productions, an animation studio founded by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera after leaving Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and was also the distributor of the Soupy Sales show. The company also entered a co-production deal with Canada's CTV Television Network and produced several shows, many of which were filmed or taped in Toronto for distribution to Canadian stations (Showdown, The Pierre Berton Show). The company even expanded as far as Australia, opening Screen Gems Australia to produce shows for that country's networks, including The Graham Kennedy Show for the Nine Network.
In the late 1950s, Screen Gems also entered into ownership and operation of television stations. Stations owned by Screen Gems over the years included KCPX (Salt Lake City; now KTVX, owned by Nexstar Media Group), WVUE-DT (New Orleans; now owned by Gray Television), WAPA-TV (San Juan; now owned by the Hemisphere Media Group), WNJU (Linden, NJ; now Telemundo/NBCUniversal O&O), and several radio stations as well, including 50,000-watt clear channel WWVA (Wheeling, WV; now owned by iHeartMedia). As a result, in funding its acquisitions, 18% of Screen Gems' shares was spun off from Columbia and it became a publicly-traded company on the NYSE until 1968. Screen Gems also provided technical assistance and partial control of a private television station in Venezuela, Canal 11 Televisión, which existed from 1966 to 1968.
In 1963, William Dozier, who was one of the top Screen Gems employees, and senior vice president of production left to start out Greenway Productions, with a non-exclusive agreement with the studio for joint distribution of its TV productions. Even though none of Greenway's shows went to SG, Greenway immediately struck out a deal with rival television producer 20th Century-Fox Television in 1964.
In 1963, Screen Gens entered music publishing with the purchase of Don Kirshner's Aldon Music with Kirshner named head of the Columbia-Screen Gems music division. Four years later, he departed Screen Gems after coming into conflict with The Monkees over their desire to play on their records. Lester Sill replaced Kirshner, and remained head of music publishing until 1985. Screen Gems-Columbia Music was sold to EMI for $23.5 million in 1976.
From 1964 to 1969, former child star Jackie Cooper was Vice President of Program Development. He was responsible for packaging series (such as Bewitched) and other projects and selling them to the networks.
For the 1965–1966 season, Screen Gems announced that they would sign three big creative programmers to develop new series, which was announced in June 1964. Among them was writer Sidney Sheldon, director Hy Averback, and writer David Swift.
In 1965, Columbia Pictures acquired a fifty per cent interest in the New York-based commercial production company EUE, which was incorporated into Screen Gems and renamed EUE/Screen Gems. The studios were sold in 1982 to longtime Columbia Pictures executive George Cooney shortly after Columbia Pictures was sold to The Coca-Cola Company.
On December 23, 1968, Screen Gems merged with its parent company Columbia Pictures Corporation and became part of the newly formed Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. for $24.5 million.
In the following year, former ABC vice president of programming Leonard Goldberg joined Screen Gems, displacing Jackie Cooper as vice president of program development. Goldberg failed to receive the same level of success as Cooper. His shows all tanked after one season, with the exception of The Partridge Family, and he abruptly left after three years, with the most notable other production of Goldberg's tenure at Screen Gems being the 1971 television movie Brian's Song. He then formed a production company with producer Aaron Spelling.
In 1971, Douglas S. Cramer, former executive VP in charge of production at Paramount Television, set up a SG-affiliated production firm, The Douglas S. Cramer Company, to produce projects for feature films and TV projects via Columbia Pictures. In 1972, David Gerber, who had left 20th Century Fox Television, set up a SG-affiliated production company to produce his own projects with that company. The most notable of these productions was Police Story, an NBC police crime drama. In 1973, Allan Blye and Chris Bearde via Blye-Bearde Productions signed an independent production agreement with Screen Gems to develop their own projects. Also that year, Harry Ackerman, who was vice president of production left the studio to start his own production company to be affiliated with Paramount Television.
On May 6, 1974, Screen Gems was renamed to Columbia Pictures Television as suggested by then-studio president David Gerber, who succeeded Art Frankel as his studio president. The final notable production from this incarnation of Screen Gems before the name change was the 1974 miniseries QB VII. Columbia was, technically, the last major studio to enter television by name.
Changes in corporate ownership of Columbia came in 1982, when Coca-Cola bought the company, although continuing to trade under the CPT name. In the mid-1980s, Coca-Cola reorganized its television holdings to create Coca-Cola Television, merging CPT with the television unit of Embassy Communications as Columbia/Embassy Television, although both companies continued to use separate identities until January 2, 1988, when it and Tri-Star Television were merged under the CPT name. Columbia also ran Colex Enterprises, a joint venture with LBS Communications to distribute most of the Screen Gems library, which ended in 1987. In 1985, the name was brought back by Columbia Pictures Television to distribute classic television series from its vaults to first-run syndication.
On December 18, 1987, Coca-Cola spun off its entertainment holdings and sold it to Tri-Star Pictures, Inc. for $3.1 billion. It was renamed as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc., also creating Columbia/Tri-Star by merging Columbia and Tri-Star. Both studios continued to produce and distribute films under their separate names. In 1989, Sony Corporation of Japan purchased Columbia Pictures Entertainment. On August 11, 1991, Columbia Pictures Entertainment was renamed as Sony Pictures Entertainment as a film production-distribution subsidiary and subsequently combined CPT with a revived TriStar Television on February 21, 1994 to form Columbia TriStar Television. The name "Screen Gems" was also utilized for a syndicated hour-long program for classic television called Screen Gems Network that first aired in 1999 and ran until 2002.
The television division is presently known as Sony Pictures Television.
Television programs produced and/or syndicated by Screen Gems:
Note: (*)= Currently owned by Turner Entertainment Co. and Warner Bros.
Note: (*) = Currently owned by Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros.
On December 8, 1998, Screen Gems was resurrected as a fourth speciality film-producing arm of Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group. It was created after Triumph Films closed. Screen Gems produces and releases "films that fall between the wide-release films traditionally developed and distributed by Columbia Pictures and those released by Sony Pictures Classics". Many of its releases are of the horror, thriller, action, drama, comedy and urban genres, making the unit similar to Dimension Films (part of Lantern Entertainment), Hollywood Pictures with Searchlight Pictures (divisions of The Walt Disney Company), and Rogue Pictures (when it was formally owned by Relativity Media and before that, Universal Pictures).
As of 2023, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) is Screen Gems' highest-grossing film with over $300 million dollars worldwide in box office earnings.