RKO Pictures (Johnsonverse)

RKO Pictures, Inc., commonly called RKO (an abbreviation of Radio-Keith-Orpheum), is an American film production and distribution company serving as one of the "Big Seven" film studios. 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. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone. By the mid-1940s, the studio was under the control of 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 the studio. Cary Grant was a mainstay for years. 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 (with Johnson Studios) and Citizen Kane. RKO was also responsible for notable co-productions such as It's a Wonderful Life and Notorious, and it also distributed many celebrated films by animation producer Walt Disney (from 1937 to the mid-1950s) and leading independent producer Samuel Goldwyn.
Maverick industrialist Howard Hughes took over RKO in 1948. After years of disarray and decline under his control, the studio was acquired by producer and businessman Daichi Makimoto in 1955. Under Moore, RKO further established itself as a major Hollywood studio, continuing to produce many beloved films and television series.
==Origin==
In October 1927, Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer, 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, a subsidiary of AT&T's Western Electric division. The industry's two largest companies, Paramount and Loew's/MGM, with two other major studios, Universal Pictures and First National Pictures, were poised to contract with ERPI for sound conversion as well.
Seeking a customer for Photophone, then general manager of RCA David Sarnoff approached Joseph P. Kennedy in late 1927 about using the system for Kennedy's modest-sized studio, Film Booking Offices of America (FBO). Negotiations resulted in General Electric acquiring a substantial interest in FBO; Sarnoff had apparently already conceived of a plan for the company to attain a central position in the film industry, maximizing Photophone revenue. Next was securing a string of exhibition venues like those the leading Hollywood production companies owned. Kennedy began investigating the possibility of such a purchase. Around that time the large Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) circuit of theaters, built around the then-fading medium of live vaudeville, was attempting a transition to the movie business. In mid-1927 the filmmaking operations of American Pathé and Producers Distributing Corporation, which Cecil B. De Mille was a partner in forming, had united under KAO's control. Early in 1928 KAO general manager John J. Murdock, who had assumed the presidency of Pathé, turned to Kennedy as an adviser in consolidating the studio with De Mille's company, Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC). This was the relationship Sarnoff and Kennedy sought.
After an aborted attempt by Kennedy to bring yet another studio that had turned to him for help, First National, into the Photophone fold, RCA was ready to step back in: the company acquired Kennedy's stock in both FBO and the KAO theater business. On October 23, 1928, RCA announced the creation of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp. holding company, with Sarnoff as chairman of the board. Kennedy, who withdrew from his executive positions in the merged companies, kept Pathé separate from RKO and under his personal control. RCA owned the governing stock interest in RKO, 22 percent (in the early 1930s, its share 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 the trademark "Radio Pictures". Looking to get out of the film business the following year, Kennedy arranged in late 1930 for RKO to purchase Pathé from him. On January 29, 1931, Pathé, with its contract players, well-regarded newsreel operation, and Culver City studio and backlot, was merged into RKO when Kennedy sold off the last of his stock in the company he had been instrumental in creating.
== History ==
=== Early years ===
=== Success under Selznick ===
=== Cooper at the helm ===
=== Briskin and Berman ===
=== Kane and Schaefer's troubles ===
=== Rebound under Koerner ===
=== Focus on B movies ===
=== HUAC and Howard Hughes ===
=== Turmoil under Hughes ===
=== Daichi Makimoto ===
In 1955,
=== Resurgence in the 1960s ===
== Logos ==
Most of the films released by RKO Pictures since 1929 have an opening logo displaying the studio's famous trademark, a spinning globe and radio tower, nicknamed the "Transmitter." It was inspired by a 200-foot (61 m) tower built in Colorado for a giant electrical amplifier, or Tesla coil, created by inventor Nikola Tesla. For many years, the RKO tower beeped out the Morse code for "A Radio Picture" (during much of World War II, "V for Victory" was substituted). Orson Welles referred to the Transmitter as his "favorite among the old logos, not just because it was so often a reliable portent.... It reminds us to listen." The RKO Pathé feature logo replaced the radio tower with the Pathé brand's hallmark rooster, who stood stock-still as the world turned beneath his feet. RKO's closing logo, an inverted triangle enclosing a thunderbolt, was also a well-known trademark. Instead of the Transmitter, many Disney and Goldwyn films released by the studio originally appeared with colorful versions of the RKO closing logo as part of the main title sequence. For decades, re-releases of these films had Disney/Buena Vista and MGM/Goldwyn logos replacing the RKO insignia, but the originals were restored in many DVD editions. In the 1990s, RKO commissioned a new, CGI version of the Transmitter, with CEO Ted Hartley composing the fanfare. Another CGI version was created in 2019, coinciding with RKO's 90th anniversary, with a new arrangement of Hartley's fanfare by Alan Silvestri.
Category:Johnsonverse