Kalloch's employment, in turn, convinced leading actresses that Columbia Pictures intended to invest in their careers. He was the first contract costume designer hired by the studio, and he established the studio's wardrobe department. In 1933, Columbia hired Robert Kalloch to be their chief fashion and women's costume designer. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), which made James Stewart a major star. Other Capra-directed hits followed, including the original version of Lost Horizon (1937), with Ronald Colman, and Mr. Until then, Columbia's existence had depended on theater owners willing to take its films, since it didn't have a theater network of its own. In particular, It Happened One Night, which nearly swept the 1934 Oscars, put Columbia on the map. A string of hits he directed in the early and mid 1930s solidified Columbia's status as a major studio. Between 19, Capra constantly pushed Cohn for better material and bigger budgets. Helping Columbia's climb was the arrival of an ambitious director, Frank Capra.
It controlled production and distribution it did not own any theaters. Like United Artists and Universal, Columbia was a horizontally integrated company. Columbia gradually moved into the production of higher-budget fare, eventually joining the second tier of Hollywood studios along with United Artists and Universal. īrandt eventually tired of dealing with the Cohn brothers, and in 1932 sold his one-third stake to Harry Cohn, who took over from him as president.Ĭolumbia's product line consisted mostly of moderately budgeted features and short subjects including comedies, sports films, various serials, and cartoons. Humorist Robert Benchley called it the Pine Tree Studio, "because it has so many Cohns".
Even in an industry rife with nepotism, Columbia was particularly notorious for having a number of Harry and Jack's relatives in high positions. Warner was head of production or CEO longer but did not become CEO until 1956). He would run Columbia for the next 34 years, one of the longest tenures of any studio chief ( Warner Bros.' Jack L. Cohn remained head of production as well, thus concentrating enormous power in his hands. In an effort to improve its image, the Cohn brothers renamed the company Columbia Pictures Corporation on January 10, 1924. The first print logo used by Columbia Pictures, featuring its Columbia personification The studio is headquartered at the Irving Thalberg Building on the former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (currently known as the Sony Pictures Studios) lot in Culver City, California since 1990.
Broccoli beat columbine series#
The company was also primarily responsible for distributing Disney's Silly Symphony film series as well as the Mickey Mouse cartoon series from 1929 to 1932. Today, it has become the world's third largest major film studio. It is one of the leading film studios in the world, and was one of the so-called " Little Three" among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford, and William Holden also became major stars at the studio. In the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studio's premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. In the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were Jean Arthur and Cary Grant.
With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the primary homes of the screwball comedy.
In its early years, Columbia was a minor player in Hollywood, but began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name on Janu(operating as Columbia Pictures Corporation until December 23, 1968), went public two years later, and eventually began to use the image of Columbia, the female personification of the United States, as its logo. On June 19, 1918, brothers Jack and Harry Cohn and their business partner Joe Brandt founded Cohn-Brandt-Cohn (CBC) Film Sales Corporation, which would eventually become Columbia Pictures. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Sony.