Screen Gems

Screen Gems is an American subsidiary company of Columbia Pictures Corp. that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation.

Screen Gems was founded in 1934 to produce a series of Columbia animated film shorts. Screen Gems' animation output included such characters as Scrappy, Krazy Kat, and the Fox and Crow. The shorts were only moderately successful when compared to those of Walt Disney Productions and Warner Bros. Pictures. In this incarnation, Screen Gems ceased operations in 1946, though their animation output continued to be distributed for another three years.

In 1948, Screen Gems was revived to serve as the television subsidiary of Columbia, producing and syndicating several popular shows (see below) and also syndicating Columbia Pictures' theatrical film library to television, including the wildly successful series of two-reel short subjects starring The Three Stooges in the late 1950s. Earlier, they also acquired syndication rights to a package of Universal horror films, which was enormously successful in reviving that genre. The final notable production from this incarnation of Screen Gems was the 1974 mini-series QB VII.

In 1974, the Screen Gems name was retired and Columbia's television subsidiary became Columbia Pictures Television. Changes in corporate ownership of Columbia came in the mid-1970s when the Coca-Cola Company bought the company, although continuing to trade under the CPT code. In 1989 Columbia Pictures was purchased by Sony Corporation of Japan. In 1991, Columbia Pictures Entertainment was renamed to Sony Pictures Entertainment as a film production-distribution subsidiary, and subsequently merged with TriStar Pictures in 1998.

In September 2002, Columbia TriStar Television became Sony Pictures Television, while three years earlier, in 1999, Screen Gems was resurrected as the specialty film producing arm of Sony's Columbia Pictures.

Contents

1 EUE/Screen Gems 2 Notable TV shows 3 Trivia 3.1 The "S From Hell" 4 External Links

EUE/Screen Gems

Screen Gems should not be confused with EUE/Screen Gems, which uses the same "S" logo. EUE/Screen Gems was founded by Frank Capra, Jr., and owns and operates motion picture and television production facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina and New York, New York. (The WB drama Dawson's Creek was filmed at the Wilmington facility.). In 1984 Capra purchased the assets of Screen Gems from Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., but apparently not the name because he was forced to make a minor change in the company's name (thus the EUE).

Notable TV shows

Notable television programs produced and/or syndicated by Screen Gems include:

• The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1954-1959)
• Father Knows Best (1954-1960)
• The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966)
• The Flintstones (produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions) (1960-1966)
• Bewitched (1964 - 1972)
• I Dream of Jeannie (1965 - 1970)
• The Monkees (1966-1968)
• The Partridge Family (1970-1974)

Trivia

The "S From Hell"

The Screen Gems "S From Hell" is a closing logo developed for Screen Gems in the mid-1960s, and first used in 1965. It starts with two parallelograms coming from the top and bottom on the screen, and the upper one is at a distance while the lower is closer, and the higher moves forward while the lower backs away. As they do so, they grow in length and wrap around a space where a dot appears, forming a stylized "S". Under the words "Screen Gems" come forward. The two parallelograms are supposed to represent a strip of film traveling around a sprocket (the 'dot'). Overall, the strips do form an 'S', but looking at the sprocket and the lower strip, you will see a lower case 'g', representing the 'Gems' half. In 1973 the words "A Division of Columbia Pictures Industries" appeared below Screen Gems.

Some people have reported being traumatized by the music the logo used from 1965-1974. The tune, composed by Eric Siday, was an early electronic music piece featuring an electric piano and filtered brass instruments, all run through a reverb effect. The resulting "off-balance" sound, combined with the stark look of the animation, bothered people (especially those who were children at the time) enough that the combination later got the nickname "The S from Hell". It is often cited (with other closing logos such as Viacom's "V Of Doom") as one of the scariest production logos ever made.

External Links

• The Screen Gems Network A now defunct block of old Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures Television shows reaired in 1999 in syndication. (http://www.sonypictures.com/tv/shows/sgn/)
• John S. Flack, Jr's Tribute to the S From Hell (http://www.milanofamily.org/scrngems/scrngems.htm) (Contains Audio and Video)
• EUE Screen Gems, Ltd. (http://www.euescreengems.com/)