Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures is a large United States-based motion picture company located in Hollywood, California and is owned by Viacom.
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History
The Paramount company was founded by W. W. Hodkinson on May 8, 1912, as a merger of 11 film rental bureaus. Paramount was the first company that did nationwide distribution, thus gaining a huge efficiency advantage over the old regional States' Rights system. The company did five-year exclusive contracts with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company, Jesse L. Lasky's Feature Play Company, and with Bosworth Studio. The contracts were expanded to 25 years later. Paramount also introduced the block-booking system, which meant that an exhibitor who wanted to show a particular Famous Players movie had to buy an entire package, containing a set of films from all companies that worked together with Paramount. This system was very efficient for the involved production firms. In 1917, Adolph Zukor bought Paramount and merged it with Famous Players.
The new firm was called Paramount Pictures Corporation, and was the dominating force in the American market, it had most of the major stars under contract like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks; Adolph Zukor also fired W. W. Hodkinson, to challenge Paramount's power. First National controlled a large portion of the nation's cinemas and thus Paramount decided to build its own chain of cinemas and achieved yet greater control of the market. In 1920, it controlled 5000 cinemas, 25% of the market. In 1919, First National and Paramount planned to merge, to gain full control of the market and to cut production cost, because they figured that stars couldn't demand huge sums if there was only one major company to work for. But the plan was uncovered by a private eye hired by Charlie Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and David Wark Griffith, who wanted to know why the major companies did not prolong their contracts. In reaction to the plan, they decided to found their own distribution company, United Artists, which effectively ended the efforts to found a monopoly. Nevertheless, Paramount was one of the dominating companies in the Second Oligopoly until the United States Supreme Court split the company in two in 1949.
The 1950s to the 1970s
After World War II, in the aftermath of the 1948 anti-trust suit forcing studios to divest in their movie theatres, Paramount struggled to keep up with the changing movie business. It sold its pre-1950 back catalog of features to MCA, then a talent agency and fledgling TV production company; today, they are the property of EMKA, Ltd., an in-name-only division of what is now NBC Universal Television, and are counted as part of Universal Pictures' library (Psycho 1960, was sold to Universal in 1968). When Paramount was split, the theater half became United Paramount Theatres, which later merged with ABC. Paramount also had a hand in creating (and, ultimately, destroying) the DuMont Television Network through its ownership of Los Angeles TV station KTLA.
In 1966, Paramount was purchased by Gulf+Western, an industrial conglomerate. Gulf+Western also purchased the Desilu television studio from Lucille Ball the next year, reincorporating it as Paramount Television. G+W installed producer and actor Robert Evans as studio head; this proved to be a smart move, as in the next ten years Paramount would become the number one studio in Hollywood, and produce such classics as Rosemary's Baby, The Godfather films and the musicals Saturday Night Fever and Grease, despite Evans' snarky personality and penchant for getting himself into trouble. Above him were first Frank Yablans and then Barry Diller, each answering to G&W chief Charles Bluhdorn. Paramount Television was also very successful, creating such hits as Happy Days, The Brady Bunch, and Cheers, and maintaining the Star Trek franchise that had exploded in the early 1970s after NBC's cancellation of the series in 1969 and its subsequent sale to syndication.
Paramount Pictures was unconnected to Paramount Records, until it purchased the rights to use Paramount Records' name (but not its back catalogue) in the late 1960s. Paramount used the name to publish soundtrack albums and pop records from the Dot Records back catalogue, since Dot had been switched over to all-country [1] (http://www.bsnpubs.com/dot/paramount.html). In 1974, Paramount sold all of their record holdings to ABC Records, which in turn ended up as part of MCA in 1978.
From the 1980s to the present day
Paramount's successful run extended into the 1980s and 1990s, generating such hits as the Friday the 13th slasher series, Raiders of the Lost Ark and its sequels, Beverly Hills Cop (part of a string of films starring comedian Eddie Murphy) and the Star Trek feature films, as well as Oscar winners like Atlantic City and Forrest Gump. By this time, G+W had sold off most of its industrial divisions, and in 1989, they changed their name to Paramount Communications. In 1993, Viacom entered a bid to purchase the studio, which they beat Barry Diller for in 1994. As of 2005, Viacom's potential spilt is rumored to split up Paramount; the movie studio would be part of a company run by Tom Freston, and the TV division would be part of a company run by Les Moonves.
As of 2004, Paramount is the only major film studio to locate its main production facilities within Hollywood itself (most studios are located in other Los Angeles suburbs). Its studio tour is a popular tourist attraction.
External link
- Official website (http://www.paramount.com/)
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