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RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood 's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together ...
In fact, an eagle-eyed reader such as yourself has probably seen the radio tower logo used in many of the early RKO films. During its 25 years in film production RKO produced many memorable films, including the Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire musicals, the early pictures of Katharine Hepburn, and most famous of all, Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane.”
- The Formation and Early Development of RKO
- Reworking The UA Model
- Wartime Recovery
- The Decline and Fall of RKO
- Further Reading
Legend has it that RKO was created in a 1928 meeting between RCA president David Sarnoff (1891–1971) and Boston financier Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK) in the Oyster Bar in New York's Grand Central Station. While the meeting itself may have been apocryphal, Sarnoff and Kennedy did in fact control the elements that would merge to create RKO. Most o...
The success of Disney's Snow White was a harbinger of major changes in RKO's production policies and market strategy, which coalesced after the arrival of George Schaefer (1888–1981) as RKO president in late 1938. Schaefer was a former top executive at United Artists who was hired to adapt the UA model—i.e., the financing and distribution of indepe...
Schaefer's departure in mid-1942 signaled the deepening financial concerns at RKO, which had not returned to consistent profitability despite the waning Depression, the banner year in 1939 (which resulted in net losses for the studio), and the emergence from receivership in January 1940. By early 1942 it was clear that the "war boom" would be as mo...
When the studio reopened, Hughes was supervising all aspects of administration and production, and the results were disastrous. RKO released a few notable films early in Hughes's regime—most of them initiated under Schary, including two noir classics, The Set-Up (1949), directed by Robert Wise, and They Live By Night (1948), directed by newcomer Ni...
Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1989. Croce, Arlene, The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book. New York: Outerbridge & Lazard, 1972. Deitrich, Noah, and Bob Thomas. Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1972. Haver, Ronald. David O. Selznick's Hollywood. New York: Knopf, 1980. Hirsch, Foster. The Dark Side of t...
RKO Pictures (also known as RKO Productions, Radio Pictures, RKO Radio Pictures, and RKO Teleradio Pictures) is an American film production and distribution company. The original company produced films from 1929 through 1957, with releases extending until its dissolution in 1959.
Website. www .rko .com. RKO Pictures is a company in the United States that makes and sells movies. It was first known as RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. RKO was an acronym for Radio-Keith-Orpheum, the original parent company of RKO Radio Pictures. [1] It was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood 's Golden Age. The company was made by the merger of ...
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of ...
THE MAD MISS MANTON with WBTV. RKO is currently in development with WBTV to reinvent the 1939 classic "THE MAD MISS MANTON," which originally starred Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. RKO Pictures produces, finances and distributes both original entertainment and remakes of its classic films.
