United Artists turns 100

Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith were all heavyweights in the rapidly growing motion-picture industry by 1919.

All four, however, were seeking to gain more financial and artistic control over producing and distributing their films. On February 5, 1919, they joined forces to create their own film studio, which they called the United Artists Corporation.

United Artists quickly gained prestige in Hollywood, notably with Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), as well as the work of actors such as Buster Keaton, Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. Chaplin directed UA films as well as acted in them, and Pickford concentrated on producing after she retired from acting in the 1930s.

With the rise of sound during that decade, UA was helped by the talents (and bankrolls) of veteran producers like Joseph Schenck, Samuel Goldwyn, Howard Hughes and Alexander Korda.

The corporation struggled financially in the 1940s, however, and in 1951 the production studio was sold and UA became only a financing and distributing facility.

By the mid-1950s, all of the original partners had sold their shares of the company; but UA had begun to thrive again. In addition, the company was responsible for the James Bond and Pink Panther film franchises. UA went public in 1957 and became a subsidiary of the TransAmerica Corporation a decade later.

UA films garnered four Best Picture Academy Awards over the course of the 1970s. Soon after that, however, five top executives left the company in a disagreement and formed the Warner Brothers-backed Orion Pictures.

Following the big-budget flop Heaven’s Gate, directed by Michael Cimino, MGM bought the company in 1981, merging with it in 1983 to become MGM/UA Entertainment. In a highlight of those relatively dark years, UA did release another Best Picture winner, Rain Man, in 1988.

In 1992, the French bank Credit Lyonnais acquired UA and changed its name back to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

MGM changed hands and was reorganized repeatedly over the next decade and a half, during which UA was repositioned as a boutique producer of smaller, so-called “art house” films such as Bowling for Columbine (2002), Hotel Rwanda (2005) and Capote (2006).

That November MGM gave the actor/producer Tom Cruise and his production partner, Paula Wagner, control over the United Artists production slate, announcing the decision as a “reintroduction” of the UA brand in the spirit of its founders.

At: https://www.historyinorbit.com/today-history-united-artists-founded/

Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks form their own production studio, United Artists, today in 1919.