One of Hollywood's "Little Three" production companies (along with UNITED ARTISTS and Universal) and the only studio to transcend its "poverty row" origins to become a major corporation. The driving force behind Columbia was the colorful, indomitable HARRY COHN, who personally supervised all studio production until his death in 1958. Cohn and his brother Jack had been producing cheap westerns and comedies since the early 1920s for their C.B.C. Films Sales Corporation in Hollywood. They changed the company name to Columbia in 1924 and released their first feature-length film, Blood Ship, in 1927.
The arrival of director FRANK CAPRA a year later had an enormous impact on the studio's rising fortunes. He directed Columbia's first all-talking picture, The Donovan Affair, in 1928. For the next 10 years, his remarkable comedies and dramas, including It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) - which won every major Oscar for 1939 - vaulted the studio into the front rank.
However, the decade of the 1940s saw primarily the production of formula pictures, excepting a handful of big-budget films such as Gilda (1946), The Jolson Story (1947), and Born Yesterday (1950). Despite government antitrust actions after 1948 and the advent of television, Columbia was not as adversely effected as were the other studios. Columbia owned no theaters, so the government-enforced divorcement of theaters had no impact. At the same time, the formation of Screen Gems in 1952 allowed Columbia to become the first studio to produce programs for television. Screen Gems also sold Columbia's pre-1948 package of features to television. Profits from the sale were channeled into new film production.
In 1968 the studio was reorganized as Columbia Pictures Industries and released two phenomenally successful films, Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970). In 1972 it left its original studio space at Sunset Boulevard and Gower in Hollywood to share WARNER BROS.' new Burbank Studios. Several corporate takeovers ensued. Coca-Cola acquired the studio in 1981, and a year later Coke created another company, Tri-Star Pictures (a joint venture of Columbia, HBO, and CBS). The idea was to create a steady flow of films that would have theatrical, cable, and network television exhibition.
A few hit pictures from Columbia followed, notably Tootsie (1985) and Ghostbusters (1984). In 1986 British producer David Puttnam appeared in a brief tenure as studio chief. Bertolucci's epic The Last Emperor was made under his guidance, and it won nine Oscars, including Best Picture. In 1987 Columbia and Tri-Star were subsumed under the corporate title Columbia Pictures Entertainment. Two years later Sony Corporation purchased both Columbia and Tri- Star and hired Peter Guber and Jon Peters as cochairmen. In 1990, Sony Entertainment of Japan purchased the famous MGM Studio in Culver City, where The Wizard of Oz was filmed. The historic studio is now home to both Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures, which are both divisions of Sony. In five short years, Noria Ohga, in charge of the business, drove the studios into a decline that translated to US Dollars 3.2 billion in write-offs and losses, according to Fortune magazine's Brent Schlender (June 12, 1995).
In 1997, Sony Pictures had a spectacularly successful year, reaching the highest domestic gross record of US Dollars 1.202 billion in a single year of its history. Some of the contributors include Men in Black, Air Force One, Jerry Maguire, My Best Friend's Wedding, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and As Good As It Gets. Sony has also produced several hit TV shows such as Mad About You, Party of Five, Felicity and Jeopardy. Columbia and TriStar have been doing well enough in the new adapted Culver City lodgings. Sony Pictures Studios includes 22 soundstages, ranging in size from more than 7,600 square feet to the world's second-largest stage at roughly 43,000 square feet; the company's Culver Studios in Culver City houses 14 additional soundstages. Sony Pictures Studios has just recently added a two-hour guided walking tour of the studio.
Currently, the studio operations of Sony Pictures are: the Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures Group, which encompasses production studio Columbia Pictures; film labels Sony Pictures Classics, Screen Gems, and TriStar; sources of thirdparty product (such as Revolution Studios); and global motion picture production operations. Recent films include Panic Room (2002), Spider Man (2002), Men in Black II (2002), Ali (2001), and Black Hawk Down (2001) with Revolution Studios.
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