They called themselves United Artists, but the trades called it a “rebellion against established producing and distributing arrangements.” Paramount Pictures founder Adolph Zukor reportedly said, “The inmates have taken over the asylum.” But when Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith went before the cameras on Feb. 5, 1919, to announce the creation of a corporation to distribute their own films, they claimed it was necessary to protect their own interests as well as to “protect the exhibitor and the industry from itself.”
It wasn’t any great prescient vision that had brought Hollywood’s biggest moneymakers to this point. Rather, they were reacting — and quickly — to what they saw as a threat to limit their salaries and the quality of their films.
A little backstory: During the 1910s, as the demand for films skyrocketed, production companies, theaters and distribution mechanisms multiplied and, in retrospect, reaction was often the catalyst for change.
It wasn’t any great prescient vision that had brought Hollywood’s biggest moneymakers to this point. Rather, they were reacting — and quickly — to what they saw as a threat to limit their salaries and the quality of their films.
A little backstory: During the 1910s, as the demand for films skyrocketed, production companies, theaters and distribution mechanisms multiplied and, in retrospect, reaction was often the catalyst for change.
- 10/4/2019
- by Cari Beauchamp
- Variety Film + TV
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