Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Columbia
Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953). EVERETT COLLECTION. REPRODUCED
BY PERMISSION.
whose myriad awards included OscarsÒ for Best Picture
and Best Actor (Broderick Crawford).
Columbia’s continued success in the 1950s was due
in part to Cohn’s experience in dealing with freelance
talent and independent production, and also to
Columbia’s ready acceptance of television when the other
studios were either dismissing or disparaging the upstart
medium. Columbia was the first studio to undertake TV
series production, via its Screen Gems division, which
under the supervision of Ralph Cohn, Jack’s son, produced
hit series in multiple genres, from daytime variety
(House Party, 1952) and syndicated children’s and family
programming (Captain Midnight, 1954; Jungle Jim,
1955; Circus Boy, 1956) to network prime-time sitcoms
(Father Knows Best, 1954; The Donna Reed Show, 1958),
anthology dramas (The Ford Television Theatre, 1952;
Playhouse 90, 1956; Goodyear Theatre, 1957), and crime
dramas (Naked City, 1958; Tightrope, 1959). TV series
production absorbed much of Columbia’s B-movie operation,
as Cohn reduced feature film output from around
sixty per year in 1950 and 1951 to less than forty by the
mid-1950s. B-western programmers were phased out
altogether, although Columbia still produced occasional
A-class westerns like The Man from Laramie (1955),
starring James Stewart, and a good many near-A’s
with contract stars Glenn Ford and Randolph Scott
(1898–1987).
In terms of top feature production, Columbia’s
greatest strength during the 1950s was its dual output
of weighty male-dominant dramas and hit romantic
comedies. The dramas included film noir classics like In
a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray (1911–
1979), and The Big Heat (1953), directed by Fritz Lang
(1890–1976), as well as stage adaptations like Death of a
Salesman (1951), The Member of the Wedding (1952),
The Caine Mutiny (1954), and Picnic (1955). While
these films clearly signaled their lineage and thus were
of a somewhat derivative quality, Columbia also produced
hit dramas in the 1950s that, like All the King’s
Men, remain inconceivable as anything but films, whatever
their medium of origin, and stand among the very
best films of that era. The most notable of these were
350 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM