Boxoffice - August 2019

1919 CELEBRATING A CENTURY 2019
A STARRY
CENTENNIAL
FROM CHAPLIN TO 007,
UNITED ARTISTS HAS
HAD A STORIED HISTORY
BY KEVIN LALLY
>> United Artists Corporation is celebrating
its 100th anniversary this year—and
entering yet another chapter in a fascinating,
often triumphant, sometimes calamitous
saga.
The name has been with us so long, it’s
easy to forget that true artists launched
the company. In an unprecedented alliance,
the corporation was formed in January 1919
by three of the biggest stars of the silent
era—Douglas Fairbanks, his wife Mary
Pickford, Charlie Chaplin—and the pioneering
director D.W. Griffith (all pictured
above). The move was spurred by the need
to protect their pictures and maintain their
independence in a chaotic environment rife
with chicanery and corruption. They would
produce and release their own films, and
those of other creators.
Pickford, Fairbanks, and Griffith all
delivered hits for UA; Chaplin, however,
maintained his ties with First National
and didn’t produce his first hit for UA
until The Gold Rush in 1925. Griffith left
in 1924, but the studio attracted new
talent (including Buster Keaton and Gloria
Swanson) with the appointment of producer
Joseph Schenck as president. Another
important addition to the company was
producer Samuel Goldwyn, who had sold
his Goldwyn Pictures to Marcus Loew’s Metro Pictures Corp. in 1924. In the
1930s, Goldwyn generated many prestigious hits for United Artists, including
Dodsworth, Stella Dallas, Dead End, and Wuthering Heights.
One of United Artists’ biggest stars of the 1930s was none other than
Mickey Mouse—yes, the early Mickey shorts from Walt Disney were released
through UA, along with Academy Award–winning animated shorts from the
studio like “Flowers and Trees,” “Three Little Pigs,” and “The Tortoise and
the Hare.”
Another formidable producer releasing through United Artists was David
O. Selznick; his successes at the time included A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred,
The Prisoner of Zenda, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. UA had its first Oscar
Best Picture winner with Selznick’s 1940 drama Rebecca (directed by Alfred
Hitchcock), competing against four other UA releases that year: Hitchcock’s
Foreign Correspondent, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, John Ford’s The Long
Voyage Home, and the movie of Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town. But
the relationship soon deteriorated, with UA suing Selznick over his deals with
RKO Pictures. As the ’40s progressed, United Artists struggled at the box
office, with the occasional bright performer like Howard Hawks’s Red River and
William Wellman’s The Story of G.I. Joe.
A robust new era commenced with the hiring of Arthur Krim (then head of
Eagle-Lion Films, best known for The Red Shoes) and Robert Benjamin as UA’s
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