#movie theaters
Feb 5, 1919 - United Artists created
“By 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith were all heavyweights in the rapidly growing motion-picture industry. Chaplin was a British actor and former vaudeville performer whose “Little Tramp” persona had made him one of the biggest stars of silent film. Pickford, silent film’s favorite ingenue, and Fairbanks, her leading man on-screen and off, were equally familiar to American audiences, and Griffith’s controversial feature Birth of a Nation (1915) had become Hollywood’s first blockbuster, establishing the director as a pioneer in filmmaking techniques. 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, thanks to the success of the films of its stars, notably 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 began to struggle 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, releasing such films as The African Queen (1951), High Noon (1952), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment and The Magnificent Seven (both 1960) and West Side Story (1961). 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 a slew of Best Picture Academy Awards over the course of the 1970s, for Midnight Cowboy (1969), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Rocky (1976) and Annie Hall (1977). Soon after that, however, five top executives left the company in a disagreement and formed the Warner Brothers-backed Orion Pictures. UA sustained an even more devastating blow in 1980, when it released the big-budget flop Heaven’s Gate, directed by Michael Cimino. Two years in the making and way over budget, the film earned less than $4 million at the U.S. box office. After that debacle, UA struggled throughout the 1980s. In 1981, MGM bought the company, 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 the corporation and changed its name back to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., abandoning the United Artists name altogether. The James Bond and Pink Panther franchises were revived, with varying degrees of success. 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). In November of 2006, MGM gave the actor/producer Tom Cruise (star of Rain Man) 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. Cruise and Wagner, whose former deal with Paramount Pictures ended amid reported acrimony earlier in 2006, released their first co-production with UA, Lions for Lambs, in 2007.”
This week in History:
Feb 2, 1887: First Groundhog Day
Feb 3, 1944: U.S. Troops capture the Marshall Islands
Feb 4, 1913: Rosa Parks is borm
Feb 5, 1917: Immigration Act passed over Wilson’s veto
Feb 6, 1952: Elizabeth II becomes queen
Feb 7, 1964: The Beatles arrive in New York
Feb 8, 1862: Battle of Roanoke Island
This negative of the United Artists Theater in Chicago can be found in the online collection of the Theatre Historical Society of America.
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Coming to theaters…!!!
Get your tickets here: https://www.fathomevents.com/events/Stand-By-Me-35th-Anniversary
“Stand By Me” 35 year anniversary screening!❤️
This was one of my favorite parts of the newspaper when I was growing up: the little blurbs about celebrities:
- I didn’t know that Michael Crawford was in the Los Angeles production of The Phantom of the Opera.
- The fangirls went nuts: Hours before Sunday’s matinee, unlucky-but-hopeful fans walked around with crude hand-drawn signs saying “Desperately Need 1 Ticket” and “Please, 2 tickets.” More than 100 people sat sullen-eyed in the cancellation line as the fashionably-dressed ticket-holders walked confidently into the theater. One group of fans set up a radio scanner and an antenna at a table outside the theater, saying they could pick up the performance inside.1
- Robert Guillaume was a Phantom! Right after I graduated from high school in 2001, I would watch Sports Night on Comedy Central after the 10am Daily Show repeat. That show tanked after he left.
- ThePhantom movie would not come out until 2004. Michael did not star in it.
- Sammy Davis Jr. would die just a few days after this article. So would Jim Henson, more on that in a second. I was six and I learned about Sammy Davis Jr. because he died the same day as Jim, or in my mom’s words “Kermit’s daddy”.
Living off of tabasco and snow.
In retrospect, man did those Soviet Union jokes got old. So did those what do you call it? Goodwill missions? Like this basketball game, or that episode of Head of the Class where the kids went to Russia, or the gymnastics competitions.
These “Brain Builders” by the “world’s smartest woman” Marylin vos Savant seem so stuck up, you know what I mean? Like, number 45. 122 is the exception.
There was even a shirt from Starkist:
This is something I vividly remember growing up– but since I was a kid I thought, pre dolphin safe tuna, I may of accidentally ate a bit of dolphin when we had tuna sandwiches . I found a New York Times article from around this time about how the young people felt really strongly about this cause. Is … is this why people my age were so obsessed with dolphins when we were kids? I mean, just search for Lisa Frank dolphins.
I remember my mom saving this picture of Homer and Marge for me! This article is so bonkers considering just in a few months we would get a sloo of Simpsons merchandise.
This is a big oof to the gut, considering Jim died just 15 days later. Jim’s last TV appearance was on Arsenio Hall promoting this special on May 4th.
I love how Channel 33 , which was the Fox affiliate at the time, bought an ad to let us know that the movie Tank would be on that night!
Unfortunately, Oprah’s Brewster Place show would only last 9 episodes. It was filmed at Oprah’s Harpo studios in Chicago. Harpo studios was torn down in 2016 and is now the McDonald’s headquarters. So you can’t go see where Oprah’s talk show was filmed. That’s a part of tv history that is gone.
Guess what chickenbutts? All these theaters are gone.
Newmarket South: my mommy worked there in the late 70s.
New American - Mom would take me here for $1 films in the early 90s, now its a live theater.
Riverdale Theaters - Closed in the mid 90s, was a church I think in the late 90s, now torn down for the Kroger parking lot.
Wiliamsburg Theatre - Now known as the Kimball, now is a live theater.
Village- now is a live theater.
Coliseum 4 - Across the street from Coliseum Mall, which had recently lost their movie theater to a food court around this time. I saw Lion King and Cool Runnings at Coliseum 4, and I think it closed in 1997.
Newmarket Mall 4 - Closed in the early to mid 90s when everything else was closing at Newmarket Fair Mall. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Offices at Netcenter which took over the mall uses it for some sort of auditorium. y/n?
Patrick Henry 7 - Closed in 2000, became an Old Navy, and now is a Tilt Arcade.
Beechmont Twin - Closed in 1995, is a church now?
This is just a reminder on how behind I am on posting this entry.
I forgot Nancy looked like this!
I mean, I know Ann Landers is BIG, but why would people write in to her agreeing with Secretary Sullivan? I also want to go on a deep google dive to see if any of the tennis stars Ann mentions did in fact, smoke.
Was this in the Ken Burns Baseball documentary miniseries.
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1. Los Angeles Times. “‘Phantom’ Departs Amid Cheers, Tears : Theater: Michael Crawford Ends His 3 ½-Year Stint as Star of the Hit Musical. He Will Soon Go to London to Star in the Movie Version.,” April 30, 1990. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-04-30-me-82-story.html.
