He eventually settled for being billed as assistant director and then left Paramount to work with David O. Selznick at RKO Studios.

Turner kept MGM's pre-May 1986 and pre-merger film and TV library, which included nearly all of MGM's material made before the merger, and a small portion of United Artists ' film and TV properties which included few UA pictures, the TV series Gilligan's Island, the U. S and Canadian distribution rights to RKO Radio Pictures library, and the pre-1950 Warner Bros. library and the Fleischer and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons that both were once the property of Associated Artists Productions, which merged with UA Television in 1958 ).

1 from Universal Studios, which controls the rights to the RKO Astaire-Rogers pictures in the UK.

Producer David O. Selznick, then production head at RKO Studios, petitioned the Academy Board of Governors to recognize the work of animator Willis O ' Brien for his groundbreaking work on 1933's King Kong.

The cemetery sold off large tracts to Paramount Studios, which, with RKO Studios, bought by 1920.

Laughton was so pleased with O ' Hara's performance that he cast her in the role of Esmeralda opposite him in The Hunchback of Notre Dame ( 1939 ), which was to be filmed at RKO Studios in Hollywood that same year.

Besides Atlas Corporation, he had a major stake in RKO Studios, Convair, Northeast Airlines, and Bonwit Teller, among other businesses, and was associated in aviation business with the well-known financier George Newell Armsby.

In extreme cases, a single film's poor performance can push a studio into bankruptcy or equivalent financial ruin, as happened with RKO Pictures ( The Conqueror ), United Artists ( Heaven's Gate ), Carolco Pictures ( Cutthroat Island, once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box office flop of all time ), Fox Animation Studios ( Titan A. E.

* In 1934, an eponymous film adaptation directed for RKO Studios by Philip Moeller ( based upon the 1920 novel and 1928 play ), starring Irene Dunne as Countess Ellen Olenska and John Boles as Newland Archer.

* Col. Hiram Staunton Brown, Class of 1900, president of RKO Movie Studios

The street where Calvero lives was a redressed set at Paramount Studios, the music hall scenes were filmed at RKO, and some exterior scenes use back-projected footage of London.

For a period of time in the 1940s to late 1950s, Hughes Tool owned the RKO companies, including RKO Pictures, RKO Studios, RKO Theatres, and the RKO Radio Network.

Despite a featured role in It's a Wonderful Life ( 1946 ), MGM did not believe she had the potential for major success, and sold her contract to RKO Studios.

MGM was not able to develop her potential as a star and her contract was sold to RKO Studios in 1947.

Though today it is considered among her finest performances, it wasn't a box-office hit and Howard Hughes, owner of RKO Studios, admitted that he never saw it.

The first of three Van Beuren Studios animated cartoons adapted from the syndicated panels was released by RKO on January 17, 1936.

* 1957: Desilu Studios is established in Hollywood and Culver City, after Arnaz / Ball purchased RKO.

1 from Universal Studios, who control the rights to the RKO Astaire-Rogers pictures in Europe.

Tom and Jerry are fictional characters that starred in a series of early sound cartoons produced by the Van Beuren Studios, and distributed by RKO Pictures.

In 1976 Pepsi, RKO Bottlers in Toledo, Ohio hired the first female Pepsi salesperson, Denise Muck, to coincide with the United States bicentennial celebration.

After 15 months apart and with RKO facing bankruptcy, the studio hired Fred and Ginger for another movie called Carefree, but it lost money.

Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures ( later known as RKO ) to star in one of their biggest productions of the year.

WDRQ's Program Director Jerry Clifton was hired by RKO to program their New York WXLO-FM.

In 1949 Katzman hired Olympic hero and movie Tarzan Johnny Weissmuller ( who had been replaced by Lex Barker in the RKO Tarzan films ) for a series of Jungle Jim adventures, earning Katzman the nickname " Jungle Sam.

Later, in 1977, News Director Gary McKenzie who went on to anchor at RKO Radio Networks and CBS was hired by KIIS FM.

Levine had hired Terry Turner, a former RKO Pictures exploitation expert of the late 1920s and 1930s where he exploited King Kong amongst other films.

She does not appear in the best-known film she directed, The Hitch-Hiker ( 1953 ), developed by her company, The Filmakers, with support and distribution by RKO.

However, her greatest known films were produced under her deal with RKO Radio Pictures, Inc ..

One of Cukor's first ingenues was actress Katharine Hepburn, who debuted in A Bill of Divorcement and whose looks and personality left RKO officials at a loss as to how to use her.

After more than 20 film roles, the role of the vicious and slatternly Mildred Rogers in the RKO Radio production of Of Human Bondage ( 1934 ), a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, earned Davis her first major critical acclaim.

She went on to make a series of films with Fox, Warner Bros. (" Gold Diggers of 1933 "), Universal, Paramount, and RKO Radio Pictures and, in her second RKO picture, Flying Down to Rio ( 1933 ), she worked for the first time with Fred Astaire.

Lela Rogers was credited with many pivotal contributions to her daughter's early successes in New York and in Hollywood, and gave her much assistance in contract negotiations with RKO.

This was personally grating to her, and had effects upon her relationships at RKO, especially with director Mark Sandrich, whose purported disrespect of Rogers prompted a sharp letter of reprimand from producer Pandro Berman, which she deemed important enough to publish in her autobiography.

RKO agreed to the casting, but had reservations due to Hepburn's large salary and the fact that her films hadn't been successful at the box office for several years.

Shortly after the film's release Hepburn was named " box office poison " by a group of US movie theater owners and was released from her RKO contract.

In 1935 McDaniel had prominent roles with her performance as a slovenly maid in RKO Pictures ' Alice Adams, a comic part as Jean Harlow's maid / traveling companion in MGM's China Seas, the latter her first film with Clark Gable, and as Isabella the maid in Murder by Television, with Béla Lugosi.

It was at RKO that Ball received steady film work, first as an extra and bit player, eventually working her way up to co-starring roles in feature films and starring roles in second rate B pictures, collectively earning the nickname " Queen of the B's ".

During her run at the RKO, Ball gained the reputation for doing physical comedy and stunts that most other actresses avoided, keeping her steadily employed.

Ball, who had only briefly known Frawley from her days at RKO, suggested him to both Arnaz and CBS.

Dunne signed a contract with RKO and appeared in her first movie in 1930, Leathernecking, a film version of the musical Present Arms.

Fontaine made her stage debut in the West Coast production of Call It a Day in 1935 and was soon signed to an RKO contract.

This Samuel Goldwyn Productions film ( originally distributed by RKO ) concerns a group of professors laboring to write an encyclopedia and their encounter with a nightclub performer who provides her own unique knowledge.

Arthur returned to California for the holidays, and appeared in the RKO film The Past of Mary Holmes ( 1933 ), her first film in two years.