Gulf + Western Industries also bought the neighboring Desilu television studio ( once the lot of RKO Pictures ) from Lucille Ball in 1967.

" Howard Hughes bought RKO in 1941 and later sold it in 1959.

RKO had bought the film rights to the show and cast Ball as Arnaz's love interest in the picture.

It also bought a TV station in New York City, WWOR-TV ( renamed from WOR-TV ), in 1987, from RKO General, which was in the midst of a licensing scandal.

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

In late 1957 the company also bought the RKO Pictures movie production properties and facilities, including its main lot in Culver City, with the backlot known as Forty Acres, and another lot on Gower Street in Hollywood.

During 1986, Turner bought the pre-May 1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library, the RKO Radio Pictures library, the Associated Artists Productions library, and some United Artists material ( including some post-1952 UA material such as Gilligan's Island and its spinoffs, and Bugs Bunny Superstar ) from MGM / UA.

In 1986, Cineplex Odeon bought out the RKO Century Theatres chain ( previously Century Theatres New York area chain and RKO Stanley Warner Theatres ).

In 1963, RKO bought out Western Ontario Broadcasting's other shareholders and gained full ownership of the CKLW stations.

General Tire bought RKO Radio Pictures in 1955 after General Tire found RKO's film library would be a perfect programming source for WNAC and its other television stations.

The traditional major networks that had dominated the history of American radio up to that point began to be dissolved in the 1980s ; RKO was forced to break up in a billing scandal, while NBC Radio and Mutual sold their assets to up-and-coming syndicator Westwood One, which itself would be bought by rival CBS in the 1990s.

In 1989, the company merged with the United Stations Radio Network ( which had already bought the RKO Radio Networks in 1985 ).

The blue screen and traveling matte method were developed in the 1930s at RKO Radio Pictures and other studios, and were used to create special effects for The Thief of Bagdad ( 1940 film ).

When I left RKO a year later, Mark said to me, ' You will never again see so much of yourself on the screen.

According to Hollywood folklore, a screen test report on Astaire for RKO Radio Pictures, now lost along with the test, is reported to have read: " Can't sing.

Lloyd produced a few comedies for RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1940s but otherwise retired from the screen until 1947.

The film was literally shot in two versions, the Todd-AO one, distributed by Mike Todd's Magna productions and RKO, and a Cinemascope one for theatres not able to handle Todd-AO, which at that time used a curved screen reminiscent of Cinerama, as well as six-track stereophonic sound.

He later recalled that RKO producers had trouble figuring out what kind of screen characters he could play, until one of the executives dubbed him, " Kay Kyser, with warmth.

Her first appearance on screen was for RKO, playing a small role among several coeds in the 1939 film, Sorority House.

The Falcon was quickly brought to the screen by RKO in 1941, in the film The Gay Falcon, in which he was redefined as a suave English gentleman-detective with a weakness for beautiful women.

RKO changed her screen name to Vanessa Brown and assigned her to a series of ingenue roles over the next few years.

Christopher Strong is a 1933 RKO film, directed by Dorothy Arzner and starring Katharine Hepburn in her second screen role.

Although David O. Selznick received no screen credit, he returned to RKO from MGM to supervise the production as the last film left in his contract with the studio.

He began acting in the 1930s, opposite Katharine Hepburn ( in the 1934 RKO film The Little Minister ), among others ; one of his notable screen appearances was Les Misérables ( 1935 ).

Flying Down to Rio is a 1933 RKO musical film noted for being the first screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, although Dolores del Río and Gene Raymond received top-billing.

A few of the notable earlier residents of Wilshire Park include popular star of the silent movie era Mildred Harris ( who became notorious as the 16-year-old child bride of Charles Chaplin ), headline-making Ziegfeld beauty and screen actress Helen Lee Worthing who appeared with John Barrymore in the film Don Juan, motion picture star Tom Mix, an executive secretary to 29th U. S. President Warren G. Harding, a CEO of finance for the City of Los Angeles, the director of the Los Angeles County Hospital, the performer Ziegfeld Follies, RKO Studios dance director / choreographer Pearl Eaton, and motion picture director and an Academy Awards co-founder, Henry King.

Toho had planned to shoot this film on location in Sri Lanka, but had to forgo that ( and scale back on production costs ) because they ended up paying RKO roughly $ 200, 000 ( US ) for the rights to the King Kong character.

* Lionsgate now controls most rights to the 1987 Vietnam War film Hamburger Hill through an equity investment Vestron Video made with its production outfit RKO Pictures, though Paramount retains TV and Internet rights.

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 ).

library, the U. S. rights to a majority of the RKO Radio Pictures library, and the television series Gilligan's Island.

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

Upon acquiring the film's distribution rights April 1941, RKO initially continued the roadshow booking policy but presented the film in mono, which was easier to exhibit.

When Schary went to MGM, he purchased the rights to the script from RKO, over the objections of Louis B. Mayer, who believed that the public was tired of war films.

Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the RKO and pre-1950 Warner Bros. libraries.

* The U. S. rights to a majority of the RKO Radio Pictures library

* Another Hitchcock film, Notorious, started out as a David O. Selznick production until the producer sold the rights to RKO before production began.

RKO originally owned the copyright, but the film was sold years later to American Broadcasting Company, which owns the rights to some of Selznick's other films.

In April 1941, RKO Radio Pictures acquired the distribution rights of Fantasia and replaced the Fantasound soundtrack with a mono soundtrack.

The week-long, eight-show-a-day presentations continued throughout the most explosive periods of civil rights unrest in the mid -' 60s, culminating in Kaufman's final show at the RKO 58th Street theater in Manhattan with a line-up that included The Who and Cream in their American debuts.

In 1932 RKO Pictures ( known then as RKO Radio Pictures Inc .) purchased the rights to a Hildegarde Withers story by Stuart Palmer and launched a six-film series starting with The Penguin Pool Murder.

In June 1995, AMC filed a $ 250 million breach of contract lawsuit against Turner Entertainment, which alleged that Turner violated AMC's exclusive cable television rights to the RKO Pictures film library approximately 30 times between July 1994 and April 1995, charging that Turner's objective in violating the contract was " to gain unfair advantage for the Turner Classic Movies cable network ( which debuted in April 1994 ) at the expense of AMC.

"; Turner owns rights to the RKO film library and licensed RKO's films to AMC in an output deal that was slated to last through 2004.

JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy had been a Hollywoood producer and head of the RKO studio at one point in his career, and he used his influence to negotiate the film rights to Donovan's biography of his son.

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

MGM eventually resold the rights to RKO Pictures, who in turn sold them to Paramount Pictures.

In 1975, Producer Dino De Laurentiis paid RKO for the remake rights to King Kong.

I created the character long before I came to RKO and have always believed I retained subsequent picture rights and other rights.