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20 Columbia Pictures: The Making of a Motion Picture Major, 1930-1943 Tino Balio Starting out in Poverty Row, Columbia Pictures survived the battle for the theaters, the conversion to sound, and the Great Depression to emerge as a full-fledged member of the Hollywood establishment by 1934. In that year, giant film companies such as Paramount, Fox, and RKO had been dragged down by their theater chains into receivership or bankruptcy, but little Columbia won the respect ofWall Street by earning over $1 million in profits. In 1934, Columbia also won accolades from the critics by releasing two surprise hits, Victor Schertzinger's One Night ofLove, a modern-dress operetta starring soprano Grace Moore, and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, a screwball comedy starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable. It Happened One Night had the distinction ofsweeping the top five Academy Awards-an achievement that has occurred only one other time in the history of the Oscars.! The economic arena Columbia operated in was a virtual oligopoly dominated by the so-called Big Five-Loew's Inc. (MGM), Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Twentieth Century-Fox, and RKO. These companies were fully integrated-that is, they produced practically all the top-quality pictures, operated worldwide distribution networks, and owned large affiliated theater chains. Columbia, Universal Pictures, and United Artists were the Little Three. Columbia and Universal produced and distributed mostly low-budget pictures that played on the bottom half of double bills; United Artists functioned solely as a distributor for a small group ofelite independent producers. These eight companies constituted the majors. Although Columbia's role in the business during the studio system era is well established, the company's entree into the Hollywood establishment has never been fully explored.2 A definitive account of Columbia's escape from Poverty Row must wait until the studio opens its corporate records to researchers , but even without the benefit of primary sources much can be inferred about Columbia's development from articles in the trade press, movie reviews, and the occasional piece in business magazines. Using these sources, 419 420 Part Four: History and Analysis I have isolated the goals that Columbia met in becoming a major motion picture company, which were: volume production, national distribution, firstrun exhibition, a roster ofone or two stars, and a few hits. These goals were consonant with the business practices of the American film industry as it entered the era of big business in the twenties.3 And as Columbia's entree into the majors will demonstrate, these goals were mutually dependent. In practice, they had to be targeted pretty much in succession. As a result, this case study has certain implications for understanding the history ofthe film industry. First, the major studios had no preordained right to succeed. Each company had to acquire the pragmatic skills to carve a niche for itself in the market, to stabilize its operations, and to generate profits. Second, production had to be tailored first and foremost to the paying public. Producing films to suit the personal tastes ofstudio moguls, boards of directors , or financiers would have ruined a company. Third, the market presented companies with an array ofoptions. All motion picture companies had the goal of profit maximization, but they chose different means to achieve that end. To place some perspective on Columbia's maneuverings, I have compared its strategies to those of United Artists and Eagle-Lion Pictures. At first glance, such comparisons might seem odd; after all, UA was founded in 1919 by Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith exclusively as a distributor of high-quality independent productions, while Eaglc-Lion didn't get started until after World War II and functioned partly as a distributor of British films. But a closer look will reveal that Columbia, United Artists, and Eagle-Lion confronted similar problems but solved them in different ways. Poverty Row Beginnings Columbia Pictures got its start as CBC Film Sales Company, which was founded by Jack Cohn, Joe Brandt, and Harry Cohn in 1919 to produce and market novelty shorts.4 Jack Cohn and Joe Brandt handled sales and managed the business affairs of the company in New York, while Harry Cohn handled the production end in Hollywood where he operated out of a rented studio in Poverty Row. The American film industry had entered the era of big business during the twenties and CBC had to expand or perish. Gradually branching out into Westerns, comedies, and even...

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