Paramount Pictures

From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki

(Redirected from Paramount)

[edit] Introduction

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production and distribution company, based in Hollywood, California. It has become the longest-running American movie studio ever, running for 94 years.

[edit] Early History

Paramount Pictures Inc. can trace its beginnings to the creation in May, 1912, of the Famous Players Film Company. Founder Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time. By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success.

That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his "Lasky Feature Play Company" with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish (later to be known as Samuel Goldwyn.) As their first employee, the Lasky company hired a stage director with no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable location-site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles for his first film, "The Squaw Man".

Beginning in 1914, both Lasky and Famous Players released their films through a start-up company, "Paramount Pictures". Organized early that year by a Utah theater-owner, W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged several smaller firms, Paramount was the first successful nation-wide distributor. Until this time films were sold on a state-wide or regional basis; not only was this inefficient, but it had proved costly to film producers.

Soon the ambitious Zukor, un-used to taking a secondary role, began courting Hodkinson and Lasky. In 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky company, and Paramount. The new company, "Famous Players-Lasky", grew quickly, with Lasky and his partners Goldfish and DeMille running the production side, Hodkinson in charge of distribution, and Zukor making great plans. With only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its "Paramount Pictures" soon dominated the business.

(Wikipedia)

[edit] Hitchcock's Early Years

In 1919, the company began productions in the United Kingdom as Famous Players-Lasky British Producers (Limited). The new company was based in a former power station in Islington.

Alfred Hitchcock, who was working at W.T. Henley's Telegraph Works at the time, designed a portfolio of title cards for "The Sorrows of Satan" and presented himself at the studio. By 1920, Hitchcock was regularly designing the intertitle cards for UK productions, including: