United Artists

The United Artists Corporation (aka United Artists Associated, United Artists Pictures, and United Artists Films) was formed on February 5, 1919 by five of the leading figures in early Hollywood, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, William S. Hart and D. W. Griffith. They were motivated in part by a desire to control their own pictures, as well as their futures. When he heard of this plan, Richard Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, said, "The inmates are taking over the asylum." The five friends, with advice from former Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo (son-in-law of then-President Woodrow Wilson), formed their distribution company, with Hiram Abrams as its first managing director.

Film archives

The value of film libraries has increased exponentially in recent years, even as ownership gets more fractured. Few studios had the foresight or ability to maintain control over every picture they produced or released. United Artists, through various strategic purchases, built up a substantial film library. Included were rights not only to some of UA's own releases, but to the pre-1948 Warner Bros. and RKO libraries. Having passed through numerous hands, this catalog now belongs to Warner Bros.' Turner Entertainment diivision.

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Since UA produced very few of the pictures it released, ownership of UA's output often rests with the individual or company producing. Some UA films of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s fell into the public domain, to be picked up by Republic Pictures (today part of Paramount Pictures) or small boutique houses like Castle Hill Productions.

Related Topics:
Republic Pictures - Paramount Pictures - Castle Hill Productions

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Charlie Chaplin's films, features and shorts, are controlled by his estate.

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When she retired from pictures in 1933, Mary Pickford wanted to destroy her films; afraid that they would be laughed-at, she was finally made to see that they would have artistic or historic value, and today rights to all of her films are held by the Pickford Foundation.

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All of the Disney shorts released through United Artists in the early 1930s are owned by The Walt Disney Company. Rights to Selznick International Pictures and other later productions from David Selznick are held by ABC. The Twentieth Century pictures released by UA between 1933 and 1935 rest with the successor company, Twentieth Century-Fox. The pre-1941 Samuel Goldwyn films released by UA are now held by a company with which Goldwyn feuded for years, MGM.

Related Topics:
The Walt Disney Company - Selznick International Pictures - ABC - Twentieth Century-Fox - Samuel Goldwyn

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Most of the Beatles' films are owned by the surviving members of the group, through Apple Corps; A Hard Day's Night is now owned by Miramax Films, but Yellow Submarine is held by UA. Rights to Mike Todd's splashy Around the World in Eighty Days and the UA-distributed Saul Zaentz films are now in the hands of Warner Bros. But a good number of United Artists' films from the 1920s through the 1940s, in the public domain, have been forgotten.

Related Topics:
Apple Corps - Miramax Films - Saul Zaentz

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Of the hundreds of fiilms distributed by UA over eighty-plus years, those which it owns outright today are its own productions from 1951 forward (plus a few pre-1951 films such as 1933's Hallelujah, I'm A Bum and Howard Hawks's Red River).

Related Topics:
1933 - Hallelujah, I'm A Bum - Red River

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