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.

The fall and slight rise of UA

Under Kerkorian, United Artists virtually disappeared. The studio was essentially dormant after 1989, releasing no films for several years. In part this was due to the continuing turmoil at MGM/UA; bought by Ted Turner in 1986, he could not get financial backing to complete the deal and, seventy-four days later, re-sold UA and the MGM trademark to Kerkorian, while keeping the MGM/UA library for himself. (See below for a note on the film library.)

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In 1990 came the farcical sale to the Italian promoter Giancarlo Parretti; having bought MGM/UA by wildly overstating his own financial condition, within a year Parretti had defaulted to his primary bank, Crédit Lyonnais, which foreclosed on the studio in 1992. In an effort to make MGM/UA saleable, Credit Lyonnais ramped up production, reviving two long-running franchises, the Pink Panther and James Bond films, while beginning to re-position itself as a boutique or specialty studio. UA (re-christened United Artists Films) released a few "art-house" films, among them Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, 2002's foreign-film Academy Award winner, No Man's Land, and 2004's Hotel Rwanda, a co-production of UA and Lions Gate Films.

Related Topics:
Giancarlo Parretti - Crédit Lyonnais - Michael Moore - Bowling for Columbine - Academy Award - No Man's Land - Hotel Rwanda

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