Allied Artists International
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| Corporation | |
| Industry | Entertainment |
| Founded | Southern California (1979), successor-in-interest to Allied Artists Pictures Corporation (1946) |
| Founders |
Robert Abernathy Richard B. Smith |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California & New York City, New York |
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Key people
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Kim Richards, Chairman and CEO, Robert Fitzpatrick, President |
| Products | Motion pictures, Television production, Music, Music publishing, Entertainment, Television syndication, Online games, Mobile entertainment, Video on demand, Digital distribution |
| Subsidiaries | Allied Artists Pictures, Allied Artists Music Group, Allied Artists Television, Allied Artists Home Video, Monogram Pictures |
| Website | alliedartists.com |
Allied Artists International, Inc. is an entertainment company involved with movies, television, music, games, and other media products. The company is the successor to Allied Artists Pictures Corporation (formerly known as Monogram Pictures Corporation).
Producer Walter Mirisch began at Monogram Pictures after World War II as assistant to studio head Samuel "Steve" Broidy. He convinced Broidy that the days of low-budget films were ending, and in 1946, Monogram created a new unit, Allied Artists Productions, to make costlier films.
At a time when the average Hollywood picture cost about $800,000 (and the average Monogram picture cost about $90,000), Allied Artists' first release, It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), cost more than $1,200,000. Subsequent Allied Artists releases were more economical but did have enhanced production values; many of them were filmed in color.
The studio's new policy permitted what Mirisch called "B-plus" pictures, which were released along with Monogram's established line of B fare. Mirisch's prediction about the end of the low-budget film had come true thanks to television, and in September 1952, Monogram announced that henceforth it would only produce films bearing the Allied Artists name. The studio ceased making movies under the Monogram brand name in 1953 (but was later reactivated by Allied Artists International). The parent company became Allied Artists, with Monogram Pictures becoming an operating division.
Allied Artists did retain a few vestiges of its Monogram identity, continuing its popular Stanley Clements action series (through 1953), its B-Westerns (through 1954), its Bomba, the Jungle Boy adventures (through 1955), and especially its breadwinning comedy series with The Bowery Boys (through 1957 with Clements replacing Leo Gorcey). For the most part, however, Allied Artists was heading in new, ambitious directions under Mirisch.
For a time in the mid-1950s the Mirisch family had great influence at Allied Artists, with Walter as executive producer, his brother Marvin as head of sales, and brother Harold as corporate treasurer. They pushed the studio into big-budget filmmaking, signing contracts with William Wyler, John Huston, Billy Wilder and Gary Cooper. But when their first big-name productions, Wyler's Friendly Persuasion and Wilder's Love in the Afternoon were box-office flops in 1956–57, studio-head Broidy retreated into the kind of pictures Monogram had always favored: low-budget action and thrillers. Mirisch Productions then had success releasing their films through United Artists.
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Wikipedia