Hiram Abrams

Hiram Abrams (1878–1926) was an early American movie mogul and one of the first presidents of Paramount Pictures. He was also the first managing director of United Artists.

Hiram was born in Portland, Maine, the son of a Russian jew immigrant who became a real estate broker. Hiram Abrams left school at the age of sixteen, sold newspapers, and eventually ended up managing several Portland film theaters. By 1909, he began marketing films, and later became a distributor.

Through the motion picture industry, Abrams became acquainted with W. W. Hodkinson and when Hodkinson founded Paramount Pictures in 1914, Abrams began serving on the five man board-of-directors. When Hodkinson denied Paramount producers Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky more of the profits, Zukor - in a Machiavellian plot - devised a coup.

Zukor and Lasky sold Hodkinson more of their film rights and, using that money, they purchased Paramount stock to, by 1916, gain a majority of it. Then with Abrams, Steele and Sherry they used this majority to vote Hodkinson out. Abrams took over as president and Steele as treasurer.

In 1917, Abrams, while in Boston, organized a party for Fatty Arbuckle, Zukor, Lansky, and several others. Eventually, the party, sans Arbuckle, moved to Mishawum Manor, an inn of notorious reputation. Willing women appeared, and later a photographer. A few days later it became evident the moguls had been caught in a badger game. Daniel Coakley, a notoriously crooked Boston lawyer, threatened arrest on morals charges. Studio lawyers were hastily summoned and eventually $100,000 was paid to have the charges dropped. It is likely this escapade cost Abrams his job, as Zukor fired him soon afterwards.

Abrams and his new partner, Ben Schulberg, convinced Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith to break with their studios and form an independent distributing company; the result was United Artists, set up on 5 February 1919. Abrams was appointed its managing director.

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