Private | |
Industry | Motion pictures |
Predecessors | |
Founded | October 23, 1928 | (as RKO Productions Inc., subsidiary of Radio-Keith-Orpheum Corp.)
Founder | David Sarnoff |
Defunct | 1959 | (de facto)
Headquarters | 1270 Avenue of the Americas, Manhattan, New York City, US |
Parent | |
Website | www |
Limited liability company (LLC) | |
Industry | Motion pictures |
Founded | 1991 |
Headquarters | L.A. Office: 9200 W. Sunset Blvd. Suite 600, West Hollywood, CA 90069 N.Y. Office: 750 Lexington Ave. Suite 2200, New York, NY 10022 |
Key people
|
Ted Hartley (Chairman and CEO) Dina Merrill (Vice Chairman) Vanessa Coifman (Executive Vice President of Production and Development) |
Divisions | Roseblood Movie Co. RKO Distribution |
Website | www |
RKO Pictures is an American film production and distribution company. In its original incarnation, as RKO Radio Pictures Inc., it was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. The business was formed after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and Joseph P. Kennedy's Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio were brought together under the control of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) on October 23, 1928. RCA chief David Sarnoff engineered the merger to create a market for the company's sound-on-film technology, RCA Photophone. By the mid-1940s, the studio was under the control of investor Floyd Odlum.
RKO has long been renowned for its cycle of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the mid- to late 1930s. Actors Katharine Hepburn and, later, Robert Mitchum had their first major successes at the studio. Cary Grant was a mainstay for years. The work of producer Val Lewton's low-budget horror unit and RKO's many ventures into the field now known as film noir have been acclaimed, largely after the fact, by film critics and historians. The studio produced two of the most famous films in motion picture history: King Kong and Citizen Kane. RKO was also responsible for notable coproductions such as It's a Wonderful Life and Notorious, and it distributed many celebrated films by animator Walt Disney and leading independent producer Samuel Goldwyn.