Casablanca Record & FilmWorks

Logo Casablanca Record & FilmWorks

Casablanca Record & FilmWorks, Inc. was formed in October 1976 through the merger of the record company Casablanca Records, founded by Neil Bogart in 1973, and the film production company FilmWorks, founded by his long-time friend Peter Guber in 1975 . Co -owner was PolyGram , who had bought 50% of Casablanca Records shortly before the merger. FilmWorks and Casablanca Records became divisions. The merger also created a roof for other departments that supplemented the operational business. Casablanca Record & FilmWorks was chaired by Neil Bogart and Peter Guber became Chairman of the Board . The company was based at 8255 Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles .

Emergence

To enable the acquisition of FilmWorks, Bogart and his partners at Casablanca Records, Cecil Holmes, Larry Harris, Richard Trugman and Buck Reingold each gave up twenty percent of their company shares to Peter Guber. In return, Casablanca received the profits from a five-film contract that Guber had signed with Columbia Pictures.

Departments

Casablanca Records

The record department was continued by Neil Bogart. The other management positions were filled by Larry Harris (Senior Vice President & Managing Director), Cecil Holmes (Senior Vice President & Special Assistant) and Bruce Bird (Executive Vice President); in March 1977, David Shein was named Vice President & Chief Financial Officer by PolyGram.

Casablanca FilmWorks

Peter Guber ran the Casablanca FilmWorks film division together with Bill Tennant.

Casablanca KidWorks

The Casablanca KidWorks project , which cooperates with McDonald’s , was led by Lewis Merenstein .

Casablanca ArtWorks

The art gallery Casablanca ArtWorks was founded by Neil Bogart and Richard Trugman to get the Munich artist Peter Mühldorfer and his partner Donna Summer to move to Los Angeles.

Casablanca BookWorks

Casablanca BookWorks was founded on March 27, 1979. The aim of the department initiated by Peter Guber was to establish Casablanca as a book publisher and at the same time to acquire material for film productions. Seven authors signed contracts, but there was never any publication.

Casablanca StageWorks

Bogart Casablanca founded StageWorks to bring the musical They're Playing our Song to the stage, which was written by Neil Simon (book), Carole Bayer Sager (lyrics) and Marvin Hamlisch (music) .

Sub-labels

Casablanca Record & FilmWorks, Inc. maintained in addition to Casablanca Records the sublabels Oasis , Millennium Records , Chocolate City Records , Parachute Records and EarMarc Records , the sublabel Casablanca West , founded in 1979 , only released two singles and one album before it was closed again. From 1982 Casablanca Record & FilmWorks also acted as distributor for the products of 20th Century Fox Records.

Descent and end

In the course of undesirable economic developments, PolyGram gradually took on more responsibility. After a failed attempt in 1977 to gain more control over Bogart's business conduct by installing finance manager David Shein (Bogart had been able to take Shein for himself and thus thwart the plan of the PolyGram officials), the company sought the complete takeover of Casablanca Record & FilmWorks on.

Larry Harris left the label on July 23, 1979.

On February 8, 1980, Neil Bogart's era at Casablanca Record & FilmWorks ended; Due to different representations, it is unclear whether PolyGram fired him or whether he pulled the emergency brake himself and got out. Bogart sold his remaining shares in PolyGram, but kept the property.

PolyGram appointed Bruce Bird as the new president of Casablanca Record & FilmWorks, but he was struggling with problems for which he was not responsible: Both Kiss and Donna Summer had contracts that were linked to Neil Bogart and that provided for both of them Artists could cancel contracts if he should leave the company. Summer left Casablanca and joined Geffen Records . Casablanca was in ruins because at the time both Village People and Parliament were artistically exhausted, Bird tried to at least hold Kiss. In April 1980, the group got a new contract for six albums, combined with the assurance of an advance of 2 million dollars per record. On May 20, the album Unmasked was released . Only a few weeks later, the group announced that Peter Criss had left the band , he had not worked on Unmasked anymore.

Casablanca FilmWorks was dissolved and served as the basis for the new production company PolyGram Pictures, which produced some commercially unsuccessful films such as Endless Love (1981) or Missing (1982). Peter Guber became the company's CEO.

In November 1980, Cecil Holmes left the label as the last founding member of Casablanca Records and switched to Columbia Records .

In December of the same year, PolyGram laid off 25 more employees, Casablanca was operated with only 25 employees. In 1981 Casablanca moved to New York, the label was used almost exclusively for the release of soundtracks and re-releases of the label "20th Century Fox Records" newly acquired by PolyGram. The success of Casablanca after 1980 remained marginal, with the exception of the soundtrack to “ Flashdance ” 1983, which was sold over 6 million times - Casablanca's biggest sales success ever. At that time, however, Casablanca Records consisted of almost nothing but a name on the door and two phones.

In 1985 PolyGram closed the chapter "Casablanca Record & FilmWorks" after the last release, the soundtrack for A Chorus Line (November 18, 1985).

literature

Former Senior Vice President & Managing Director of Casablanca Records, Larry Harris, published a book about the history of the label in 2009 together with journalists Curt Gooch ( "Performance Magazine" ) and Jeff Suhs ( "The Original Entertainer" ):

• And Party Every Day - The Inside Story of Casablanca Records ; Larry Harris, Curt Gooch, and Jeff Suhs; Backbeat Books, 2009; ISBN 978-0-87930-982-4

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} And Party Every Day - The Inside Story of Casablanca Records
2. ↑ Public Record data - Department of State - Division of Corporations
3. ^ Hit and Run - How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood ; Nancy Griffin & Kim Masters, Simon & Schuster (1996), 98