Metro Pictures Corporation

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Metro Pictures Corporation was an American film production and film distribution company founded in 1915 by Richard A. Rowland and Louis B. Mayer . The company, which was initially based in New York and later in Los Angeles , was incorporated into the newly founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1924 .

history

The forerunner of Metro Pictures was the proven since 1914 Alco Film Corporation , a small film production and distribution company based in New York City, which Richard Rowland and Louis B. Mayer converted into the new company Metro Pictures Corporation in 1915 . From 1917 Rowland continued to run it alone.

Shortly after it was founded, the Metro sent a film team to California to set up a recording studio there. They found what they were looking for in Hollywood in 1915 on an area that is now the Ren-Mar Studios . In 1917, the company acquired the Lone Star Studio of the Mutual Film Corporation, also located in Hollywood .

After the end of the First World War , the film business in the USA experienced a strong boom, and many owners of cinema chains began to produce films themselves. One of them was Marcus Loew , who initially obtained the films for his cinemas from his former partner Adolph Zukor . When Zukor began to lend films no longer at fixed prices, but against a profit sharing scheme, Loew decided to become independent and began to buy up production companies.

Metro Pictures' interests coincided with those of Loews: the film studio needed a permanent and reliable cinema connection in order to sell its productions. In 1920 Loews cinema chain Loews Theaters merged with the Metro , in the same year the new company produced the most successful film in its history: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Rex Ingram with the new world star Rudolph Valentino .

In 1924, the President of Goldwyn Picture Corporation , FJ Godsol , proposed a merger to the management of the Metro . Third partner was Louis B. Mayer Pictures , and from May 17, 1924 there was the new film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer .

194 films are still known today that were produced by the Metro .

Stars and directors of the Metro (selection)

Male stars

Female stars

Directors

Filmography (selection)

  • 1917: blue jeans
  • 1917: aka Mrs. Jessop
  • 1918: Revelation
  • 1918: Revenge
  • 1919: Entangled in the Net ( Blind Man's Eyes )
  • 1919: A Good Guy in a Convict Smock or The Right to Life ( Blackie's Redemption )
  • 1919: The Red Lantern
  • 1920: aka Jimmy Valentine
  • 1920: The Saphead
  • 1920: Polly with a Past
  • 1920: Hearts are Trumps
  • 1921: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
  • 1921: Uncharted Seas
  • 1921: The Conquering Power
  • 1922: Turn to the Right
  • 1922: The Prisoner of Zenda
  • 1922: Sherlock Brown
  • 1922: Trifling Women
  • 1922: Peg o 'My Heart
  • 1923: Escape from Paradise ( Where the Pavement Ends )
  • 1923: Scaramouche
  • 1923: The three ages ( Three Ages )
  • 1924: Happiness

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Metro Pictures Corporation. in the engl. IMDb

swell

  • John Douglas Eames: The MGM Story: The Complete History of Over Fifty Roaring Years. All 1,709 Films of M • G • M Described and Illustrated in Color and Black and White. Octopus, London 1975, ISBN 0-904230-14-7 .
  • Joel W. Finler: The Hollywood Story. Crown Publishing, New York 1988, ISBN 0-517-56576-5 .

Web links