Metro Pictures Corporation
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
- Francis X. Bushman
- Edward Connelly
- Frank Currier
- Allan Forrest
- Hale Hamilton
- Joseph Kilgour
- Bert Lytell
- Jack Mulhall
- Harry Northrup
- Ramón Novarro
- Eugene Pallette
- Lewis Stone
- Rudolph Valentino
Female stars
- May Allison
- Ethel Barrymore
- Beverly Bayne
- Viola Dana
- Alice Lake
- Alla Nazimova
- Anna Q. Nilsson
- Emily Stevens
- Edith Storey
- Alice Terry
- Rosemary Theby
- Emmy Wehlen
Directors
- George D. Baker
- Harry Beaumont
- Herbert Blaché
- Death Browning
- Edwin Carewe
- John H. Collins
- Dallas M. Fitzgerald
- Harry L. Franklin
- John Ince
- Rex Ingram
- Maxwell Karger
- Wesley Ruggles
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
- ^ 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
- Metro Pictures Corporation in the Internet Movie Database (English)