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What is RKO aka Radio-Keith-Orpheum?
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RKO was a Hollywood studio founded by RCA in 1928 to promote its sound-on-film technology. It produced many classic films, but struggled financially and was bought by Howard Hughes in 1948.
RKO Radio Pictures Inc., commonly known as RKO Pictures or simply RKO, was an American film production and distribution company, one of the "Big Five" film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.
- The Formation and Early Development of RKO
- Reworking The UA Model
- Wartime Recovery
- The Decline and Fall of RKO
- Further Reading
Legend has it that RKO was created in a 1928 meeting between RCA president David Sarnoff (1891–1971) and Boston financier Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK) in the Oyster Bar in New York's Grand Central Station. While the meeting itself may have been apocryphal, Sarnoff and Kennedy did in fact control the elements that would merge to create RKO. Most o...
The success of Disney's Snow White was a harbinger of major changes in RKO's production policies and market strategy, which coalesced after the arrival of George Schaefer (1888–1981) as RKO president in late 1938. Schaefer was a former top executive at United Artists who was hired to adapt the UA model—i.e., the financing and distribution of indepe...
Schaefer's departure in mid-1942 signaled the deepening financial concerns at RKO, which had not returned to consistent profitability despite the waning Depression, the banner year in 1939 (which resulted in net losses for the studio), and the emergence from receivership in January 1940. By early 1942 it was clear that the "war boom" would be as mo...
When the studio reopened, Hughes was supervising all aspects of administration and production, and the results were disastrous. RKO released a few notable films early in Hughes's regime—most of them initiated under Schary, including two noir classics, The Set-Up (1949), directed by Robert Wise, and They Live By Night (1948), directed by newcomer Ni...
Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1989. Croce, Arlene, The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book. New York: Outerbridge & Lazard, 1972. Deitrich, Noah, and Bob Thomas. Howard: The Amazing Mr. Hughes. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1972. Haver, Ronald. David O. Selznick's Hollywood. New York: Knopf, 1980. Hirsch, Foster. The Dark Side of t...
RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.,, American motion-picture studio that made some notable films in the 1930s and ’40s. Radio-Keith-Orpheum originated in 1928 from the merger of the Radio Corporation of America, the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theatre chain, and the American Pathé production firm.
Legend has it that RKO was created in a 1928 meeting between RCA president David Sarnoff (1891–1971) and Boston financier Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK) in the Oyster Bar in New York's Grand Central Station.
RKO Pictures is a company in the United States that makes and sells movies. It was first known as RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. RKO was an acronym for Radio-Keith-Orpheum, the original parent company of RKO Radio Pictures. [1] It was one of the Big Five studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.
RKO, short for Radio-Keith-Orpheum, was one of the major film studios during the Golden Age of Hollywood, particularly prominent from the 1920s to the 1950s. Known for producing some of the most iconic films in cinematic history, RKO was influential in shaping early cinema through its innovative storytelling, visual style, and contribution to ...
