RKO

RKO, American film production company, created in 1928. Radio-Keith-Orpheum was formed from the merger of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the Keith and Orpheum Theatre chains, when RCA was looking for an outlet for its optical film sound system. It was rarely financially stable, its parent company even going into receivership in 1933, and regular changes of management reflected the company’s instability. Despite all its troubles, RKO produced many successful films, including What Price Hollywood? and Bill of Divorcement (both 1932, directed by George Cukor); King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack); the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, such as The Gay Divorcee (1934, Mark Sandrich) and Top Hat (1935, Sandrich); The Informer (1935, John Ford); Alice Adams (1935, George Stevens); Bringing Up Baby (1938, Howard Hawks); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939, William Dieterle); the first two films of Orson Welles, Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, though mutilated by the studio before its release); Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock); Crossfire (1947, Edward Dmytryk); and a large number of cult films, such as those directed by Val Lewton.

David O. Selznick was head of production from 1931 to 1933, followed briefly in succession by Merian C. Cooper, B. B. Kahane, Samuel Briskin, and Pandro S. Berman. When Berman resigned in 1939, a new policy was adopted and fresh talent, including that of Orson Welles, was introduced. Still the losses were too great and too frequent and by 1942 RKO was again in financial trouble. Two more production heads, Peter N. Rathvon and Dore Schary, followed in quick succession, until in 1948 Howard Hughes bought control, replaced Schary with Sig Rogell, and then with Samuel Bischoff, who also soon left. In spite of all the upheavals in management, RKO was technically strong and the directors John Cromwell, Anatole Litvak, Anthony Mann, Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, and Otto Preminger, and such stars as Ingrid Bergman, Dick Powell, Cary Grant, Rod Steiger, Robert Mitchum, David Niven, and Dana Andrews all worked under its banner.

Throughout the 1940s the company had been gradually going over to independent production and after 1952 Hughes deliberately ran the studio down so as to sell it, as a shell, to General Teleradio, a subsidiary of General Tire, which in 1957 sold it on to Arnaz and Lucille Ball for their Desilu television production company. The RKO Company, which retained its name as a separate entity, resumed feature productions in the 1980s, and in 1989 it was taken over by Pavilion Communications, while its substantial film library was acquired by Ted Turner.