Act One – The Rise of a Titan – The Birth of RKO

1921

British businessmen Rufus S. Cole and H.F. Robertson create a film distribution company and purchase 13.5 acres on the corner of Gower Street and Melrose Avenue to build a studio.

1922

Robertson-Cole takes the name Film Booking Offices of America (FBO).  FBO produces and distributes a number of films, but the company is small compared to MGM, Paramount, and Fox.

1926

Joseph P. Kennedy buys out the British interests of FBO.

1928

Two titans of their age – David Sarnoff, President of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the future President and owner of the Film Booking Office of America (FBO), a movie distribution company – met at an oyster bar in Manhattan. By the time the meal was over, they’d agreed to combine RCA’s Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater chain with Kennedy’s company (as well as the fledgling Pathe Studios) to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum, or the RKO Corporation.

1930

RKO releases 12 films in the first year, including Dixiana and Hit the Deck which featured Technicolor sequences and the first three of a series of comedies starring the team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey.

1931

David O Selznick is hired as production chief. Cimarron receives Oscar for Best Picture.

1932

RKO’s corporate headquarters in New York moves into the RKO Building, one of the first Rockefeller Center structures to open.

1933

King Kong released. Selznick departs RKO, after only 15 months. Marion C Cooper, the producer of KING KONG, takes over as production.

1933

RKO releases FLYING DOWN TO RIO, the first film of dancing legends Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

1934

THE RICHEST GIRL IN THE WORLD – first of a series of screwball comedies and OF HUMAN BONDAGE, Bette Davis’s first success.

1937

Working with Disney, RKO releases SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS

1938

The Saint Series Begins

1941

RKO agrees to distribute films by Samuel Goldwyn resulting in William Wyler’s THE LITTLE FOXES starring Bette Davis, and Howard Hawks’ BALL OF FIRE with Barbara Stanwyck. Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion, the Falcon Series Begins

1942

Val Lewton brings horror to RKO with Cat People and later ZOMBIE/ISLE OF THE DEAD. Welles writes/directed Magnificent Ambersons

1946

It’s a Wonderful Life, Notorious, and The Falcon’s Adventure was the 13th and final film of RKO’s Falcon series.

Act Two – Howard Hughes and Rough Waters

1948

Howard Hughes Takes Ownership of the Company after beating out the competition to purchase long-time RKO financier Floyd Odlum’s interest in the company. Production was shut down for six months as Hughes reworked the entire production slate set up by previous production head Dore Schary.  When production started again, his hands-on approach to every detail hindered progress. Fort Apache.

1949

The Set-Up.

The last two production heads under Hughes, Sid Rogell and Sam Bischoff, quit after less than two years due to Hughes’s meddling. Hughes’s time at RKO was marked by dwindling production and a slew of expensive flops

1952

Hughes and RKO corporate head Ned E. Depinet sell their RKO stock to a Chicago syndicate whose own mishandling of the studio bring Hughes back to a controlling interest in 1953. Nicholas Ray’s ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1952, though shooting had been completed two years earlier) and BEWARE, MY LOVELY (1952), – both with Robert Ryan

1953

The Encino backlot is shut down and sold off.

1954

Walt Disney ends his 18 years long distribution deal with RKO and creates his own distribution company.

1955

Howard Hughes sells RKO to General Tire and Rubber Company who start selling broadcast rights to RKO movies to television stations across the country.

1957

Under General Tire, film production is entirely shut down.  A fallow period begins.

1982

In collaboration with Universal Studios, RKO put out five films over the next three years. Although the studio frequently worked with major names—including Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Jack Nicholson in The Border, and Nastassja Kinski in Cat People (all 1982)

Act Three – A Titan Reborn

1989

RKO signaled the birth of a new era with its acquisition by Ted Hartley and Dina Merrill in 1989.

1998

MIGHTY JOE YOUNG – The return of the classic hero. An epic adventure film based on the 1949 film of the same name about a giant mountain gorilla brought to a wildlife preserve in Los Angeles by a young woman who raised him, and a zoologist, to protect him from the threat of poachers until one seeks Joe out in order to take his revenge. Starring Charlize Theron

2003

SHADE is released, starring Thandie Newton, Stuart Townsend, Jaimie Foxx, Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith, and Gabriel Byrne

2011

RKO Stage – Top Hat — Based on the classic Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers musical. Starring: Gavin Lee, Kristen Beth Williams, Music and Lyrics by Irving Berlin. Choreographer: Bill Deamer Director: Matthew White

Today

Today, the modern RKO Pictures produces, finances, and distributes both original entertainment and remakes of its classic films. RKO draws upon its brand and intellectual property assets to develop entertainment properties for production and distribution. RKO’s production strategy includes devoting resources to the repositioning of its famous classic library for current audiences as it develops other businesses and entertainment properties. The company seeks out additional distribution and co-financing ventures for new productions as well as for sequels, remakes, and live stage productions based upon its library of titles.