The “European” Hollywood Studio

Dubbed the most “European” and “sophisticated” of the American studios in the 1930s and '40s, Paramount became known for its exotic foreign imports. Paramount's star lineup included at times Germans such as Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich, as well as the Polish Pola Negri. Paramount's directors also often had foreign accents: Ernst Lubitsch, Rouben Mamoulian, and Billy Wilder. Its art directors might come from Denmark (Hans Dreier) or Germany (Ernst Fegte). Not that Paramount's American stars weren't popular, too. Under contract to the studio were the likes of Claudette Colbert, Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Fred MacMurray, Ray Milland, and many others. One of Paramount's precursors, the Feature Play Company, made the first feature ever filmed in Hollywood, a Western called The Squaw Man (1914).

Paramount Highlights • 1912 - Adolph Zukor founds the Famous Players Film Company. • 1914 - First feature film made in Hollywood, The Squaw Man by Paramount precursor Feature Play Co. • 1914 - Zukor turns to W.W. Hodkinson's Paramount Pictures Corp. for film distribution. • 1916 - Zukor becomes president of the Famous Players-Lasky Corp. merger. • 1927 - New company name is Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. • 1930 - Another name change: Paramount Publix Corporation. • 1935 - Paramount Publix Corp. goes bankrupt. Reorganized as Paramount Pictures, Inc. under Adolph Zukor. • 1930s - Paramount becomes known as the “most European” studio with many European actors and filmmakers. • 1940s & '50s - Prestigious reputation with directors DeMille, Hitchcock, Sturges, Wilder, and Wyler. • 1954 - VistaVision wide screen process introduced. • 1970s - Big hits with Grease and Saturday Night Fever. • 1976 - Adolph Zukor dies at age 103. MORE > Paramount.com

Paramount Pictures, Inc. began its existence in 1912 as the Famous Players Film Company, founded by the Hungarian ex-furrier Adolph Zukor (1873-1976). Zukor's own long 103-year life began in Austria-Hungary before his family brought him to New York when he was 15 years old. The young man soon worked his way up in the fur business in Chicago where he entered the new film entertainment business by buying a nickelodeon in 1903. Two years later, Zukor had a business partner named Marcus Loew. Before long, Zukor was the treasurer for Loew's burgeoning chain of movie theaters.

With profits from a film distribution deal, Zukor branched out on his own to found the Famous Players studio. It was Zukor who then hired Famous Players' key to success, a young actress named Mary Pickford. She was soon known as “America's Sweetheart.” In 1916 Famous Players merged with Jesse L. Lasky's Feature Play Company to form Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. (Lasky's partners were Samuel Goldfish [later Goldwyn] and Cecil B. DeMille.) After several more name changes, mergers, management shuffles, and a bankruptcy, the newly reorganized Paramount Pictures, Inc. emerged in 1935. In the 1930s and '40s, Paramount was known for its big stars: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Ray Milland, Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, and the Marx brothers.

Paramount debuted its wide-screen VistaVision in 1954 to compete with Fox's CinemaScope. The 1950s were good to Paramount. Popular stars and well-known directors made the Paramount logo very familiar to moviegoers. The studio became a subsidiary of the Gulf + Western conglomerate in 1966. A bitter takeover struggle between QVC and Viacom in 1993 ended with Paramount becoming part of the Viacom Corporation in 1994. In 2002 the studio celebrated its 90th anniversary. Today it is the only major Hollywood studio actually located in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.

Copyright © 1997-2003 Hyde Flippo. All rights reserved.

Related Pages

Film Studios

Film Trivia Quiz

Film Connections (Links)

Adolph Zukor @ IMDb - Internet Movie Database filmography and info for Zukor.

Paramount.com - Paramount Pictures - The Studio

Viacom - The parent company of Paramount, CBS, Blockbuster, MTV, and Showtime.

The Evolution of Paramount - Interesting collection of Paramount logos over the years (fan site)