United Artists

• 1. Introduction

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  United Artists was born from an act of rebellion. On the 5th of February 1919, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith signed papers creating a company that would put creative power directly in the hands of performers. They were the biggest names in silent film, and they were tired of having no say over their own work.

  The man who supposedly heard about their plans, Richard A. Rowland, head of Metro Pictures, reportedly quipped: "The inmates are taking over the asylum." It is one of the most famous lines in Hollywood history. But what the skeptics failed to grasp was that these were not just stars throwing a tantrum. They were responding to a specific threat: a scheme to merge all production companies and lock exhibition chains into five-year contracts.

  What followed was a company that remade Hollywood's power structure not once, but many times over a century of existence. From the silent era to streaming, from art house to James Bond, United Artists would prove to be less a studio and more an idea. The questions worth asking are: what happened when that idea worked, what happened when it failed, and who bore the cost each time.

• 2. The Asylum Plan

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  Sydney Chaplin, Charlie's brother and business manager, was the one who first sensed something was wrong. He contacted Pickford and Fairbanks, and together they hired a private detective. What that detective uncovered pushed the four stars into action: a plan to consolidate studio control and bind exhibitors to multi-year contracts.

  The four partners brought in D. W. Griffith, whose credentials as a filmmaker were unmatched at the time. Cowboy star William S. Hart was also part of the original talks but stepped back before the company was formalized. Their legal and financial guide was William Gibbs McAdoo, a lawyer who also happened to be the son-in-law of President Woodrow Wilson and a former Treasury Secretary. Each founding partner took a 25% stake in the preferred shares and a 20% share in the common stock, with McAdoo holding the remaining 20% of common shares.

  Hiram Abrams became the company's first managing director, and United Artists set up its original headquarters at 729 Seventh Avenue in New York City. The original plan called for each star to produce five pictures a year. By the time the company was actually running in 1921, feature films had grown longer and more expensive, and that target was quietly dropped. The company distributed an average of only five films a year across its first five years, kept afloat by advance payments from theater owners rather than public capital.

• 3. Schenck, Goldwyn, and the 1930s

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  By 1924, D. W. Griffith had departed and United Artists was in trouble. The solution came in the form of Joseph Schenck, a veteran producer who had spent a decade making pictures. Schenck arrived with contracts for films starring his wife Norma Talmadge, his sister-in-law Constance Talmadge, and his brother-in-law Buster Keaton. He also signed independent producers including Samuel Goldwyn and Howard Hughes.

  In 1933, Schenck organized Twentieth Century Pictures with Darryl F. Zanuck, and that company alone provided four pictures a year, filling half of UA's release schedule. Schenck also partnered with Pickford and Chaplin to buy and build theaters under the United Artists name, expanding first into Canada and then into Mexico. By the end of the 1930s, the company was represented in over 40 countries.

  When Schenck was denied an ownership stake in 1935, he resigned, and his departure set off a chain reaction. He arranged the merger that created 20th Century-Fox. The independent producers who had been UA's lifeblood began to drift away. Walt Disney Productions moved to RKO. Samuel Goldwyn, who had become the company's primary source of product, sued United Artists multiple times over disputed compensation before leaving. MGM's 1939 blockbuster Gone with the Wind had originally been intended for UA, but David O. Selznick wanted Clark Gable in the lead, and Gable was under contract to MGM, so the film went elsewhere. That same year, Douglas Fairbanks died.

• 4. The Independent Producers Fight

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  In 1941, several of the figures who had orbited United Artists joined together for a different kind of battle. Pickford, Chaplin, Disney, Orson Welles, Goldwyn, Selznick, Alexander Korda, and Wanger formed the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers, known as SIMPP. The organization's target was the grip that seven major studios held over every link of the film business: production, distribution, and exhibition.

  SIMPP's first major legal move came in 1942, when it filed an antitrust suit against Paramount's United Detroit Theatres, accusing Paramount of conspiring to control both first-run and subsequent-run theaters in Detroit. It was the first antitrust suit brought by producers against exhibitors that alleged monopoly and restraint of trade. The case was part of a broader legal assault that culminated in the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court Paramount Decision, which ordered the major studios to sell their theater chains and end the anti-competitive practices that had defined Hollywood for decades.

  By 1958, SIMPP had accomplished enough of what it set out to do that the organization disbanded. The court ruling had ended the studio system as it had existed. United Artists, which had always functioned outside that system, was about to enter its most productive era.

• 5. Krim, Benjamin, and the Bankless Studio

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  On the 15th of February 1951, two lawyers-turned-producers walked into a meeting with Pickford and Chaplin and made a proposition. Arthur B. Krim and Robert Benjamin, along with Matty Fox, offered to take over United Artists for ten years. The terms were specific: if UA turned a profit in any one of the next three years, they would have the option to acquire half the company. Through their efforts, 20th Century-Fox president Spyros Skouras extended UA a $3 million loan.

  The approach Krim and Benjamin took was genuinely novel. They created the first studio without an actual studio. UA leased space at the Pickford/Fairbanks Studio but did not own a lot. It had no overhead, no maintenance costs, and none of the expensive permanent production staff that burdened every other studio in Hollywood. Primarily acting as bankers, they offered money to independent producers and let the filmmakers control their own work. The model echoed what the original founders had wanted in 1919.

  Their first year produced two significant results: The African Queen with Sam Spiegel and John Huston, and High Noon. UA turned a profit of $313,000 that year, compared to a loss of $871,000 the previous year. By 1958, the company was making annual profits of $3 million. Along the way came Marty, which won the 1955 Palme d'Or at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Picture, and 12 Angry Men in 1957. Krim would later note that before home video, 12 Angry Men was being seen on television 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, somewhere in the world.

  In 1955, with movie attendance at its lowest level since 1923, Chaplin sold his 25% share to Krim and Benjamin for $1.1 million. Pickford followed a year later for $3 million. The two founders who had created the company to protect their independence sold it during the industry's darkest hour.

• 6. Bond, Beatles, and the Best Picture Run

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  For $1 million, United Artists backed Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli's Dr. No in 1963, launching the James Bond franchise. The two producers were expatriate North Americans working in Britain who had acquired the rights to Ian Fleming's novels. That initial bet would outlast UA's time as an independent company by decades.

  The same period brought the Beatles to American film audiences. A Hard Day's Night came out in 1964, followed by Help! in 1965. UA also introduced the Pink Panther series, which began in 1964, and backed the Spaghetti Westerns that made Clint Eastwood a star: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

  The company went public in 1957 with a $17 million stock and debenture offering and was averaging 50 films a year. Through the 1960s, while mainstream studios were declining, UA won 11 Academy Awards including five for Best Picture. West Side Story in 1961 alone took ten Academy Awards. The run continued into the following decade: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975 became UA's highest-grossing film with a gross of $163 million. Producer Michael Douglas said UA was "like your last choice in those days" but that they made a decent deal. The film won Best Picture. Rocky won the following year. Annie Hall the year after that. UA became the first studio to win Best Picture three years in a row and held the record for the most Best Picture winners at that point, with 11.

  In 1975, Harry Saltzman sold UA his 50% stake in Danjaq, the holding company behind the Bond films, deepening the studio's control over the franchise it had launched on a single million-dollar bet.

• 7. Heaven's Gate and the Sale

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  The film that broke United Artists was Heaven's Gate, directed by Michael Cimino. The new leadership under Transamerica, which had purchased 98% of UA's stock in 1967, agreed to back the project. It vastly overran its budget and cost $44 million. The failure led to the resignation of UA president Andy Albeck, who was replaced by Norbert Auerbach.

  The disaster had been preceded by a long internal fight. Arthur Krim had tried to persuade Transamerica to spin off United Artists, but he and Transamerica's chairman John R. Beckett could not agree. In 1978, following a dispute over administrative expenses, Krim, president Eric Pleskow, Benjamin, and other key officers walked out. They announced the formation of Orion Pictures within days, backed by Warner Bros. Hollywood figures took out an advertisement in a trade paper warning Transamerica it had made a fatal mistake in letting them go.

  UA's final head before the sale, Steven Bach, later wrote in his book Final Cut that there had been talk of renaming United Artists to Transamerica Pictures. Heaven's Gate may have prevented that by destroying UA's reputation with Transamerica so completely that the parent company simply decided to exit the film business. In 1980, Transamerica put UA on the market. Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp., which also owned Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, purchased the company in 1981 for a reported $350 million. The merged entity became known as the MGM/UA Entertainment Company, and in 1983, MGM closed United Artists' long-standing headquarters at 729 Seventh Avenue in New York City, ending a chapter that had begun in 1919.

• 8. A Century of Reinvention

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  Between 1981 and the present day, United Artists passed through the hands of Kerkorian, Ted Turner, Italian financier Giancarlo Parretti, Crédit Lyonnais, Sony, and Amazon. Parretti's ownership in the early 1990s was particularly chaotic: he overstated his financial condition, obtained a loan under false pretenses, and looted the company before Crédit Lyonnais foreclosed on the studio in 1992. Parretti was subsequently convicted of securities fraud.

  In 2006, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner resurrected the United Artists name under a new LLC with MGM. Cruise and Wagner held a 30% stake. Wagner became CEO, and UA became the first motion picture studio granted a Writers Guild of America, West waiver during the Writers' Strike in January 2008. Wagner's two films as head of the studio were both Cruise vehicles: Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie. She departed in August 2008.

  A joint distribution venture between MGM and Annapurna Pictures, founded on the 31st of October 2017, was rebranded as United Artists Releasing on the 5th of February 2019, precisely 100 years after the original founding date. Amazon acquired MGM Holdings for $8.45 billion, a deal completed on the 17th of March 2022, which placed the company under Amazon control. Amazon folded United Artists Releasing into MGM on the 4th of March 2023, citing the box-office success of Creed III as evidence of theatrical release opportunities.

  On the 26th of July 2024, Amazon MGM Studios announced another revival, entering a multi-year first look deal with film producer Scott Stuber. Stuber would produce films for the newly revived banner and be involved with every release under the United Artists name, whether destined for theaters or Amazon Prime Video. The company Richard Rowland once dismissed as an asylum takeover had now spent more than a century proving that creative control and commercial survival were not mutually exclusive.