Screen Gems

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Screen Gems
Type Subsidiary
Founded 1940
Headquarters Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States
Industry Motion pictures
Parent Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group

Screen Gems is an American subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation.

Contents

[edit] Animation studio: 1940–1946

For an entire decade, Charles B. Mintz distributed his Krazy Kat, Scrappy, and Color Rhapsody animated film shorts through Columbia Pictures. When Mintz became indebted to Columbia in 1939, he ended up selling his studio to them. Under new management, the studio assumed a new name, Screen Gems. Jimmy Bronis, Mintz's production manager became the studio head, but was shortly replaced by Mintz's brother-in-law, George Winkler. After this, Columbia decided to "clean house" by ousting the bulk of the staff (including Winkler) and hiring creative cartoonist, Frank Tashlin. After Tashlin's short stay came Dave Fleischer and after several of his successors came Ray Katz and Henry Binder from Warner Bros. Animators, directors, and writers at the series included people such as Art Davis, Sid Marcus, Bob Wickersham, and, during its latter period, Bob Clampett.

The studio had several characters on their roster. These included Flippy, Willoughby Wren, and Tito and his Burrito. However, the most successful characters the studio had were The Fox and the Crow, a comic duo of a refined Fox and a street-wise Crow.

Screen Gems is also notable for being, in an attempt to keep costs low, the last American animation studio to stop producing black and white cartoons. The final black-and-white Screen Gems shorts appeared in 1946, over three years after the second-longest holdouts (Famous Studios and Leon Schlesinger Productions). During that same year, the studio shut its doors for good, though their animation output continued to be distributed until 1949.

The Screen Gems cartoons were only moderately successful when compared to those of Disney, Warner Bros., and MGM. The studio's purpose was assumed by an outside producer, United Productions of America (UPA), whose cartoons, including Gerald McBoing Boing and the Mr. Magoo series, were major critical and commercial successes.

[edit] Television subsidiary: 1948–1974

In 1948, Screen Gems was revived to serve as the television subsidiary of Columbia, producing and syndicating several popular shows (see below) and also syndicating Columbia Pictures' theatrical film library to television, including the wildly successful series of two-reel short subjects starring The Three Stooges in the late 1950s. Earlier, they also acquired syndication rights to a package of Universal horror films, which was enormously successful in reviving that genre. The final notable production from this incarnation of Screen Gems was the 1974 mini-series QB VII.

From 1958 through 1974, under President Don Kirshner and Vice President of Production Harry Ackerman, Screen Gems delivered the classic sitcoms: Father Knows Best, Dennis the Menace, The Donna Reed Show, Hazel, Gidget, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Flying Nun, The Monkees, and The Partridge Family. It was also the original distributor for Hanna-Barbera Productions, an animation studio founded by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera after leaving Columbia's now-semi-sister studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

In the late 1950s Screen Gems would also go into broadcasting. Stations that would be owned by Screen Gems over the years would include KCPX (Salt Lake City), WVUE (New Orleans), WAPA (San Juan), WNJU (Linden, NJ), and several radio stations as well, including 50,000-watt clear channel WWVA (Wheeling WV).

In 1974, the Screen Gems name was retired and Columbia's television subsidiary became Columbia Pictures Television. Changes in corporate ownership of Columbia came in 1982, when The Coca-Cola Company bought the company, although continuing to trade under the CPT name. In the mid-1980s, Coca-Cola reorganized its television holdings to create Coca-Cola Television, merging CPT with the television unit of Embassy Communications as Columbia/Embassy Television, although both companies continued to use separate identities until 1988, when it and TriStar Television were reunited under the CPT name. In 1989 Columbia Pictures was purchased by Sony Corporation of Japan. In 1991, Columbia Pictures Entertainment was renamed to Sony Pictures Entertainment as a film production-distribution subsidiary, and subsequently combined CPT with a revived TriStar Television in 1994 to form Columbia TriStar Television.

The television division today is presently known as Sony Pictures Television.

[edit] Selected TV shows

Television programs produced and/or syndicated by Screen Gems (most shows produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions are now owned and distributed by Warner Bros. Television, except for Jeannie (see below):

[edit] Specialty feature film studio, 1999–present

In September 2002, Columbia TriStar Television became Sony Pictures Television, while three years earlier, in 1999, Screen Gems was resurrected as a second specialty film producing arm of Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, after Sony Pictures Classics. Similar to Dimension Films, Screen Gems produces and releases smaller-budget science fiction, horror, teen movies, farce or ethnic films with more centralized target audiences than Columbia TriStar's mainstream outputs, although it started out as a sister studio of Sony Pictures Classics, which produced more mature, intellectual fare.

The most-successful Screen Gems film commercially as of 2007 was Resident Evil: Extinction, which grossed $147,713,442 in international box office receipts.

[edit] Screen Gems films

[edit] EUE/Screen Gems

Screen Gems should not be confused with EUE/Screen Gems LTD and EUE/Screen Gems Studios.

Main article: EUE/Screen Gems

EUE/Screen Gems LTD owns and operates motion picture and television production facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina and New York, NY. The company owns and operates one of the most successful commercial production companies in the world.

EUE/Screen Gems branded content division collaborates with global brands and advertising agencies for the development, production, marketing and distribution of filmed entertainment for all media – including theatrical feature film, television, and digital content for the Web and mobile platforms.

The CW Network show “One Tree Hill” and over 300 films, commercials and television projects have been shot at the Wilmington studios. The Rachel Ray Show is produced for CBS Productions at the New York facility which has also hosted hundreds of productions since 1965.

[edit] EUE/Screen Gems Studios

EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, NC was built by Dino De Laurentiis in 1984. It operated under the name DEG (DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group) until 1990, when it was purchased by Carolco (producers of the Terminator movies).

George Cooney, owner of EUE/Screen Gems, acquired the Wilmington Studios in 1996 and renamed it EUE/Screen Gems Studios. In 1998, the studio built a 9th stage in Wilmington and has recently acquired 12 adjacent acres for future expansion.

[edit] The company and Columbia Pictures

In 1965, Columbia Pictures acquired a fifty percent intent in the New York based commercial production company EUE. At that time Screen Gems was the television production division of Columbia Pictures. The commercial company was incorporated into the television division and renamed EUE/Screen Gems.

In 1982, Columbia was sold to Coca-Cola. EUE/Screen Gems and the New York production facility were sold to long time Columbia Pictures Executive, George Cooney. Mitchell Brill left Lifetime Television and joined Screen Gems.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links