Of the works I consulted, one in particular stands out: Cari Beauchamp's Joseph P. Kennedy Presents.3 Exhaustively researched and beautifully written, this book answered a multitude of questions about Joseph Kennedy's activities with Robertson-Cole, FBO, Keith-Albee-Orpheum, and Pathe and about the role he played in RKO's formation. Its contributions to my project will be obvious in chapters 1 and 2. Thank you, Cari, for your brilliant work and for saving me an enormous amount of time.
I must also express my gratitude to Mindy Gordon of the Rockefeller Archive Center; Harry Miller of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research; Barbara Hall, Val Almendarez, Faye Thompson, and Linda Mehr of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library; Shawn Guthrie, grants coordinator of the Academy's Film Scholar Committee; Patricia Hanson of the American Film Institute Library; Ned Comstock and Steve Hanson of the USC Cinematic Arts Library; Dace Taube of the USC Doheny Library Special Collections Department; and Leith Adams and Steven Bingen of Warner Bros. for their many kindnesses and contributions.
The fingerprints of two academic reviewers contracted by the University of California Press may be found throughout this manuscript. I am indebted to the anonymous reader and particularly to Thomas Schatz of the University of Texas for their excellent suggestions.
Mary Francis of the University of California Press deserves special mention for her investment in me and RKO and her unwavering encouragement. Like a good producer, she began to cultivate the project a couple of years before I received the Academy recognition and has shepherded it through to its final form. Eric Schmidt, Kim Hogeland, Suzanne Knott, and Steven Baker of UC Press also provided a good deal of expert assistance as we moved through the process.
Others who have had a salutary impact on my work through the years include Lawrence Bassoff, Irwin Blacker, Drew Casper, Hugh Hefner, Tom Kemper, Arthur Knight, Lisa Majewski, David Malone, John Mueller, Woody Omens, Frank Rosenfelt, John Russell Taylor, and the brilliant students I have been privileged to teach. Finally, I owe a massive debt to my patient wife, Lynne, and vivacious daughter, Annie.
Once in a great while, an author stumbles upon a quote that seems to justify, in an especially felicitous way, precisely what he hopes to accomplish. In December 1952, RKO was passing through one of its many turbulent periods. Journalist and film historian Terry Ramsaye noted the dramatic events taking place, ruminated on the company's roller-coaster past, and offered the following suggestion:
ROMANTIC ASSIGNMENT—The intricate and excitingly fantastic week-to-week, sometimes day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour, developments in the current chapter of the affairs of RKO suggest that some competent writing-researcher might do a fascinating history of that corporation.
………………………………………………….
Everything that has happened in the motion picture industry has happened to what we call RKO—so far. It is a story of the vitality of an industry close to the people.4
1. “Master Showmen of the World”
Prehistory and the Formation of the Company
The roots of RKO can be traced back to 1883. In that year, the vaudeville showman B. F. Keith opened a variety theater in a fifteen-by-thirty-five-foot remodeled store in South Boston, Massachusetts.1 Keith's theater was a success and he decided to expand. When he died in 1914, he controlled a nationwide circuit of vaudeville houses that could, and did, book entertainers on tours of more than a year's duration. Keith built his theatrical domain through expansion of his Keith houses and by amalgamating them with the Albee circuit.
During the early years of the twentieth century, the movies were generally regarded as a vulgar, low-class form of entertainment. Vaudeville theaters, like those in the Keith-Albee group, used films mainly as “chasers” to clear a house of patrons between shows.2 Birth of a Nation, the films of the great silent comedians, and such early stars as Mary Pickford and William S. Hart gradually changed the attitudes of even the most educated and cosmopolitan members of the public. Movies grew in popularity while vaudeville diminished in attractiveness. In some variety theaters, movies received equal billing with the live performers.
The leaders of Robertson-Cole, a British company whose primary business was exporting Roamer automobiles, decided to pursue a serious foothold in the movie business in the early 1920s. They purchased thirteen and a half acres on a site called Colegrove in Hollywood in 1920 and constructed seven buildings, including three production stages. This studio would become the West Coast headquarters of RKO eight years later. Harry Robertson and Rufus Cole had already dabbled in the distribution of motion pictures made by various Hollywood producers. Intrigued by the notion that their company could realize greater profits by producing its own films, Robertson and Cole began making movies on the new lot before the facilities were even finished.
Robertson-Cole's next-door neighbor at the time was the United Studios, a rental facility where First National and other producers shot films. A few years later, Paramount bought the property; thereafter, Paramount Pictures and RKO Radio Pictures would exist side by side, separated only by a wire fence, throughout RKO's history.
The first Robertson-Cole feature production was Kismet (1920). Personally overseeing the release of Kismet in Boston was Joseph P. Kennedy, who had formed a company to distribute R-C pictures in the New England area in late 1920.3 The thirty-two-year-old Kennedy's foray into the movie business must have been viewed as something of a lark by his family and acquaintances. A graduate of Harvard with financial expertise in everything from balance sheets to stock pools, he appeared headed for a career as a prominent Boston banker. Indeed, he had already succeeded in this arena, becoming “America's youngest bank president” when he assumed control of Columbia Trust at twenty-five.4 He also worked for the prestigious banking and brokerage firm Hayden, Stone during the period when he was looking after the distribution of R-C movies.
But Joe Kennedy did not become involved in film distribution because he needed a stimulating side interest to take his mind off the dull realm of ledgers, accounts, and portfolios or because he adored the movies. Kennedy jumped in because he smelled money. As would soon become apparent, he had contempt for the business acumen of nearly all the people he encountered in the rapidly expanding film industry and believed he could squeeze more dollars out of their efforts than they even imagined were there. He was right.
Kennedy was appointed to the Robertson-Cole board of directors in 1921. This gave him access to company balance sheets, which he soon realized were “a joke.”5 Two years later he resigned from the board and sold his New England distribution franchise, but he would not forget what he had learned about the precarious financial condition of the organization.
That condition did not improve. In 1922 Robertson-Cole underwent reorganization, including a name change to Film Booking Offices of America, Incorporated. British banking interests took control of the company in 1923. Pat Powers was placed in charge of production, and, for a time, the lot on Gower Street was known as the “Powers Studio,” though its releases were still labeled “R-C Pictures.” Powers's productions were decidedly second-class, mostly B films and serials, though it did turn out an occasional middling drama featuring such actors as Pauline Frederick, Sessue Hayakawa, and Billie Dove. Film Booking Offices also continued to distribute independent films made by Chester Bennett Productions, Tiffany Productions, Hunt Stromberg Productions, and other companies. It even released Haldane of the Secret Service, directed by and starring Harry Houdini for the Houdini Picture Corporation.
Powers was succeeded by B. P. Fineman in 1924. Fineman had experience as an independent producer for First National, but his R-C pictures were no better than Powers's. With the industry growing rapidly as evidenced by the construction of huge theaters in many cities, the formation of new “supercompanies” like Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and the emergence of stars like Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, and Harold Lloyd to delight audiences, R-C remained mired i
n a quicksand composed of equal parts bad management and poor productions.
In 1926 Kennedy made his move. He offered the rock-bottom sum of $1 million for the whole company, and the British bankers who owned R-C accepted. They had little choice, for the company was deeply in debt. But Kennedy understood something they failed to recognize. He would not need to pump in large sums of new capital or even appreciably improve the studio product to turn things around. Utilizing handpicked lieutenants E. B. Derr, Charlie Sullivan, and Pat Scollard to implement his policies, the new president reduced personnel, streamlined operations, and instituted other money-saving programs that stabilized the company in a short period of time.6 Hollywood insiders marveled at his accomplishment, leading the trade papers to publish stories for the next several years extolling Kennedy's managerial genius.
Joe Kennedy referred to his new company as FBO (after Film Booking Offices) and installed Edwin King as head of production. Though rarely a candid person, Kennedy admitted that his venture was not ready to compete on the same level with Paramount, Fox, or MGM. “We are trying to be the Woolworth and Ford of the motion picture industry rather than the Tif-fany.”7 To those who worked at the studio, FBO must have seemed more like the Cheyenne of the industry. Westerns were its specialty, starring Fred Thomson, Bob Custer, Tom Tyler, Yakima Canutt, Ranger the dog, and others. Among the other employees of R-C and FBO during the early years were a number of directors who would later contribute to RKO's history: Christy Cabanne, Wesley Ruggles, William Seiter, Al Santell, Sam Wood.
In the same year Kennedy took control, the first rumblings of the sound revolution were heard in Hollywood. Warner Bros. premiered Don Juan in New York in August 1926 with a synchronized musical score and sound effects. The film, starring John Barrymore, and the series of sound shorts that accompanied it were received enthusiastically, convincing the Warners to continue their sound film experiments. When The Jazz Singer opened fourteen months later, it transformed Al Jolson into an instant movie star and enabled the studio to assume a leadership position in the first great technological breakthrough since the invention of the medium. In 1928 the company released the initial true “talking picture,” The Lights of New York. The enormous success of that film, along with the popular Movietone sound newsreels distributed by the Fox Film organization around the same time, demonstrated to even the most skeptical executive that he better start building sound stages if he wanted his company to survive.
Figure 1. Joseph P. Kennedy, the famous Bostonian who functioned as a highly compensated midwife at the birth of RKO Radio Pictures. (Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)
What does this have to do with RKO? Everything—for RKO was a child of the sound revolution.
But Joe Kennedy was not thinking about the role he would play in the coming of sound—yet. Dissatisfied with the continuing lackluster films pouring forth from his lot on Gower Street, he replaced Edwin King with William LeBaron in 1927. Bill LeBaron was an educated and savvy show business veteran in his early forties. He had served as editor of Collier's magazine, written several plays produced on Broadway, and worked on films for Famous Players-Lasky starring Gloria Swanson, Richard Dix, and others.
FBO's product under LeBaron would improve, but only fractionally, because Kennedy continued to keep a tight grip on production expenditures. The studio's biggest star of the late ‘20s continued to be cowboy hero Fred Thomson. The rest of its films featured lesser-known performers and rarely cost more than $75,000 to produce. This apparently did not discourage Kennedy, who took a presentation credit on most of the releases and billed himself and his colleagues as “Master Showmen of the World” in FBO advertisements. Nevertheless, in July 1928 the company's reputation was such that it placed a notice in Motion Picture News declaring that the rumor that FBO planned to “produce pictures of an inferior quality” was absolutely unfounded.8
There is no evidence to suggest that Joseph Kennedy had been paying much attention to sound film developments. But when new business opportunities presented themselves, he was quick to take advantage. In January 1928 Kennedy announced that the Radio Corporation of America, the General Electric Company, and the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company (allied companies at the time) had acquired “a substantial interest” in FBO Pictures Corporation.9 The original announcement stated that RCA's new sound reproduction and synchronization method not only would be used in FBO films but would also “be available to the entire motion picture industry.”10
While Warner Bros. and, to a lesser extent, the Fox Film Corporation were industry leaders in the introduction of sound pictures, the company that stood to make the most money was not one of the movie studios. It was A. T. & T., which “through its subsidiaries, Western Electric and Electrical Research Products, [had] captured the entire market for sound equipment.”11
This did not sit well with David Sarnoff, the young and ambitious leader of Radio Corporation of America. He also understood that substantial income could be generated by the manufacture, installation, and maintenance of sound equipment, both within production facilities and in theaters. Engineers at RCA had developed their own sound-on-film system, which they felt was competitive with the system offered by A. T. & T. They trademarked their system “Photophone.”
Photophone, however, had obstacles to overcome. Since nearly all of the important movie companies had signed agreements to use Western Electric equipment exclusively, Sarnoff and the other RCA executives had to find a way to wedge their products into the new market. They needed a foothold within the industry and they found it in FBO. RCA planned to use the movie company to showcase Photophone and as a base camp from which to launch an attack against the near-monopoly of Western Electric. Part of the following first notice of the plan is of particular interest in light of the subsequent formation and development of RKO: “This is the first time that any great industrial organization so closely related to the motion picture business, has ever become a directly interested associate of any motion picture company. It is one of the first times in the history of all business that two organizations representing distinct industries, have associated themselves to further the common interests of both industries.”12 The contention that radio and the movies were related and shared common goals and interests would become a constant corporate refrain in RKO's early years.
February 1928 brought another tantalizing announcement. Joe Kennedy stated that he was joining the Pathe Film Company as an advisor.13 Despite Kennedy's denials that this meant a merger of FBO and Pathe, Pathe's class A stock nearly doubled in one day.14 Kennedy emphasized that he would simply be a business advisor to Pathe, without remuneration, and was taking on the job because of his long friendship with J. P. Murdock, the president of Pathe.
The next few months seemed to indicate the veracity of Kennedy's remarks. FBO and Pathe did not merge, at least not right away. But another merger did occur involving FBO. First, the Orpheum circuit of vaudeville theaters amalgamated with Keith-Albee. Almost before the ink was dry on this deal, the newly formed Keith-Albee-Orpheum purchased a significant interest in FBO. As the Motion Picture News declared, this transaction completed “a combination…that is a tremendous power in the motion picture industry.”15 It was obvious what the author meant. Now, in addition to the financial support and technical expertise of RCA, FBO could count on “assured bookings [for its pictures] in practically 700 theatres which make up the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuits and affiliated houses in America and Canada.”16 This comment, however, contained one significant misstatement. Many of the vaudeville houses would not be converted into sound film theaters. In actuality, the original chain of K-A-O motion picture theaters would number fewer than two hundred.
B. F. Keith's expanded theater empire retained much of its original thrust and purpose. Vaudeville performances continued for a few years as a significant element in the K-A-O houses. But there was no doubt about the general direction of entertainment trends. The movies were taking over,
and live shows were moving swiftly into the background. Within ten years, nearly all the surviving K-A-O theaters would be film palaces exclusively.
By midsummer 1928 the Hollywood movie companies were engaged in a feverish rush to convert to sound. MGM, First National, Paramount, and other companies were building sound stages, installing equipment in theaters, and looking for properties that would make suitable “talkies.” FBO was more conservative. Joseph Kennedy advocated a go-slow policy: “The expense that the industry will have to undergo because of talking pictures will be very excessive…. It behooves the utmost care and caution in handling this new invention so that it is properly and judiciously placed before the public, and not induce expenditures out of all proportion. There are too many concerns in this business within 6 or 7 percent of going in the red for any wild flinging about of money at present. That is far too small a margin.”17
William LeBaron echoed his boss's remarks. After decrying the “hysterical” responses of some film people to the coming of sound, LeBaron observed that the silent cinema would probably never disappear completely:
I believe…that there will eventually be three distinct forms of entertainment. First, there will be the legitimate stage play with the human person and voice; second, the talking picture or all talking picture program; and third, the old reliable form of a good silent picture program, during which the patron as [sic] to exert but one sense—the sense of seeing. This enables the patron to relax, where on the other hand, either the stage play or the talking picture brings into use both hearing and sight. The silence and relaxation afforded by the silent drama is one of the chief reasons for its tremendous success.18
RKO Radio Pictures Page 2