Talent. This bicoastal department hired talent scouts whose job was to discover potential new stars, as well as individuals who might be groomed as producers, writers, or directors. Talent and story were combined for several years in New York, but they eventually split into different departments. The New York staff made screen tests of such individuals as Katharine Hepburn and Fred Astaire. These were sent to the Hollywood studio, where the head of production would decide whether to offer them contracts. While the Hollywood talent department, whose leader was Ben Piazza, spent most of its time evaluating the hordes of neophytes who flocked to the movie capital, its staff members, as well as those from the New York office, were also required to spend some time on the road. Their travels took them to beauty contests, nightclubs, amateur plays, musical performances, and vaudeville theaters in search of the one commodity that separated the most powerful studios from the rest: STARS.
DISTRIBUTION
The lord of RKO's distribution division was Ned Depinet. From his office in Rockefeller Center, he and his staff planned the release strategies for hundreds of feature films. Their goal was to convince as many theater owners as possible to book RKO's product. Even though the corporation did own a considerable number of theaters, it could not exist solely on the revenues generated by these houses. It needed independent theater owners, both in the United States and overseas, to make a commitment to RKO. This was not an easy sales job; for much of the company's existence, the RKO merchandise was considered inferior to that of the other vertically integrated studios.
Nevertheless, Depinet and his staff never stopped beating the drum for RKO movies. The first members of their audience were the company's domestic salesmen who worked out of offices geo graphically situated throughout the country.3 RKO maintained distribution exchanges (or branches) in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and some fifteen other U.S. cities. It also set up Canadian offices in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and three other cities. The salesmen in each exchange were expected to convince independent theater owners in their region to buy a “block” of RKO pictures. Thus, Depinet and friends needed first off to sell their own employees on the quality of the coming season's movies.
The season lasted from September to the following August and, during a time when theater owners were not allowed to book one film at a time, a block ranged from a full year's worth of product (including shorts and the company newsreel) to about a dozen features. To ramp up excitement about the coming films, the New York office would organize a yearly sales convention, usually in late spring or early summer. Chicago was the most popular site because of its central location, but New York and Hollywood occasionally played host. Invited to the convention would be the branch managers and top salesmen; they listened to a preview of the forthcoming films, received hyperbolic promotional material about the product, and then were wined and dined and offered a variety of extracurricular diversions. If it were possible, Depinet loved to include the head of production and a few of the company stars in the festivities. Paul N. Lazarus has offered this colorful description of a typical sales convention: “In the halcyon days, attending a national meeting combined the best features of a revival meeting, a six-day bike race, a saturnalia and a college reunion. The all-day sessions alternated between being inspirational and somnolent; the all-night activities gave you a simple choice of booze, broads or table-stakes poker.”4
Thus, when they returned to their offices, the conventioneers were primed to sell, sell, sell. Their potential customers, however, were not usually too receptive. Theater owners based their decisions on the recent performance of RKO films, not the free-flowing promises made by a hyped-up supplier. In addition, many were unhappy with the system itself, which they believed was heavily stacked in favor of the major distributors (not just RKO) and placed them in an untenable business position. Besides block booking, they disliked the fact that they were buying blind (no chance to view the movies before they committed to play them), as well as the many examples of obvious collusion among the majors. These “competitors” played each other's films in their theaters, fixed admission prices, and set up a system of zoning and clearance periods that meant the independents were rarely able to show movies when they were still relatively fresh. In the late 1930s, the U.S. government would heed their complaints and bring suit against the majors for monopolistic practices.
The leaders of the foreign sales force would also attend each convention. Their jobs were considerably more taxing than those of the domestic salesmen. In addition to different laws, languages, censorship rules, and business practices, they had to navigate idiosyncratic governmental regulations and cultural sensitivities that Hollywood moviemakers never considered when they produced product with American audience members in mind. Nevertheless, RKO had offices or subdistributors in almost all major countries and realized approximately one-third of its gross income from overseas sales. As previously mentioned, many of the smaller companies incorporated under the RKO corporate umbrella existed to facilitate distribution in Great Britain, India, Australia, France, Spain, Mexico, and other lands.
The distribution office in New York also devised the advertising campaigns for each film, preparing billboards, posters, lobby cards, still photographs, and press books that were sold inexpensively to theater owners. Its workers developed ad slicks as well. These would be used in local newspapers and would form the basis for advertisements in national magazines. Distribution employed a local lab to manufacture release prints, then shipped them to the exchanges that circulated the prints to theaters in their geographical area. The company generally struck around two hundred prints for domestic distribution.
Depinet and staff were always anxious to have a big picture kick off each new release year in September. This, they felt, could really help sell large blocks of product, because theater proprietors would be anxious to secure a run of the special production. The opening of Top Hat over the Labor Day weekend in 1935 made them particularly happy. It would soon become the company's most successful film of the decade. The distribution people also believed that the best time to release prime A productions was just before other holiday weekends and encouraged the studio to plan accordingly. The only exception was Independence Day. Because of the summer heat (most theaters were not air conditioned in the 1930s) and because many movie fans went on vacation around that time, July 4 was not considered a favorable time to release a major picture.
THEATERS
The RKO theater division, originally comprising some 175 houses, was whittled down to about 125 during the Depression. It was the smallest chain operated by any of the vertically integrated companies. Paramount could count on more than a thousand affiliated houses, Fox and Warner Bros. each had more than five hundred, and MGM (Loew's) controlled about 150. RKO's particular strength existed in the New York City area, where it ran more than thirty-five theaters. It also had a solid presence in the rest of New York State and New Jersey, plus a number of midwestern cities including Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Dayton, Des Moines, and Kansas City. Its weak areas were the southern and western United States, although it did operate houses in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Similar to foreign distribution, the RKO theater empire included a number of secondary divisions and small companies set up for the operation of theaters where RKO shared ownership with another entity. The Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, for example, was a cooperative venture between the Pantages organization and RKO.
Nearly all the RKO theaters were “picture palaces” with more than one thousand seats. Some were quite large. In the New York metropolitan area, for example, the Coliseum, the Center, the 58th Street, the 86th Street, the Brooklyn Albee, the Brooklyn Kenmore, and Keith's in White Plains all boasted more than three thousand seats. So did the Boston in Boston, Keith's
Palace in Cleveland, the Palace in Columbus, the Albee in Cincinnati, and the Mainstreet in Kansas City.
As with most of RKO's executive positions except the head of distribution, leadership of the theater division was a revolving-door proposition. Harold B. Franklin and Major L. E. Thompson were the major figures leading RKO's theater arm during the first half of its history, though Nate Blumberg, J. J. O'Connor, Malcolm Kingsberg, Charles Koerner, and Edward L. Alperson also functioned at or near the top at certain times.
Occasionally, friction developed between the theater executives and both production and distribution personnel. Though often referred to as the distribution department's “best customer,” RKO theaters did not present RKO films exclusively; they also showcased features and short films produced by other studios. This was acceptable during the times when the company did not have an A picture to release. The theater division was supposed to run in a flexible, efficient fashion and make a profit—everyone knew that. But once in a while some RKO theaters would jump ranks and book a competitor's movie for a date when one of the company's own important films was due to open. The theater men believed they would make more money from the non-RKO release than from the company's own production and made a business decision to boost revenue. But this ignored the importance of launching company product in the very best venues and elicited howls of protest from Hollywood as well as from Ned Depinet's shop. These situations would generally require the intervention of the corporate president to calm the waters.
The studio system was not a monolithic enterprise. It constantly evolved during the 1930s, forties, and fifties as world events, government intervention, and other factors affected its business model. On one level, the history of RKO Radio Pictures is the history of its leaders' efforts to respond to all the forces that impacted the movie industry and to develop an approach and assemble personnel that could make the enterprise a success.
Notes
INTRODUCTION
1. Richard B. Jewell, with Vernon Harbin, The RKO Story (London: Octopus Books, 1982).
2. For more information related to this ledger and the data contained within it, see my article, “RKO Film Grosses, 1929-51: The C. J. Tevlin Ledger,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1994), pp. 37-49.
3. Cari Beauchamp, Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years (New York: Knopf, 2009).
4. Terry Ramsaye, “Terry Ramsaye Says…, ” Motion Picture Herald, 20 December 1952, p. 14.
CHAPTER 1
1. Perry Lieber, “History of RKO Radio Pictures,” 27 May 1946. All references that do not indicate a source are from the RKO archival materials I photocopied in the 1970s and ‘80s. See the Introduction.
2. Ibid.
3. Cari Beauchamp, Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years (New York: Knopf, 2009), pp. 36-37.
4. Ibid., p. 13.
5. Ibid., p. 39.
6. Ibid., p. 73.
7. Ibid., p. 82.
8. Motion Picture News, 14 July 1928, p. 347.
9. “Radio Corp. and General Electric Acquire Interest in FBO,” Motion Picture News, 7 January 1928, p. 17.
10. Ibid.
11. Tino Balio, United Artists: The Company Built by the Stars (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), p. 77.
12. “Radio Corp. and General Electric Acquire Interest in FBO.”
13. “Joseph P. Kennedy with Pathe as Advisor; Merger Denied,” Motion Picture News, 18 February 1928, p. 501.
14. Ibid.
15. “K-A-O Buys FBO Interest,” Motion Picture News, 3 March 1928, p. 735.
16. Ibid.
17. Edwin Schallert, “Kennedy Urges Conservatism,” Motion Picture News, 4 August 1928, p. 347.
18. “William Le Baron Again Sounds Warning to Go Slow,” Motion Picture News, 25 August 1928, p. 612.
19. “R.C.A. Claims Complete Interchangeability; Western Electric Silent,” Motion Picture News, 11 August 1928, p. 457.
20. “Rivoli Booking Sheds Further Light on Interchangeability Issue,” Motion Picture News, 18 August 1928, p. 537.
21. “Kennedy Signs Five Year Contract with First National,” Motion Picture News, 18 August 1928, p. 529.
22. “Kennedy Withdraws from First National,” Motion Picture News, 25 August 1928, p. 607. See also the description of Kennedy's dealings with the First National board in Beauchamp, Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, pp. 201-207.
23. According to Cari Beauchamp, Sarnoff paid too much for FBO, some $7.5 million in a stock swap deal. This was seven and a half times more than Kennedy and his partner Guy Currier had paid only two and half years earlier. See Beauchamp, Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, p. 219.
24. “RCA Getting Control of KAO and FBO in 300 Million Deal,” Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World, 13 October 1928, p. 23.
25. Ibid.
26. “Radio-Keith-FBO Deal Closed with Sarnoff as Board Head,” Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World, 27 October 1928, p. 21.
27. Ibid.
28. “Kennedy on RKO Directorate; Sarnoff Silent on Presidency,” Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World, 10 November 1928, p. 25.
29. “Hiram S. Brown Enters Film Industry as RKO President,” Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World, 8 December 1928, p. 27.
30. Martin Quigley, “A New Executive,” Exhibitors Herald and Moving Picture World, 8 December 1928, p. 20.
31. “Brown Has Full Control at RKO,” Motion Picture Herald, 27 February 1932, p. 11.
32. Balio, United Artists, p. 83.
33. Beauchamp, Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, p. 231.
34. “Warners Acquire Stanley Co. in $100,000,000 Deal,” Motion Picture News, 15 September 1928, p. 843.
CHAPTER 2
1. “RKO Productions Is New FBO Title,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 19 January 1929, p. 23.
2. “Radio Pictures Advertisement,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 9 February 1929, pp. 7-10.
3. Ibid., p. 9.
4. “Radio Pictures Is Trade Name Selected for RKO Productions,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 9 February 1929, p. 39.
5. Martin Quigley, “ ‘Radio’ Pictures,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 9 February 1929, p. 34.
6. “Radio Pictures,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 18 January 1930, p. 28.
7. “ ‘Broadway Melody’ Opens in Cleveland at Stillman, March,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 23 February 1929, p. 28.
8. Bosley Crowther, The Lion's Share (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1957), p. 151.
9. “RKO's Production Program Points to Big Sales Year, Says Schnitzer,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 23 February 1929, p. 28.
10. “LeBaron Outlines RKO $10,000,000 Production Plans,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 23 February 1929, p. 39.
11. “Soundproof Stages at RKO in $250,000 Program,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 2 February 1929, p. 42.
12. Douglas Hodges, “RKO Adds $3,000,000 to Its Budget; Expansion Is Planned,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 17 August 1929, p. 51.
13. “RKO Organization Is in Business to Stay, Says Hiram S. Brown Denying Merger,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 23 February 1929, p. 25.
14. “Kahane Denies RKO and Paramount Plan Similar Deal in U.S.,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 8 June 1929, p. 31.
15. “Purchase of Proctor Circuit Welds RKO Theatre Holdings,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 8 June 1929, p. 21.
16. “Publix Lead Fox by Only 100 in Race for Theatre Control,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 16 November 1929, p. 21.
17. “RKO's Production Program Points to Big Sales Year, Says Schnitzer.”
18. Upper World, based on Hecht's story, would eventually be produced by Warner Bros., starring Warren William and Mary Astor and released in 1934.
19. “Most Popular Stars of the Era,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 9 March 1929, p. 63.
20. RKO Starts Year September 7 with Coast to Coast Campaign,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 7 September 1929, p. 33.
21. “Le Baron's Contract with RKO Is Renewed for Three Year Term,” Exhibitors He
rald-World, 26 October 1929, p. 26.
22. “Hecht and MacArthur Signed to Write Originals for FBO,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 12 January 1929, p. 41.
23. Ligon Johnson, letter to RKO Radio Pictures, Inc., 9 November 1937.
24. J. I. Schnitzer, telegram to V. Baravalle, 7 October 1929.
25. Douglas Hodges, “ ‘ Rio Rita’ a Triumph in Many Ways for Many People,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 30 November 1929, p. 36.
26. Laurence Stern, “Buying Concentrated in Stocks Assured of 1930 Profits,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 8 February 1930, p. 26.
27. “RKO Gets Rights to Spoor-Berggren Wide Film Process; Plans Building Sets,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 25 November 1929, p. 25.
28. “RKO Votes $1,000,000 for Use of Spoor Stereoscopic Process,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 6 July 1929, p. 63.
29. Each studio's preferred widescreen process employed different-width film and was incompatible with the others. See John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 54.
30. “Warner Operetta Begins; RKO Is Using Wide Film Cameras,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 8 February 1930, p. 35.
31. “RKO Silent on Dropping Spoor Wide Film Process,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 15 March 1930, p. 21.
32. “Wide Film Finally Passed Up by Public and Producer,” Variety, 26 November 1930, p. 5.
33. “Irene Dunne Signs with RKO for Singing Roles; Was Hit in Ziegfeld Show,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 26 April 1930, p. 24.
34. “Leading Film Names, 1930,” Variety, 31 December 1930, pp. 54-55.
35. “Amos-Andy Not for 2nd Talker,” Variety, 18 February 1931, p. 2.
36. “Leading Film Names, 1930,” p. 55.
37. “Vaudeville as Aid to R-K-O,” Variety, 1 October 1930, p. 23.
38. “Think Schnitzer West to Stay on Production,” Variety, 17 December 1930, p. 5.
39. Daniel Okrent, Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center (New York: Viking, 2003), p. 142.
40. “Big Rockefeller Project Gives Electric Group Strongest Hold,” Exhibitors Herald-World, 21 June 1930, p. 43.
RKO Radio Pictures Page 35