Paramount Pictures are due a pretty large birthday cake shortly. The studio that has brought you everything from Titanic to Top Gun and hundreds more in between has had a special poster commissioned. Unfortunately the Gallery1998 commission is only for staff and not available to the general public. But fear not, you can check it out here! And what a poster it is!!! Click the image to make it super sized and see how many movies you can identify.
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Paramount Pictures can trace its beginning to the creation in May 1912 of the Famous Players Film Company. Founder Hungarian-born Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants.3 With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time (leading to the slogan "Famous Players in Famous Plays"). By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success.
That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature show Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as Samuel Goldwyn. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable location site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles, for his first feature film, The Squaw Man.
Older Paramount logo, based on a design by founder W. W. Hodkinson in 1914. This print logo was featured onscreen during the main titles, and featured in advertising, until 1968.
Beginning in 1914, both Lasky and Famous Players released their films through a start-up company, Paramount Pictures Corporation, organized early that year by a Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged several smaller firms. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies. Paramount was the first successful nation-wide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a state-wide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation.
Soon the ambitious Zukor, unused to taking a secondary role, began courting Hodkinson and Lasky. On September 28, 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. The new company,Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, grew quickly, with Lasky and his partners Goldwyn and DeMille running the production side, Hiram Abrams in charge of distribution, and Zukor making great plans. With only the exhibitor-owned First Nationalas a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its "Paramount Pictures" soon dominated the business.
--- via Wiki
