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Paramount Pictures, A
House of the Cinema
Leaders
Paramount Pictures motion picture and television production and distribution company based in New York City. One of the leading film studios in the United States, Paramount has produced many popular motion pictures, such as "The Ten Commandments" (1923; remade in 1956), "The Godfather" (1972) and its sequels, and "Forrest Gump" (1994). In 1966 Gulf & Western Industries, an industrial conglomerate, purchased Paramount. Gulf & Western divested itself of many lines of business in the 1980s, and the Paramount subsidiary emerged with large television and publishing divisions in addition to its film studios. Entertainment and media conglomerate Viacom bought Paramount in 1994.
Paramount was founded in 1912 as Adolf Zukor's Famous Players Film Company. Zukor, an immigrant to the United States from Hungary, began his career in the entertainment industry in 1903 when he opened a string of penny arcades with his partner, Marcus Loew. The arcade business soon grew into an extensive chain of movie theaters known as Loew's Theatrical Enterprises. Zukor served as the chain's treasurer until 1912 when he formed Engadine, a film distribution company. He later added a film production division and renamed the company Famous Players. In 1916, Zukor teamed with American film producer Jesse Lasky to form the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which soon took the name of its film distribution division, Paramount. The company produced and distributed films, but it also built or bought hundreds of theaters in the United States and Europe.
 Paramount became one of the early leaders in the movie industry by aggressively acquiring smaller production studios, by featuring popular actors in its films and by showing those films in its own theaters. In 1914, Zukor signed a contract with American actor Mary Pickford, who quickly became one of the most famous stars in the industry. Other early movie stars who performed in Paramount films included Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, W. C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers.
In 1926, the Balaban & Katz theater chain merged with Paramount, and ten years later American producer Barney Balaban took charge of the operation. Under Balaban's leadership during the 1930s and 1940s, Paramount grew even larger. The studio's films "Going My Way" (1944) and "Lost Weekend" (1945) each won Academy Awards for best picture. By the mid-1940s Paramount and four other large motion picture companies owned most of the movie theaters in urban areas of the U.S., thereby controlling production, distribution, and presentation of virtually all American films. In 1948, the United States Supreme Court found Paramount and the other companies guilty of violating antitrust laws and ordered the companies to sell their theater holdings.
After Paramount lost control of its theater chain, the studio's influence in the motion picture industry diminished considerably. Paramount produced only an occasional hit during the 1950s and early 1960s, such as "Gunfight at the OK Corral" (1957) and "Becket" (1964), before Gulf & Western Industries bought the company in 1966. Gulf & Western was started in 1956 by Charles Bluhdorn, who had made millions of dollars through commodities trading. When it acquired Paramount, Gulf & Western was a holding company for dozens of other interests, including cigars, mining, and real estate.
With Gulf & Western's backing, Paramount produced several hits, including The Odd Couple (1968), "Love Story" (1970), "The Godfather" and "The Godfather II" (1974). In 1974, Bluhdorn turned over operation of Paramount to American communications executive Barry Diller. Gulf & Western diversified its holdings in the entertainment industry when it bought the New York publishing company Simon & Schuster in 1975 and Madison Square Garden, a New York entertainment center, in 1977. In 1983 it began a six-year restructuring to divest itself of holdings other than its entertainment, communication, and publishing divisions. By 1989 the company had sold a diverse collection of its businesses for more than $5 billion while building its television group and becoming one of the world's leading publishers.
 In 1989 the company was renamed Paramount Communications Corporation. Later that year Paramount launched an unsuccessful bid to purchase Time Inc. (now Time Warner). In 1994 Viacom bought Paramount for $9.9 billion. A year later Viacom launched a television network, United Paramount Network
Art & Entertainment
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