Word: rko
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...filmmakers' cooperative that nurtured indie-minded directors from D.W. Griffith to Woody Allen - both of which had fallen fallow. Almost instantly, Turner was obliged to sell the studios and their California real estate; but he held on to the library of 3,000 old MGM, Warner Bros., UA and RKO films. These were the programming staples for his TNT channel (Turner Network Television), which went on the air Oct. 3, 1988; the first movie shown was Gone with the Wind...
...basic collection. Even when TNT had commercials and AMC didn't, the Turner network had an edge because its library was stronger than its rival's. Turner had (and has) the grandeur of MGM, the grit of Warners, the swank of RKO. And the movies usually look great. This is a living archive; it keeps restoring classic films so they look as pristine as when they premiered. That's thanks in large part to George Feltenstein, whose title is senior vice president of theatrical catalog marketing at Warner Home Video, but who is really the boss of all things...
...Charles Foster Kane to publisher William Randolph Hearst cued a campaign to suppress the movie, and Kane flopped in its initial release. In addition, many in the industry rankled at Welles' boy-genius rep and may have resented the freedom this first-timer was given by his studio, RKO. Under these circumstances, it's probably a miracle that the film received nine Oscar nominations, including three for Welles as actor, director and co-screenwriter. In the end, it won only for the screenplay, and John Ford's How Green Was My Valley took Best Picture. That study of Welsh family...
...screen test, then got a contract, his "nom de screen" and not much more from Paramount, where he made nearly a quarter of his films and no strong impression. He was noticed opposite Mae West and Marlene Dietrich, but it was in 1936, on a loan-out for an RKO flop, Sylvia Scarlett, that he finally "felt the ground under his feet," as George Cukor, the film's director, would put it. He played a type he had known in his past, a Cockney con man with a chipper way of expressing a gloomy view of human nature. Here...
...snarl of newly urbanized America, Bette Davis represented the assertive, neurotic ur-bitch. She came to Warners in 1931, making five to seven films a year and, like Cagney, campaigning for better parts. (She made her first big impression, in Of Human Bondage, on a loan-out to RKO.) When she turned down one role she was suspended and left for England, hoping to make pictures there, but Warners sued her for breach of contract...