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RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum)
An American film company
Common clue: "Citizen Kane" studio; “King Kong” studio; Old MGM rival; “Bringing Up Baby” studio; “It's a Wonderful Life” studio
Crossword puzzle frequency: once a year
Frequency in English language: 75845 / 86800
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The company was formed in 1929 from the merger of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater company, Joe Kennedy's Film Booking Office (FBO), Pathé, and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).
In the 1930s RKO churned out movies at the rate of forty per year as RKO Radio Pictures, and signed a distribution deal with The Walt Disney Company in 1930 that would last into the 1940s. The studio produced movies with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Orson Welles, Johnny Weissmuller, Robert Mitchum, Bette Davis, Mary Pickford, John Ford, George Cukor, Douglas Fairbanks and Alfred Hitchcock.
Titles produced include King Kong, Citizen Kane, It's a Wonderful Life, Gunga Din, Suspicion, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hitler's Children, The Bells of St. Mary's, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Magnificent Ambersons and a lot of Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals.
At RKO [one of the original big five Hollywood studios] lack of continuity in management proved a constant problem. RKO changed heads almost yearly. Producer Pandro Berman claimed that he worked for seventeen different administrations there in as many years. Not coincidentally, RKO was frequently in and out of receivership and bankruptcy, depending on whoever was taking over. Howard Hughes finally bought the studio in 1948, but his leadership was always on the ethereal side. Everybody on the lot talked about him, yet few ever saw him. Right after Hughes acquired the studio, it was claimed, he went there in the middle of the night to look it over. He was driven over the lot, got out and walked around, and finally gave signs that he was ready to leave. A lesser executive said to him, 'Well, you've seen it now. What do you have to say?' Hughes replied, 'Paint it.'
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "RKO".
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