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29 unusual facts about Columbia Pictures


Aérospatiale Super Frelon

In Columbia Pictures' 1988 Soviet/Afghanistan War drama The Beast, the Super Frelon was used to represent Communist-bloc helicopters, being that no examples of Soviet aircraft were available for use due to the existence of the Iron Curtain, which would collapse three years later.

Ann Barnes

In the series executive-produced by Hal Roach, Arthur Lake reprised the role of Dagwood, first essayed in the feature films produced by Columbia Pictures in the 1930s-1940’s.

Color Rhapsodies

Color Rhapsodies was a series of usually one-shot animated cartoon shorts produced by Charles Mintz for Columbia Pictures.

Dad's Army missing episodes

It has since been established that the two episodes were film recorded to show to executives at Columbia Pictures during discussions on the structure of the Dad's Army feature film.

Dave Franco

In May 2012, Franco starred in the Columbia Pictures action comedy film, 21 Jump Street, as Eric, a high school student and the lead drug dealer.

Deal Breaker

A movie adaptation is in development after the rights to the Myron Bolitar novels was bought by Columbia Pictures.

Fred Haines

Strick was impressed with Haines' intellectual curiosity and film knowledge, and got him a job in the writing department at Columbia Pictures.

How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater

On November 25, 2004, in an interview with Acito, the Seattle Times newspaper reported that the rights to a film version of How I Paid for College had been secured by Columbia Pictures, less than a year after the novel's publication.

James Dalessandro

For many years, he worked as a writer in the trailer/marketing department at Columbia Pictures, where he worked on dozens of films.

Jim Kokoris

The Rich Part of Life is the winner of the Friends of American Writers for Best First Novel of 2001 and has been optioned for film by Columbia Pictures.

June Harding

She is best known for appearing opposite Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell in the Columbia Pictures film The Trouble with Angels.

Keystone, South Dakota

This town was one of the filming locations for the Columbia Pictures 1994 comedy film North.

Little Iodine

In 1946, Comet Productions, a company established by Mary Pickford, her husband, Charles Rogers and Columbia executive Ralph Cohn, produced a 56-minute feature film, Little Iodine, starring Hobart Cavanaugh as Henry, Irene Ryan as Cora and Jo Ann Marlowe as Little Iodine.

Louder, Please

The original production was directed by George Abbott and starred Lee Tracy; it was successful enough for Krasna to be hired as a writer for Columbia Pictures.

Margaret Matzenauer

In 1936, she played the part of Madame Pomponi in the Columbia Pictures production of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

Masanori Hata

For US distribution by Columbia Pictures, it was cut down from 90 to 76 minutes and narration in English by Dudley Moore was added.

Michael Glazer

Most notably, his creation of a nationwide event tour for Columbia Pictures Identity, as well as TV Guide's SeenOn.com launch party, and other prominent media and press events in Los Angeles.

Najane Kyun

In June 2004, before they could record their next song, "Najane Kyun", Strings were approached by the heads at Columbia TriStar Films of India, a sister company to their record label company to include the song in the soundtrack of the Urdu version of the epic Hollywood blockbuster Spider-Man.

Patty Larkin

She has also performed on numerous compilations and her songs have been featured in the following films: “Anyway The Main Thing Is” in Evolution (DreamWorks); “Good Thing” in Random Hearts (Columbia Pictures); and “Coming Up For Air” and “Tenderness on the Block” in Sliding Doors (Miramax).

Ralph Andrews

From 1980-1986, Ralph Andrews and his production company had an office at Columbia Pictures' lot located at the Burbank Studios in Burbank, California.

Roberto Goizueta

In 1982 Goizueta approved the purchase of Columbia Pictures, signaling Coca-Cola's intentions to branch out beyond the soft-drink business.

Romek Marber

In 2013, The Minories, Colchester exhibited a retrospective of graphic work designed by Romek Marber for Penguin books, The Economist, New Society, Town and Queen magazines, Nicholson’s London Guides, BBC Television, Columbia Pictures, London Planetarium and others.

Rosemarie Bowe

When his production plans stalled, she obtained a contract with Columbia Pictures.

San Fu Maltha

He started his film career in the Netherlands as a marketing and publicity manager for Warner Bros. and Columbia TriStar, and he worked in different positions for Meteor Film.

Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc.

The defendants, including Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., RCA Corporation, and several major newspapers, denied Steinberg's allegations of copyright infringement and asserted the affirmative defenses of (1) fair use as a parody, (2) estoppel, and (3) laches.

Verne Mason

When motion picture director Frank Capra fell ill with a mysterious fever after completing It Happened One Night, Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn called in Mason to diagnose and treat Capra's illness.

Wayne D. Wright

In 1939, Wright appeared in the Columbia Pictures film, Columbia World of Sports: Jockeys Up in which future National Radio Hall of Fame and American Sportscasters Hall of Fame inductee Bill Stern went to Santa Anita Park and spent the day visiting the stables and meeting with several jockeys, trainers, and horses.

Williams Arena

Williams Arena was used for the filming of scenes in Columbia Pictures' 1978 motion picture release, Ice Castles.

WIOQ

After a proposed sale of Outlet's broadcast properties to Coca-Cola's Columbia Pictures subsidiary around 1982 fell through, the station group was acquired by Wesray Capital Corporation, a corporation partially owned by former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.


Adele Jergens

After a few years of working as a model and chorus girl, including being an understudy to Gypsy Rose Lee, Jergens landed a movie contract with Columbia Pictures in 1944, with brunette Jergens becoming a blonde.

Alec Lorimore

Previous to his involvement in the Imax industry he worked for over ten years as a screenwriter, and wrote a number of feature film scripts which were either purchased or commissioned by the major studios, including Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Paramount Pictures, and worked with such producers as Jerry Bruckheimer, Jonathan Taplin, Ray Stark, and Steve Tisch.

Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States

Other highly symbolic deals — including the sale of famous American commercial and cultural symbols such as Columbia Records, Columbia Pictures, and the Rockefeller Center building to Japanese firms — further fanned anti-Japanese sentiment.

Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood

Boston Blackie Goes Hollywood is a 1942 American crime film, fourth of the fourteen Boston Blackie films of the 1940s Columbia's series of B pictures based on Jack Boyle's pulp-fiction character.

Bryan Burk

A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Bryan Burk began his career working with producers Brad Weston at Columbia Pictures, Ned Tanen at Sony Pictures and John Davis at FOX.

Charles Lamont

After Educational shut down its Hollywood studio, Lamont was hired by Columbia Pictures to work with such stars as Charley Chase and The Three Stooges, but his stay was short ("I had an intense hatred for Columbia's president Harry Cohn," said Lamont to authors Ted Okuda and Edward Watz).

Civil service of Japan

The ministry could not restrain aggressive and often politically controversial purchases by Japanese corporate investors in the United States, such as Mitsubishi Estate's October 1989 purchase of Rockefeller Center in New York City, which, along with the Sony Corporation's acquisition of Columbia Pictures several weeks earlier, heated up trade friction between the two countries.

Erik Bergquist

In 2003, Columbia Pictures and producer Lili Fini Zanuck teamed Bergquist with Limp Bizkit front man turned director Fred Durst to write a film about four characters named Guy who are essentially the same person at different points in his life, all co-existing at the same time and place.

Eros Films

Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli's Warwick Films had previously had a successful financing and distribution arrangement with Columbia Pictures, however there was occasionally friction between the two organisations.

Father Knows Best

Originally built in 1941 during the production of a series of Blondie movies, this theatrical property continued to serve for many more years as part of the backlot of Columbia Pictures (now Warner Brothers Ranch in Burbank, California).

Five Little Peppers

The Pepper books were the inspiration for a brief series of feature films produced by Columbia Pictures in 1939 & '40. The four films were vehicles for Columbia's juvenile star Edith Fellows, who played Polly. The rest of the kids were Charles Peck as Ben, Tommy Bond of Our Gang as Joey, Robert Boyce "Bobby" Larson as Davie, and Dorothy Ann Seese as Phronsie.

Hugo Montenegro

Following the success of his albums, he was contracted by Columbia Pictures where he did such films as Hurry Sundown (film) and two Matt Helm pictures.

I Was a Teenage Frankenstein

The film was released on VHS/NTSC videocassette in 1991 by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video under the shortened title "Teenage Frankenstein" which was the alternate title also used when released in the UK by Anglo-Amalgamated.

Jack Rice

Jack Rice (May 14, 1893 – December 14, 1968) was an American actor best known for appearing as the scrounging, freeloading brother-in-law in Edgar Kennedy'sseries of short domestic comedy films at the RKO studios, and also as "Ollie" in around a dozen of Columbia film studio's series of the Blondie comic strip, which starred Penny Singleton.

Jerry Perenchio

The company sold to Coca-Cola in 1985 (who at the time was the parent of Columbia Pictures, now owned by Sony) for $485 million in Coke shares which later doubled.

John Tintori

John's repertoire also includes writing screenplays, including Wise Child, Murder Most Foul for Columbia Pictures and "Interstate" for HBO.

Lynda Myles

She served as director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (1973–1980), director and curator of film at the Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, Senior Vice–President at Columbia Pictures, Commissioning Editor for Drama at the BBC for two years, and as co-Executive Director of the East-West Producers' Seminar from 1990–1994, a training program for young producers in Eastern Europe.

Mahi Beamer

In 1959, Beamer had an uncredited part as a singer in the Columbia Pictures movie Forbidden Island, which starred Jon Hall and was filmed on location in Hawaii.

Martin Flavin

The Criminal Code (1929, produced on Broadway 1929), the basis for several motion pictures: the Columbia Pictures film of the same name (1931), the Spanish-language version El Código penal shot simultaneously on the same sets

Method Studios

Method Studios has collaborated on feature films with many top Hollywood studios such as Warner Bros., Twentieth Century Fox, Summit Entertainment, Columbia Pictures and Paramount.

Miss Sadie Thompson

The public eagerly welcomed her return in two previous films Affair in Trinidad and Salome so Columbia gave Miss Sadie Thompson an "A" film budget.

Mission to Moscow

The film was the first pro-Soviet Hollywood film of its time and was followed by others, including Samuel Goldwyn's The North Star (1943), MGM’s Song of Russia (1944), United ArtistsThree Russian Girls (1943), Columbia’s The Boy from Stalingrad (1943) and Counter-Attack (1945).

Murphy's Romance

Sally Field and director Martin Ritt had to fight Columbia Pictures in order to cast Garner, who was viewed at that point as primarily a television actor despite having enjoyed a flourishing film career in the 1960s (and more recently having co-starred in the box office hit Victor/Victoria opposite Julie Andrews two years earlier).

New York Town

New York Town, based on the story, "Night Time" by Jo Swerling, was originally to have been directed by Mitchell Leisen, but when he was assigned to do I Wanted Wings, Charles Vidor was borrowed from Columbia.

Samuel Bischoff

He drew the attention of Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn, who hired him to supervise the studio's feature film productions.

The Fortune

When Warren Beatty was unable to stir interest in his and Robert Towne's screenplay for Shampoo, about an amoral hairdresser he had been developing since 1967, he bundled it with the more appealing The Fortune and convinced Columbia Pictures head David Begelman to finance both films.

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists

In 2006 Sony optioned the rights to make the book into a film, with comedy director Chris Weitz reportedly signing on to helm the project for Columbia Pictures.

Thun'da

The screen rights for the character were bought by Columbia Pictures, who brought Thun'da to the screen in the serial King of the Congo (1952), featuring Buster Crabbe as Roger Drum, the officer who becomes Thunda.