Post by topbilled on May 9, 2023 14:48:06 GMT
Nice to see that "Come Back Little Sheba" got an Oscar nod as this classic seems to get little attention today.
One thing that helped RKO, through the 1940s and early 1950s, is they had distribution deals with Walt Disney and Sam Goldwyn. So a few of these titles were not actually produced by RKO even if they were filmed at RKO on rented soundstages, but instead were produced by Disney or Goldwyn, and merely distributed through RKO which had control of theater chains for exhibition. The 1946 Oscar winner THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES was really a Sam Goldwyn picture that RKO distributed. Of course RKO got a share of the profits and some of the Oscar glory, since its name was attached to the film and RKO had helped put it in theaters nationwide.
After Howard Hughes took over in mid-1948, he made a series of questionable choices. He didn't seem to get along with either Sam Goldwyn or Walt Disney...so in the mid-50s he ended RKO's distribution deals with them. Goldwyn struck a deal with MGM to distribute GUYS AND DOLLS which was a huge moneymaker; while Disney formed his own distribution entity known as Buena Vista Pictures.
Going back to 1952, some of the output from this year includes films that were made earlier but had their releases delayed. For example, THE NARROW MARGIN had really been completed in 1950 but Hughes wanted some scenes reshot (his tinkering with finished films is well-documented).
Also, MONTANA BELLE was a western that had actually been made at Republic Pictures in '48 and it uses Republic's Trucolor process. The film's star, Jane Russell, was under contract to Hughes; and after he took over RKO, he bought the negative for MONTANA BELLE from Republic to issue it as an RKO picture, since part of his goal was to build her up as an RKO star. Not sure why he waited four years to release MONTANA BELLE, unless he was toying with the idea of reshooting the whole thing but ultimately decided against doing so and just ended up releasing what Republic had made.
And speaking of westerns, 1952 was the last year that RKO produced any of its crowd pleasing Tim Holt B westerns. Holt had been making films at RKO since 1938, with a slight pause during the war years. His films usually turned a profit, but by 1952, most of the major studios were no longer making B westerns, since those units were moving full time into television production, which explains the glut of westerns on TV in the 1950s and 1960s.
Holt would not transition to TV like Gene Autry, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy) and Roy Rogers did. He retired from movies at a relatively young age. Though he was coaxed back for the occasional screen role in subsequent years, his focus shifted to radio broadcasting.