Paramount Centennial Blogathon Wrap-Up

I would just like to say a big thank you to all of you who participated in my Paramount Centennial Blogathon!  Over two days, there were seventeen excellent posts celebrating an amazing movie studio.  I truly enjoyed reading every single one of your posts.  Thank you all for taking the time to participate!

Paramount Centennial Blogathon: Day 2

Thank you to all of you who contributed something to the first day of the blogathon!  Yesterday, there were eleven contributions and all of them are great reads!

Andrew from The Stop Button starts off day two with a look at The Marx Brothers’ 1931 hit Monkey Business.

Speaking of comedies, Sean from The Joy and Agony of Movies takes a look at Paramount’s comedic output over the years, but most specifically Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise.

Barbara Stanwyck was certainly one of Paramount’s brightest stars.  Head on over to The Picture Spoilers for more on Stanwyck and how Paramount helped her grow as an actress.

1956’s The Court Jester may not have been a big box office hit when it was first released, but it did find an audience when it made its way to television.  Among that audience was Ivan of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, who calls it one of the most perfect movie comedies.

Have you ever seen California with Barbara Stanwyck and Ray Milland?  If not, Natalie from In the Mood gives us five reasons why she loves California.

Paramount didn’t only produce live action films, they were also the home of some amazing animation.  Head on over to True Classics to find out about how the Fleishcer brothers came to Paramount and created iconic cartoon characters like Betty Boop and Popeye.

Aurora from Once Upon a Screen joins the party a few days late, but her post on Sunset Boulevard is one you don’t want to miss!

The Paramount Centennial Blogathon: Day 1

What do Mae West and Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager have in common?  Alexandra from The Best of Alexandra sees five similarities between these two ladies.

Ernst Lubitsch’s style was often imitated, but rarely duplicated.  One director who came pretty darn close was Rouben Mamoulien when he made Love Me Tonight.  Marsha from A Person in the Dark is a big fan of Love Me Tonight and is here to tell us all about this “…musical box of bon bons that makes you close your eyes and say ‘my, that is perfectly delicious.'”

No Paramount blogathon would be complete without Double Indemnity.  Silver Screenings offers some insights on the relationships in the movie and the significance of Phyllis’ anklet.

Even though her most well-known movies were made at other studios, Carole Lomabrd spent seven years at Paramount.  Carole and Co. takes a look at some of the movies she made during her years on the Paramount backlot and why it was a rather frustrating era in her career.

This Property is Condemned may not have been a big hit for Paramount, but it was a turning point for both Robert Redford and its director Sydney Pollack. Head on over to One Gal’s Musings to find out why.

Lasso the Movies takes a look at one of Paramount’s most paramount movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window.

Kellee from Outspoken and Freckled takes a look at The Marx Brothers’ years at Paramount Studios and how her love of Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo helped give her the positive attitude she has today.

Critica Retro takes us back to the 1910s and 1920s to look at the some of the work Cecil B. DeMille and Mary Pickford did at Paramount.

Sometimes Paramount’s executives didn’t always know best.  The Classic Screen talks about how executives were horrified when they saw what Mary Pickford and screenwriter Frances Marion had done with Poor Little Rich Girl, but it turned out Pickford and Marion were the ones who really knew what audiences wanted.

Dedicated Star Trek fan Rich from Wide Screen World takes a look at Star Trek: The Motion Picture and what it was like to be a Trekkie during the gap between the end of the original Star Trek TV series and the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Toby from 50 Westerns from the 50s is working on a book about the production of the Marlon Brando Western One-Eyed Jacks.  Here he tells us about a scene that didn’t make it into the final cut of the movie.

Paramount Centennial Blogathon: How it Works

The first day of the Paramount Centennial Blogathon is already just a day away!  Tomorrow at about 9:00 AM Eastern, I’ll have a post up for that day’s contributions.  All you have to do is comment on that post with a link to your article and I’ll update the post with links as they come in.  Or if you’d prefer, you’re always welcome to send me an e-mail with your link at HollywoodRevue AT gmail DOT com.  If you plan to contribute on Friday, I’ll have a post for day two’s contributions up at 9:00 AM Friday.

I can’t wait to read all of your posts!

A Paramount Centennial Montage

When you’re hosting a blogathon to celebrate a movie studio’s hundredth anniversary, it’s hard to know where to begin when you try to plan your contributions to your own blogathon.  There have been so many great stars who worked at Paramount over the years, it would have been hard to choose just a few to write about.  And Paramount has been behind so many of the greatest films of all time, picking a few movies seemed even harder than picking a few stars.

But since we are talking about a movie studio here, I decided the best way for me to pay tribute would be through video.  So I put together a montage of clips from 48 movies produced by Paramount, representing every decade of its existence except for the 1910s since, unfortunately, I don’t have access to any of their movies from that decade.  Since I was limited to movies I have copies of, I know I’ve left out some pretty important movies from the studio’s history, but it still says more than I ever could in just a few blog posts.

If you’re interested in seeing a Paramount movie from the 1910s, 1912’s Queen Elizabeth is currently available on YouTube.  Queen Elizabeth was the first movie released by Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Film Company.  Famous Players’ motto was “Famous Players in Famous Plays,” and Queen Elizabeth certainly fits in with that philosophy.  It offers a rare look at legendary stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, who only acted in a handful of films.  Famous Players later merged with Jesse Lasky’s Lasky Picture Show Company and Paramount Pictures to form Famous Players-Lasky, which later became simply Paramount Pictures.

Paramount in the 1950’s

Paramount in the 50’s just wouldn’t have been the same without Billy Wilder.  He made two of his most, in my opinion, under-appreciated movies at Paramount: 1953’s Stalag 17 and 1951’s Ace in the Hole.  But in 1950, he released a movie that defined not only his career, but the entire film industry — Sunset Boulevard.

Paramount in the 1930’s

Times were tough for just about everyone during the 1930’s, including Paramount Studios.  In the early 1930’s, Paramount was on the brink of financial disaster and with the Great Depression, audiences needed darn good reasons to spend what money they had on movie tickets.  Paramount was facing some pretty tough competition, too.  MGM had Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, and Joan Crawford;  Warner Brothers had their gangster flicks and Busby Berkley musicals.  But Paramount rose to the challenge and created some of the most definitive movies of the decade with some of the best talent in town.