United Artists (UA) was an American motion-picture studio and entertainment company. It began as a film studio in the early decades of the movie industry. In the mid-1900’s, United Artists moved away from filming, or shooting, motion pictures. The company’s focus then shifted to financing, distributing, and sometimes producing movies and television programs.
United Artists was founded in 1919 by the early Hollywood film stars Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Charlie Chaplin and by the film director D. W. Griffith. During the era of silent films, UA released the melodrama Way Down East (1920), directed by Griffith; the romantic adventure The Thief of Bagdad (1924), written by and starring Fairbanks; and the comedy The Gold Rush (1925), written and directed by, and starring, Chaplin. United Artists also began financing and distributing films made by independent producers working outside the system of major commercial film studios. United Artists struggled during the early sound era in movies. By the mid-1940’s, it was producing or releasing few films.
In 1951, the attorneys Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin bought United Artists. Their purchase did not include UA’s filming facilities, but the company continued financing and distributing movies. Successful UA films of the 1950’s included the romantic adventure The African Queen (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn; Moulin Rouge (1952), about the French artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; the realistic urban melodrama Marty (1955), the first United Artists film to win the Academy Award for best picture; and the comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), starring Marilyn Monroe, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis, and directed by Billy Wilder. Popular films released by UA during the early 1960’s included the musical West Side Story (1961), the James Bond film Dr. No (1962), and the comedy The Pink Panther (1963). The latter two films each marked the start of a successful film series.
In 1967, Krim and Benjamin sold United Artists to Transamerica Corporation. Important films released while Transamerica owned the company included the civil rights drama In the Heat of the Night (1967); the urban drama Midnight Cowboy (1969); the musical Fiddler on the Roof (1971); the drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), based on a novel by Ken Kesey; the boxing drama Rocky (1976), which had several popular sequels; the romantic comedy Annie Hall (1977), directed by Woody Allen; the drama Apocalypse Now (1979), set during the Vietnam War (1957-1975); and the biographical drama Raging Bull (1980), about the American boxer Jake LaMotta.
In 1981, United Artists was sold to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) owner Kirk Kerkorian, who merged the two companies. United Artists and MGM later were sold and reorganized a number of times. The name United Artists was applied to various new business ventures. Such ventures included United Artists Releasing, a marketing and distribution company that operated during the late 2010’s and early 2020’s. By that time, however, the historic film studio had long ceased to exist.
