Let the Fighting Begin
The ink was barely dry on the contract when Goldwyn quarreled with Zukor, and he ended up buying the Ince Triangle Studio that later became MGM.
DeMille would later quarrel with Zukor. After Thomas Ince’s death, he would take over Ince’s second studio in Culver City, which later was sold to RKO.
DeMille would create what many believe was his finest film, "King of Kings," at the Culver City studio, and, at the same time, oversee the production of eight films including the first version of "Chicago."
A Time to Sell
Realizing that one could not run a facility and produce and direct films at the same time, DeMille sold the studio to RKO.
Following a short stint at MGM, He returned to Paramount where "His Grey Eminence," Adolph Zukor, was still running the show.
It was Zukor who began the merger of theatres and a major studio, forcing other exhibitors to band together to form studios to free them from having to deal with Paramount.
Pretty as a Picture
In fact, Marcus Loew’s resistance to the high fees he was forced to pay to play Paramount Pictures led him to launch his own production company, which would become MGM and the biggest rival to Zukor’s Paramount.
From the 1920s through the end of the 1960s, the emphases in Hollywood films was on glamour.
How Not to Live
As Ethan Mordden points out in his book, "The Hollywood Studios," "Once the movies took us places we had never been, among people we longed to know. Real life is noir. We cannot be moved or invigorated by a cinema that reflects that life."
With the advent of the Vietnam War, when we saw real blood and real gore on our Home Entertainment Center, our tastes and attitudes began to change.
Adolph Zukor’s 100th birthday was celebrated at Paramount Pictures in 1973.
‘Rocky,’ Then Zukor
He lived to the ripe old age of 103, dying in 1976. That was the year that "Rocky" was released. A year later, "Star Wars" would take the box office by storm. Movies would now become franchises with sequels, television spinoffs, video games and toys factored into the gross receipts.
Even though there weren’t enough charecters left standing in the blood- soaked finale of this year’s “Best Picture” winner, "The Departed," to make a sequel, there is buzz about a prequel to be released next year.
So Adolph Zukor lived long enough to see the era he started finally come to an end.
A Parting Thought
Ethan Mordden concludes in "The Hollywood Studios:"
"It is thought that a parent’s greatest agony is to live to see the death of his child. But Zukor is not on record as having said anything on this matter whatsoever."
