[GreenKeys] RKO Radio Pictures

[Richard Knoppow]

      I think it changed when they changed the trade name from just 
"Radio Pictures" to RKO Radio Pictures c.1936.   I knew John Aalberg, 
once head of RKO's sound department slightly.  He was about ninety and I 
met him because he rode his horse every day at Griffith Park.  He told 
me they had problems recording the Morse sound effect.
      RKO had a long and very strange history.   It was the result of a 
merger of several companies assembled by Joseph P. Kennedy, who thought 
there was a fortune to be made in the movie industry after some limited 
experience with owning a distribution company.  He had not sense of how 
to do it.   In about 1929 RCA decided it wanted to promote the sound 
recording method it had inhereted from General Electric, called 
Photophone.  Western Electric had beat all others to the punch in 
setting the industry up for sound after the success of "The Jazz Singer" 
in 1926.   RCA decided to buy Kennedy's company, called Film Booking 
Office or FBO and his exhibition chain composed of the 
Keith-Albee-Orpheum chain (a merger of the three biggest vaudeville 
chains) along with the Pantages chain and American holdings of the 
French Pathe company.  The resulting company operated as 
Radio-Keith-Orpheum or RKO and trade-marked its movies as either Radio 
Pictures or Pathe pictures.   About 1935 General Electric, who had held 
about 35% of RCA stock, the controlling interest, sold out and RCA 
became autonomous.    At that point they sold off the Pathe interests 
and continued as RKO-Radio.   The company went bankrupt not long after 
and was put in the hands of a receiver (who's name I am drawing a blank 
on).  The receiver held the company until it was sold to General Tire 
and Rubber Company.  When the anti-trust case against the entire 
industry was decided in favor of the complainents General Tire sold off 
the production and distribution divisions to Howard Hughes and kept the 
exhibition end (General Teleradio and RKO-General).  Hughes treated it 
like a hobby and mismanaged it to death.   There is still an entity who 
owns the name and the film library but I have lost track of the name.  I 
think the last picture produced by RKO was in about 1957.   The physical 
plant was eventually sold to Desilu.

      RCA's sound system eventually became quite popular in Hollywood.  
Partly it was due to the recording devices being very rugged and partly 
because RCA's royalty set up was more attractive than Western Electric.
      This is much more than anyone on this list really wants to know.


On 8/26/2015 3:15 PM, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> Am I the only one here who knows that they actually sound it out in CW?
>
> SSS
>
> An RKO Radio Picture
>
> VVV
>
> (I think; my CW is a little rusty.)
>

-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL