PARAMOUNT PICTURES IS FOUNDED IN LOS ANGELES

Today, The Grandma is still relaxing at home. She has decided to watch some films, and she has chosen some masterpieces produced by Paramount Pictures Corporation, the American film and television production and distribution company that was founded on a day like today in 1912.

Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film and television production and distribution company and a subsidiary of ViacomCBS.

It is the fifth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States (behind Universal Pictures), and the sole member of the Big Five film studios still located in the city limits of Los Angeles.

In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor put 22 actors and actresses under contract and honoured each with a star on the logo.

In 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only.

The company's headquarters and studios are located at 5555 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, California.

Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world after the French studios Gaumont Film Company (1895) and Pathé (1896), followed by the Nordisk Film company (1906), and Universal Studios (1912). It is the last major film studio still headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles.

More information: Paramount

Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company.

Hungarian-born founder Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in Nickelodeon, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time, leading to the slogan Famous Players in Famous Plays.

By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success. Its first film was Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt.

That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as Samuel Goldwyn. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a suitable site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles, for his first feature film, The Squaw Man.

Starting in 1914, both Lasky and Famous Players released their films through a start-up company, Paramount Pictures Corporation, organized early that year by a Utah theatre owner, W. W. Hodkinson, who had bought and merged several smaller firms. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies.

Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation.

In February 1994, Viacom acquired 50.1% of Paramount Communications Inc. shares for $9.75 billion, following a five-month battle with QVC, and completed the merger in July.

At the time, Paramount's holdings included Paramount Pictures, Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers, the New York Knicks, and the Simon & Schuster publishing house. The deal had been planned as early as 1989, when the company was still known as Gulf and Western.

More information: Paramount Studios

 I cannot permit you to disrupt the Paramount schedule.

David O. Selznick