Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (commonly known as Columbia Pictures or simply Columbia) is an American film studio, production company and film distributor that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Entertainment's Sony Pictures subsidiary of the Japanese multinational conglomerate Sony Corporation.
What would eventually become Columbia Pictures, CBC Film Sales Corporation, was founded on June 19, 1918 by Harry Cohn, his brother Jack Cohn, and Joe Brandt. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924 and went public two years later. In its early years, it was a minor player in Hollywood, but began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director Frank Capra. With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the primary homes of the screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were Jean Arthur and Cary Grant. In the 1940s, Rita Hayworth became the studio's premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s. Rosalind Russell, Glenn Ford, and William Holden also became major stars at the studio.
It is one of the leading film studios in the world and is a member of the "Big Five" major American film studios. It was one of the so-called "Little Three" among the eight major film studios of Hollywood's Golden Age. Today, it has become the world's fourth largest major film studio.
Logo[]
The Columbia Pictures logo, featuring a woman carrying a torch and wearing a drape (representing Columbia, a personification of the United States), has gone through five major revisions.
Originally in 1924, Columbia Pictures used a logo featuring a female Roman soldier holding a shield in her left hand and a stick of wheat in her right hand. The logo changed in 1928 with the woman wearing a draped flag and torch. The woman wore the stola and carried the palla of ancient Rome, and above her were the words "A Columbia Production" ("A Columbia Picture" or "Columbia Pictures Corporation") written in an arch. The illustration was based upon the actress Evelyn Venable, known for providing the voice of The Blue Fairy in Walt Disney's Pinocchio.
In 1936, the logo was changed: the Torch Lady now stood on a pedestal, wore no headdress, and the text "Columbia" appeared in chiseled letters behind her (Pittsburgh native Jane Chester Bartholomew, whom Harry Cohn discovered, portrayed the Torch Lady in the logo). There were several variations to the logo over the years—significantly, a color version was done in 1943 for The Desperadoes. Two years earlier, the flag became just a drape with no markings. The latter change came after a federal law was passed making it illegal to wear an American flag as clothing. 1976's Taxi Driver was one of the last films to use the "Torch Lady" in her classic appearance.
From 1976 to 1993, Columbia Pictures used two logos. The first, from 1976 to 1981 (1976 to 1982 for international territories) used just a sunburst representing the beams from the torch. The Torch Lady returned in 1981, but in a much smoother form than her 1936-1976 appearance. The score accompanying the first logo was composed by Suzanne Ciani. The studio hired visual effects pioneer Robert Abel to animate the first logo. The woman returned in 1981, but in a much smoother form described as resembling a Coke bottle.
The current logo was created in 1992 (same time as the television version’s debut), and started its use in films the year after, when Scott Mednick and The Mednick Group was hired by Peter Guber to create logos for all the entertainment properties then owned by Sony Pictures. Mednick hired New Orleans artist Michael Deas, to digitally repaint the logo and return the woman to her a "classic" look. Michael Deas hired Jenny Joseph, a graphics artist for The Times-Picayune, as a model for the logo. Due to time constraints, she agreed to help out on her lunch break. The animation was created by Synthespian Studios in 1993 by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, who used 2D elements from the painting and converted it to 3D. In 2012, Jenny Joseph gave an interview to WWL-TV: “So we just scooted over there come lunchtime and they wrapped a sheet around me and I held a regular little desk lamp, a side lamp,” she said, “and I just held that up and we did that with a light bulb." Deas went on to say, "I never thought it would make it to the silver screen and I never thought it would still be up 20 years later, and I certainly never thought it would be in a museum, so it’s kind of gratifying.”
Filmography[]
- Ghost Vision (1995)
- Archot (2014)
- The Emoji Movie (2017)
- Addie (2019)
- Ico (2019)
- The Boy and the Ape (2019)
- Addie 2 (2020)
Film library[]
Film series[]
| Title | Release date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Open Season | 2006–present | co-production with Sony Pictures Animation |
| Surf's Up | 2007–present | |
| Addie | 2019–present | co-production with Sony Pictures Animation and Gingo Animation |
Gallery[]
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