The Obituary
RKO was one of the Big Five Hollywood studios of the golden age, formed in 1928 from a merger of RCA’s interests with the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater circuit. It released King Kong, the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals, and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. In 1948 the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes bought a controlling stake and ran the studio erratically, cutting output and driving away talent. He sold it in 1955 to General Tire. By 1957 film production had stopped, and the famed studio lots were sold to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu Productions, ending RKO as a working studio.
Worth remembering
- It produced King Kong (1933), Citizen Kane (1941), and the Astaire-Rogers musicals.
- Aviator Howard Hughes bought control in 1948 and his erratic management hollowed the studio out within a decade.
Sources
- RKO Pictures was one of the Big Five Hollywood studios and ceased production in the late 1950s after Howard Hughes's ownership Wikipedia
- Howard Hughes acquired control of RKO in 1948 and its decline followed Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.