UA's been through many incarnations but a new deluxe set proves that the heyday of United Artists was the 60s and 70s
United Artists
In 1919, the four biggest stars in the cinematic constellation - Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks - formed United Artists, an independent production and distribution company aimed at circumventing the coming wave of studio-based dictatorship.
In so doing, they not only created the world's first virtual studio, they helped to introduce the now rampant practice of franchise filmmaking - even if, by the time UA was in full swing, none of the "A"s remained at large.
Krim-Benjamin
In 1951, Chaplin, the last hold-out, followed in Fairbanks and company's footsteps and sold his interest to businessmen Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin. Krim and Benjamin, operating without the overhead of a studio or a production staff, quickly demonstrated an eagle-eye for teams of hungry, savvy producers with properties of wide appeal.
UA Deluxe Gift Set
A fatman-sized basket of the fruits of their labors is now available as the 46 disc UA Deluxe Gift Set, a collection bursting with some of the biggest hits of the Baby Boomer era.
It's a perfectly picked selection of the major works of the Kim-Benjamin alliances: Hecht-Hill-Lancaster (Marty, The Birdman of Alcatraz,) Billy Wilder-Mirisch Brothers (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment,) and entries from the Pink Panther and James Bond series.
Notably absent are the films of The Beatles, snatched from the UA vaults some years ago when Apple Corps re-acquired their rights for McCartney and Starr.
Transamerica Corp.
In 1967, UA was rolled into Transamerica Corp. It was an ironically benefiting union: Transamerica was an insurance company, a comparatively conservative entity. Yet by curbing the outfit's instinct for big scale projects, UA became perfectly poised to accommodate auteur filmmaking, just then becoming the rage. Hence, such seventies stylists as Altman, Allen and Scorsese found themselves working under the company's banner, and some of their best work, from Annie Hall to Raging Bull, is represented here.
United We Stand
There are more titles, of course, from West Side Story to Hotel Rwanda (yes, UA is still in business, thanks to a recent resuscitation by Tom Cruise) but there is one serious omission: Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, which all but buried UA in 1982. Ironically, it was the same kind of film that marked the company's heyday, with its big budget, reliable genre, name director, and slightly offbeat take. United we stand, United we fall.
The UA Deluxe Gift Set is widely available, for approx. $300.
