RKO Radio Pictures: A Titan Is Born

As the preface explains, this book is about the management and business side of RKO. Although it's most famous productions are touched upon the focus is on box office and personnel management rather than actual moviemaking. It was interesting, especially the history of how the studios were founded and the way films were sold and booked into theaters. In the end I could've done with more discussion of the movies themselves. I wasn't quite aware that the focus would be so much on the boardroom. Some of RKO's most famous and lavish production such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame are dismissed as almost failures because they didn't live up to box office expectations. The enduring reputation of the movies and the massive effort put into their sets, cinematography, crowd scenes etc is irrelevant to the author's mission. So in that regard it wasn't quite the book I was looking for.

Great book. If you want to learn about the film business; great book to start with. The highs & lows of a major studio. RKO.

RKO Studios was probably the smallest major movie studio in Los Angeles. Incompetent ever-changing management ran it, made more films with box office sales that didn't even recover production costs, failed at teaching contract actresses and actors necessary performance skills, and routinely overshot filming budgets. It spent 7 years in bankruptcy during the 1930s Depression making movies.But, RKO gave us some of the best American films ever made: King Kong, Astaire & Rogers musicals, Gunga Din, and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. RKO had a stable of talented film technicians: master scoring composer Max Steiner, producer Pandro S. Berman, art decorators Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark, and others who created its famous art deco "BWS" (Big White Sets) in Astaire musicals, and a stable of talented character actors. Bigger movie-making competitors considered the RKO Camera FX department to be the best in the business.Author Richard Jewell reviews the 2-way blizzard of dysfunctional correspondence and decisions from 1929 thru 1942 between RKO money men in New York City and the movie makers in Hollywood. Film professor Jewell at USC appears to have a love affair with quirky RKO. So do I.

If you are a fan of movies, especially the old classics, this is a great book. If you are a fan of film history and fascinated by the ins and outs of Old Hollywood, this is a WONDERFUL book. Much has been written about the golden years of 20th Century-Fox, MGM and Warner Bros., but the Hollywood community of old had an abundance of talent and many true stars - both in front of and behind the camera - worked in studios that get less attention today, such as RKO, Republic, and even Columbia to a degree. As I read this book names kept jumping off the page at me because I had no idea they were at RKO.This is an exceptionally well researched book that is fun to read. I'm happy to have this one in my collection.

One of the most comprehensive books on the inner workings of RKO you will ever read...It really goes into great detail regarding the ups and downs of this studio...which had many....

Very easy read and very interesting if you are into the nuts and bolts of studio production.

An excellently research/written history of the complex rise and fall of RKO Radio Pictures. - a very informative tome that explains so much why RKO never lived up to its potential. Highly recommended!

Excellent book on the start of RKO and Orson Welles when he made Citizen Kane & Ambersons. Lots of details on movies that made money and many that did not for the studio. Will for sure buy the next book when the story continues untill RKO is closed for good.

RKO Radio was formed mainly by Joseph kennedy sr.having completed the job he took his millions and wisely made his exit.for the first couple of years the company made a profit.then the books were awash with red ink.Oné could suggest that it would have been appropriate to print this book in red ink.Not surprisingly the company went into receivership and stayed there for 7 years.When it finally emerged it had a board of 13 directors.It is therefore little surprising that the company had an unstable management set up.no less than 9 during the period covered by the book.Compare this with the 2 for MGM over a period of nearly a quarter of a century.the only change being as a result of the death of Irving Thalberg.Yet despite these problems the company produced some of the finest films of the era.Films which have stood the test of time and are now regarded as classics.The author charts the progress of the company from its formation to the begining of 1942.He does it in a clear concise and very entertaining manner.he quotes from many of the inter office memos having had full access to the company archives.There is a second part due which the author is currently working on and i am impatient to read it.This even though there is no happy ending as would have been essential to the films produced by RKO.

Author Richard Jewell has already done a pictorial history of RKO and his new book RKO RADIO PICTURES,A TITAN IS BORN takes a new angle on the studio - how it functioned as a business.The answer seems to be not very well. And yet this is the studio that gave us ASTAIRE & ROGERS, CITIZEN KANE,GUNGA DIN and KING KONG.I thoroughly recommend this book which is the first of two on the subject. The second part will cover the era when Howard Hughes ran the studio .

I received this book recently as a much wanted history of the lesser major film studio of the 1930s-50s, RKO Radio Pictures. I am now into the early 1940s and and it is fascinating reading. I also have the sequel/companion volume and that of Joseph P Kennedy(John F's dad) who was a founder of what became RKO Radio Pictures. This was the studio that produced the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical films in the 1930s. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.