Engulfed
The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood
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Book Presentation:
From Double Indemnity (1944) to The Godfather (1972), the stories behind some of the greatest films ever made pale beside the story of the studio that made them. In the golden age of Hollywood, Paramount was one of the Big Five studios. Gulf + Western's 1966 takeover of the studio signaled the end of one era and heralded the arrival of a new way of doing business in Hollywood. Bernard F. Dick reconstructs the battle that reduced the studio to a mere corporate commodity and traces Paramount's devolution from freestanding studio to subsidiary—first of Gulf + Western, then of Paramount Communications, and currently, of Viacom-CBS.
Dick portrays the new Paramount as a paradigm of today's Hollywood, where the only real art is the art of the deal. In modern Hollywood, former merchandising executives find themselves in charge of production on the assumption that anyone who can sell a movie can make one. CEOs exit in disgrace from one studio, only to emerge in triumph at another. Corporate raiders vie for power and control, purchasing and selling film libraries, studio property, television stations, book publishers, and more. The history of Paramount is filled with larger-than-life people, including Billy Wilder, Adolph Zukor, Sumner Redstone, Shari Redstone, Sherry Lansing, Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and more.
About the Author:
Bernard F. Dick is professor emeritus of communications and English at Fairleigh Dickinson University (Teaneck campus). He holds a doctorate in classics from Fordham University and is the author of numerous film books including Anatomy of Film, Hal Wallis, and That Was Entertainment.
Press Reviews:
Through the richness in cases, examples and anecdotes it gives a practical, nuts-and-bolts insight into the workings of the film business. -Business History
Does a fine job of detailing the death of a studio and its reincarnation as a subsidiary of a conglom. Dick's forensics peel back history, revealing the passions, politics and power plays of filmmakers and dealmakers that culminated in the dissolution of a Hollywood empire. -Daily Variety
An important book not only about the history of a studio, but also about the apparently ineluctable direction big business has taken in American society. -Donald Spoto
A breezy and informative six-reeler about the 'engulfing' of the once proud studio by a mega-conglomerate to which film art was merely another commodity. -EH.NET Reviews
Provides a helpful scaffolding of Paramount's fascinating history thus far and suggests that business historians would do well to engage the film industry further in their explorations of twentieth-century business and economic life. -Enterprise and Society
Clever, thought-provokingDick has the ability to explain the complex in-fighting among studio executives in the corridors of power in a movie studio—and their even more complex negotiations with the conglomerates who own the studios—in a way that is clear and incisive. -Gene D. Phillips
The stories behind some of the greatest films ever made pale beside the story of the studio that made them. -Hollywood Inside Syndicate
Provides historical insight into the death of Paramount Pictures as an autonomous studio and its fall to the conglomerate Gulf + Western in 1966. -Journal of Economic History
Uses Paramount Pictures to illustrate the evolution of the motion-picture industry from Thomas Edison to Michael Eisner.... Always erudite and entertaining. -Kirkus Reviews
This thoroughly researched story reveals the shift in the industry's primary focus from making fine film to making a successful, multifaceted business deal and prompts debate over which one is considered to be real art in modern Hollywood. -Library Journal
Everybody knows that Paramount was one of the major studios, but few know the twists and turns of the history of the studio over the years. -Peter C. Rollins
Traces Paramount's lineage from its 1912 origins to its 1966 purchase by Gulf & Western and its present ownership by Viacom/CBS. -Publishers Weekly
Astutely analyzes the role of outside corporate money in the film industry, and how the changes at Paramount heralded a new, inevitable trend in American film and arts.... Dick's in-depth analysis and research makes for great—and shocking—journalism. -Publishers Weekly
Dick lends the personalities and events so much emotional colour that his book is as compulsively readable as a biography. -Sight and Sound
Dick has composed an authoritative account of Paramount Pictures Corporation and accomplished the not inconsiderable feat of making it read less like business and more like history. -Washington Times
> From the same author:
The Star-Spangled Screen (2022)
The American World War II Film
The Golden Age Musicals of Darryl F. Zanuck (2022)
The Gentleman Preferred Blondes
City of Dreams (2021)
The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures
The Merchant Prince of Poverty Row (2021)
Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures
Subject: Others persons > Harry Cohn
That Was Entertainment (2018)
The Golden Age of the MGM Musical
> On a related topic:
Death of the Moguls (2012)
The End of Classical Hollywood
The Hollywood Trust (2016)
Trade Associations and the Rise of the Studio System
by Kia Afra
Subject: History of Cinema
Leading Lady (2017)
Sherry Lansing and the Making of a Hollywood Groundbreaker
Subject: Studio > Paramount, 20th Century Fox
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