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Eastman Kodak Pictures
Eastman Kodak Pictures (sometimes referred to as "Eastman Pictures"; known as " Kodak International" from 1967-1988) was an American-British film company and a subsidiary of the Eastman Kodak Company. Formed in 1919, it was an offshoot of their film stock division, meant to enter a market they already had some influence in. With larger budgets provided by their parent company, they would make large scale epics and adventure films, which would become some of the biggest hits of the 1920's. They would relocate to their acquired studios in United Kingdom following the Second American Revolution, alongside their parent company. They would remain a prominent force in the British (and later, Franco-British) film industry for 30 years. Eventually, as RKO and Paramount began larger pushes into the European market in the 1960's, Kodak struggled, though kept afloat by their parent company, who rebranded their film division, "Kodak International". However, by the 80's, their parent company, suffering its own financial difficulties, would merge with Ilford Pictures, and as a result, in 1984 the studio was sold, first to the Maggie Pie corporation, and, after a disastrous 8 years, merged with Associated British Picture Corporation to form Imperial Pictures, a subsidiary of Phillips.
History
Having already contributed nitrate film stock since 1916, Kodak decided to enter the film market to capitalize on their control over their own film stock. George Eastman made a deal with several theaters across the country to distribute films that were made in-house with Kodak film stock.
Thanks to their more privileged position in comparison to other upstart film organizations, they could pursue more ambitious projects with enough star power to make them hits. In 1921, they produced the feature
The Life and Times of Pancho Villa, starring the titular Mexican revolutionary himself as the lead. The film's co-producer was a struggling director named David Wark Griffith, who took footage from several small films he did with Villa during the Great War. Griffith had made several films, but floundered for several years when he attempted to stage a large scale adaptation of Thomas Dixon's Reconstruction era historical novel
The Clansman, that ended up becoming a victim of the drive towards wartime propaganda.[1] While he would direct the acclaimed invasion film,
Olympus has Fallen, his vision of an epic feature film remained dormant. However, he would be given the reigns of a large project, an adaptation of an acclaimed and beloved Biblical novel.
Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ, starring Rudolph Valentino in the titular role, would be a gigantic success in 1922, helping usher in a new age of epics to capitalize on its success. Kodak would ride this wave with ease. Using the pull power of producer Thomas Ince, they made lavish, star studded adventure pictures set in exotic locations. "FROM THE DESERTS OF ARABIA TO THE TUNDRA OF RUSSIA", one ad for the studio boasted.
They even began to dip into more special effects heavy work, with 1925's
The Lost World featuring the then-almost life like stop motion models of Willis O'Brien. "Obie" was also recruited to do the effects for their adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's
The Land That Time Forgot two years later, and
Skylark, an adaptation of EE "Doc" Smith's science fiction stories.
However, they were not free of their own troubles. Thomas Ince himself was forced to testify in front of the Fish Committee due to the studio enlisting known communist or communist sympathizers to help with their films, and the release of Cecil B. DeMille's
The Volga Boatsman, a fairly sympathetic portrayal of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War. Ince insisted that they were "full, unashamed capitalists", and highlighted his relationship with Vice President William Randolph Hearst as evidence of his "capitalist soul"[2]. At the same time, Eastman Kodak was also fighting the tide of unionism both for the main company and its film division, calling in Pinkertons to suppress the strikes and helping in enforcing the Breen Code. One of the biggest blows was the death of their star Rudolph Valentino in 1926, who had become an icon of the burgeoning Uranian movement due to his open homosexuality.
In 1928, Kodak purchased the Pathe film studios in the UK. The same year, their documentary
Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness won one of the first Academy Awards. Ultimately, the Depression would hit the studio hard, and already with communist sympathies and strikes rising in Hollywood, they began to move their operations to those purchased studios in the UK. Indeed, some of their next big feature
King Kong (made by
Chang directors Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack with effects by O'Brien) was made in the United Kingdom. When the Revolution came, Kodak promptly left for Britain, and set up their headquarters there with their UK Studios. Their Hollywood lot was collectivized and renamed "The Burbank Film Collective"
With the death of Ince during the Civil War, a new studio chief was needed. Luckily, Eddie Mannix, general manager at MGM who had followed them to the UK, had left due to disputes between him and the studio's new partner Alexander Korda. Kodak successfully lured him to head up the studio and make use of the new British environment.
Under Mannix (called "Kodak's Little Mussolini"), they were able to compete with the MGM-Korda machine. However, because of Mannix's overbearing style, they failed to attract many of Korda's regulars, relying on a stable of stars from Europe. However, their European relocation also allowed them to experiment more with color film, using their previously developed two-color Kodachrome process. Eventually, they were able to create color films on par with the now widespread Technicolor, and use them to make even bigger pictures to sell to audiences
During the war, they churned out propaganda films, including
The Last Plantagenet to promote the newly formed Franco-British Union, and even some pro-American features like
Red Trails and
American Songbook. Ayn Rand would single these films out as evidence of pro-communist sympathies in the Franco-British film industry.
After the war, Kodak would rely on its stars like Hedy Lamarr and Maureen O'Hara, called "the Queen of Kodachrome"[3] because of her long time affiliation with the studio. However, they would find new competitors. The Rank Organization, having recently purchased Universal, and RKO, owned by mogul Howard Hughes, were making in-roads in the Franco-British film industry. They would also find new allies. In 1955, they would distribute the adaptation of the television serial
The Quatermass Experiment, done by Hammer Films. In 1958, Hammer's
Castle of Frankenstein would be a hit for them and Kodak, starting off the popular Hammer Horror films. That same year, they opened their first French studio, and enlisted Jean Renoir to produce the epic film
Mekong, adapted from Pierre Boulle's memoir of the same name[4].
The death of Eddie Mannix in 1960 was devastating for the studio output, as was a failed attempt to start a theater chain. As a result, they turned towards distributing Eurospy and horror pictures from continental Europe and the Soviet Union, and downgrading their traditional exotic pictures, instead loaning their second unit teams to the EBC for nature documentaries. As for their own output, the rise of the counterculture and Swinging London gave rise to "hip thrillers" and beach movies, attempts to appeal to urban youth in London, Paris, West Rome etc, coinciding with their parent company pitching themselves as a "camera for the young". Instead, while "Camera for the Young" was a success, the films mostly became the subject of mockery or parody.
The traditional area of recruitment for Kodak, continental Europe, was also dwindling, with MGM-Eon offering bigger deals for their
James Bond series, and even Mosfilm and some American studios recruiting politically active thespians for Spanish-based productions.
A new regime, led by Indian producer Ismail Merchant, tried to return the studio to its bread and butter during the 20's and 30's, starting with
A Passage to India directed by Satyajit Ray and John Boorman's
The Man Who would be King. These new Indian set films would both start off a colonial nostalgia wave and a new Indian studio to help the making of these colonial features. This coincided with a name change to "Kodak International", to emphasize the new studios abroad in 1968.
The biggest hit of 1969 was
Planet of the Apes , directed by Francois Truffaut and based on another Pierre Boulle novel, and produced by Kodak International and Pathe. As part of the agreement to make the film, Kodak was to back Truffaut's Alfred Hitchcock homage,
The Rio Conspiracy. However, while filming in Bonn in 1972, three separatists from the Red Army Front kidnapped Truffaut, and tried to extort his family and Kodak for cash as well as the release of artists languishing under the "Exploitation Act" in West Germany. While the Bundeswehr was able to rescue Truffaut, the lack of security on set hurt the studio's reputation.
The colonial wave would evolve into a trend of Victorian and Edwardian-set movies in the 70's, including
Tess of D'Urberville, Howard's End and
Pride and Prejudice, which were disparagingly called "Tasteful Cinema" by some (criticized for their sterility and stuffiness), but were massive successes at the box office. Notably, they once again worked with Hammer in 1972 with the Victorian set
The Reign of Dracula.
Still, their penchant for exotic features continued, primarily with the new fangled spy thriller. Notably, they received official FBU distribution rights to
Stern, a 1976 Maxine Kaplan adaptation produced by the ESCI affiliated Vertov Collective.[5] The critically acclaimed Indochina drama,
The Night of the Jungle would sweep the BAFTAs and became the biggest film in the FBU in 1979.
The beginning of the end for Kodak Films largely centered on corporate politics around its parent company, since their films had continued success with their brand of Victorian movies as the aftermath of the 1979 Crisis raged on.
Chariots of Fire and
The Flying Singh, about the 1924 and 1956 Olympics respectively, would win the BAFTAs and the former even received an Oscar nomination.
However, Eastman Kodak itself was steadily losing out in the new battle for digital photography, and in 1984, merged with Ilford Photo to form Kodak-Ilford Ltd. The merger would not be able to accomodate the studio, so they auctioned it and its assets as a package. It was eventually purchased by the fast food conglomerate Maggie Pie[5], though Kodak would continue to license the name for brand recognition.
The entire studio was restructured, firing Merchant, and shutting down the Victorian sets. Instead, the studio became more focused on contemporary comedies or thrillers to sell Maggie Pies under the guise of filmmaking.
While some classics, including an adaptation of Douglas Adam's
The Nifty Galactic Handbook and
The Final Solution with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their last filmed appearance together as Holmes and Watson (and the last to use the iconic Merchant sets), emerged from this period, the Maggie Pie era saw the output plummet and the remaining films largely generic, cheap affairs, a far cry from their luxurious hayday. Notably, they were involved in the notorious flop,
Battlefield Earth, an RKO co-production based on the eponymous novel by Dianetic Church founder L. Ron Hubbard (who served as lead producer), through Maggie Pie's deal to produce toys for the film. They also produced
The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, containing massive Maggie Pie product placement, and regarded as the worst of the series.
With this fall in quality, eventually Maggie Pie sold off Kodak to the private equity firm the Bernard Group, who merged it with Associated British Picture Corporation to form a new company, Imperial Pictures, which still utilize the studios purchased in 1929. The library and the rights to series like
Planet of the Apes was sold to MGM-Mirror, under the Kennedy Group.[6]
[1] That adaptation would become
Birth of a Nation OTL.
[2]Google "Thomas Ince", and you'll get the in-joke
[3] Special Thanks to Time_slip for the nickname.
[4] Bridge on the River Kwai OTL
[5] Fictional American spy Rachel Stern and her creator Maxine Kaplan , as well as Maggie Pie, courtesy of
@MistahC
[5]Media conglomerate owned by Cuban-British congresssman-turned-businessman Edward "Ted" Kennedy
