Embassy Pictures
Embassy Pictures Corporation (also and later known as Avco Embassy Pictures as well as Embassy Films Associates) was an American independent film production and distribution studio, active from 1942 to 1986. Embassy was responsible for films such as The Graduate, The Producers, The Fog, The Howling, Escape from New York, and This Is Spinal Tap, Swamp Thing, and television series such as The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time and The Facts of Life.
Industry
1942
1986
Folded into De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
- De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (theatrical)
- Nelson Entertainment (home video)
- New Line Home Video (home video)
- ELP Communications (television, logo, trademark and its copyrights)
1901 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, California
- Independent (1942–1967)
- Avco Corporation (1967–1982)
- Embassy Communications, Inc. (1982–1985)
- The Coca-Cola Company (June–October 1985)
- Dino De Laurentiis Productions (1985–1986)
- Embassy Television
- Embassy Home Entertainment
- Charter Entertainment
Embassy was founded in 1942 by Joseph E. Levine as a foreign film distributor, before branching out into film production in 1945.
In 1967, Embassy was acquired by Avco. The company struggled in the 1970s before focusing on lower-budget genre films at the end of the decade. In 1982, television producer Norman Lear and his partner Jerry Perenchio bought the studio, and it became involved in television production. In 1985, Embassy was sold to The Coca-Cola Company, which sold the studio to Dino De Laurentiis in October of that same year.
Today, StudioCanal owns ancillary rights to the majority of Embassy's theatrical library, while Sony Pictures Television owns worldwide television syndication rights to the studio's films and TV shows.
History[edit]
Founding[edit]
The company was founded in 1942[1] by Joseph E. Levine, initially to distribute foreign films in the United States. The company entered film production in 1945, co-producing with Maxwell Finn the documentary Gaslight Follies, a compilation of silent film clips narrated by Ben Grauer.[2]
Success[edit]
Embassy found success in 1956 bringing the Japanese film Godzilla to the American general public (in a re-edited version), acquiring the rights for $12,000 and spending $400,000 promoting it under the title Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, and earning $1 million in theatrical rentals.[2] They then made a $100,000 deal to bring the French-Italian film Attila (1954) to the United States in 1958 and spent $600,000 promoting it, which returned $2 million in rentals.[2] Their breakthrough came the following year with Hercules, starring Steve Reeves and released by Warner Bros. Levine invested $120,000 on dubbing, sound effects and new titles and spent $1.25 million on promoting the film. It was one of the highest-grossing films of the year, with rentals of $4.7 million, starting a growth in the sword-and-sandal genre.[2]
Art house releases[edit]
After releasing the Hercules sequel, Hercules Unchained (1960), Embassy expanded to add 13 offices nationally as well as offices in Rome, London and Paris and signed deals with Italian production company Titanus and producer Carlo Ponti and began distributing art films, often European ones. In 1961, Embassy bought North American distribution rights for Two Women after Levine seeing no more than three minutes of its "rushes". The film, based on a novella written by Alberto Moravia, had been directed by Vittorio de Sica, and starred Sophia Loren (Ponti's wife) and Eleanora Brown, who acted out the respective roles of a mother and her young daughter whom World War II had displaced from their home. Levine's promotional campaign focused on one still photograph, which showed Loren, as the mother, wearing a torn dress, kneeling in the dirt, and weeping with rage and grief. Predicting that she would win the Academy Award for her performance, Levine brought Loren to the United States for interviews, bought space for, and placed, large advertisements in newspapers, and saw to it that Two Women appeared in the cities of residence of Academy Award jury members.
Levine's efforts paid off when the film was a hit and Loren became the first cast member of a foreign-language film to win the Academy Award for Best Actress.[2] Embassy also acquired rights to and distributed Divorce Italian Style (1961); Salvatore Giuliano (1962); Federico Fellini's film 8½ (1963), as well as Ponti's producing credits including Boccaccio '70 (1962), and de Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and Marriage Italian Style (1964).[2] Embassy also produced an adaptation of The Thief of Baghdad (1961), also with Reeves in the lead, and Rick Carrier's Strangers in the City (1962).
On the back of the success of Ingmar Bergman, Embassy released some of his earlier films in the United States, his film The Devil's Wanton (1949) in 1962 and his film Night Is My Future (1948) in 1963. Embassy also released two 1961 films produced by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman - What a Carve Up! (released in 1962) and The Hellfire Club (released in 1963). Other Ponti-produced films released by Embassy include Landru (1963), directed by Claude Chabrol; Contempt (1963), directed by Jean-Luc Godard; The Empty Canvas starring Bette Davis; The Ape Woman (1964); Casanova 70 (1965); The 10th Victim (1965); and de Sica's Sunflower (1970).[2]
Paramount Pictures deal[edit]
By the 1960s, Levine had transformed Embassy into a production company. In 1963, Levine was offered a $30 million deal with Paramount Pictures to produce films in the vein of his previous successes. Paramount would finance the films and Embassy would receive part of its profits.[3] Under the deal, Levine produced Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers (1964) and its prequel Nevada Smith (1966), which were successes, along with flops such as Harlow (1965), starring Carroll Baker. A third film based on a novel by Harold Robbins was also released as part of three-picture deal with Robbins, Where Love Has Gone (1964).[2]
Embassy also released several films produced by or starring Stanley Baker including Zulu (1964), Dingaka (1965) and Robbery (1967).[2]
Later in the decade, Embassy functioned on its own with many Rankin/Bass Productions animated features, including The Daydreamer (1966) and Mad Monster Party? (1967), and successful live-action productions including The Graduate, by second-time film director Mike Nichols, The Producers, by first-time director Mel Brooks (both 1967), and The Lion in Winter (1968), which won an Academy Award for Katharine Hepburn.[2]