Adolph Zukor (January 7, 1873 – June 10, 1976): Todays TML Arts Artist Birthday Adolph Zukor was a Hungarian film mogul and founder of Paramount Pictures. Zukor was born in 1873 in Ricse, Hungary, which was then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1889 he emigrated to the United States. When he first landed in New York, he stayed with his family and worked in an upholstery shop. A friend got him a job as an apprentice at a furrier. Zukor stayed there for two years. When he left to become a contract worker, sewing fur pieces and selling them himself, he was nineteen years old and an accomplished designer. By 1903, he already looked and lived like a wealthy young burgher, and he certainly earned the income of one. He had a commodious apartment at 111th Street and Seventh Avenue in New York Citys wealthy German-Jewish section. In 1918, he moved to New City, Rockland County, New York, where he purchased three hundred acres of land from Lawrence Abraham, heir to the A&S Department Stores. Abraham had already built a sizable house, a nine-hole golf course and a swimming pool on this property. Two years later, Zukor bought an additional five hundred acres, built a night house, guest house, movie theater, locker room, greenhouses, garages, staff quarters and hired famed golf architect A.W. Tillinghast to build an eighteen hole championship golf course. Today, Zukors estate is a private country club known as the Paramount Country Club. He became involved in the motion picture industry when in 1903 his cousin, Max Goldstein approached him for a loan. Mitchell Mark needed investors in order to expand his chain of similar theaters that had begun in Buffalo, New York with Edisonia Hall. The arcade salon, the Automatic Vaudeville Company on 14th Street in New York City was to feature Thomas Edisons marvels: phonographs, electric lights and moving pictures. Zukor not only gave Goldstein the money but insisted on forming a partnership to open another one. Another partner in the venture was Marcus Loew. In 1912, Adolph Zukor established Famous Players Film Company—advertising Famous Players in Famous Plays—as the American distribution company for the French film production Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth starring Sarah Bernhardt. The following year he obtained the financial backing of the Frohman brothers, the powerful New York City theatre impresarios. Their primary goal was to bring noted stage actors to the screen and Zukor went on to produce The Prisoner of Zenda (1913). He purchased an armoury on 26th Street in Manhattan and converted it into Chelsea Studios, a movie studio that is still used today. The studio evolved into Famous Players-Lasky with co-producer Jesse L. Lasky and then Paramount Pictures, of which he served as president until 1936 when he was elevated to chairman of the board. He revolutionized the film industry by organizing production, distribution, and exhibition within a single company. He retired from Paramount Pictures in 1959 and thereafter assumed Chairman Emeritus status, a position he held up until his death at the age of 103 in Los Angeles. (from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolph_Zukor)
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 15:07:35 +0000
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