Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith incorporated United Artists on February 5, 1919. Each of them own 20% of the corporation with the remaining 20% by lawyer William Gibbs McAdoo serving as general counsel for the founders.
The first agreement allowed the principles to release four pictures a year. A number that soon they found they could not reach. They did turn to others such as Buster Keaton, King Vidor and Samuel Goldwyn to fill the schedule.
One of the reasons, perhaps the single most important reason, was that these artists didn’t like the idea of the movie studios practice of ‘block booking’. This practice required movie houses to take a block of pictures whether they wanted them or not, just to get the pictures they may want. United Artists would deal with the exhibitors by single picture.
The first United Artist released picture was Douglas Fairbanks “His Majesty, the American” on September 1, 1919
By the late 1940s, United Artists existed mostly in name only. Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford was contacted by Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin, two lawyers, in 1951 asking if they could run United Artists. They agreed, even though Chaplin at first was against the idea changing it only after US government revoked his re-entry visa in 1952. Their management and then ownership changed the direction of the corporation, turning them into one of the biggest movie corporation of the 1950s into the 1960s. In 1967 they sold their interests to Transamerica Corporation.
The company now known as United Artists is jointly owned by MGM, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner.
