It’s very unusual to think about that most of the largest film studios immediately have existed since nearly the daybreak of cinema. Common Photos and Paramount Photos had been each based again in 1912 whereas Warner Bros. Photos dates again to 1923. In the meantime, the Walt Disney Studio was launched in 1923 and although it might take many years earlier than it may begin distributing its personal works, its standalone distribution firm has been round since 1953. These huge entities have caught round for a big selection of causes, together with their absorption into bigger firms that make sure that even a string of expensive flops gained’t wipe out, say, Columbia Photos. Given the long-lasting nature of those studios, it shouldn’t be a shock that many of those outfits have had a large presence on the first 95 editions of the Academy Awards. Their respective histories stretch again far earlier than the times of Miramax, A24, or DreamWorks SKG. It’s no shock then that almost all of the Greatest Image winners on the Oscars belong to those warfare horses that carry on trucking. Nonetheless, the studio answerable for the best variety of Greatest Image winners on the Oscars could also be a bit shocking to some movie geeks. That honor goes to not MGM or Warner Bros. Photos, however slightly to Columbia Photos.
Columbia Photos occupies an odd place within the historical past of essentially the most notable American film studios. This firm began in 1924, so it’s received the longevity that its brethren have, and it’s definitely launched loads of movement photos which have grow to be unquestionable classics. Nonetheless, The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler presents loads of perception into why Columbia Photos has at all times been an oddball among the many “main” American film corporations. Finler’s part of this textual content devoted to Columbia Photos notes that Columbia was cash-strapped in its earliest years as a distributor. It will take till the Forties earlier than its largest motion pictures may measure as much as its competitors. The studio wasn’t as related to a deep bench of contracted filmmakers and actors as different corporations like MGM whereas it additionally tended to keep away from the largest genres studios gravitated to within the Thirties and Forties (particularly, musicals).
Its smaller measurement and continually fluctuating picture initially made Columbia Photos a little bit of an oddball outlier amongst its contemporaries, although it definitely solidified its standing as a serious studio within the trendy world. A part of securing that place has been by means of securing a staggering 12 Greatest Image wins. In Finler’s Hollywood Story, the creator notes that the corporate’s first Greatest Image-winning film, It Occurred One Evening, was an incredible occasion. Right here was a a lot smaller firm swooping in and scoring essentially the most prestigious award of the night time. “It’s unimaginable to overestimate the importance of this occasion for the tiny studio,” Finler wrote. With that, Columbia Photos received a fame enhance and commenced a scorching streak of Oscar wins.
The studio would subsequent win a Greatest Image Oscar in 1938 with You Can’t Take It With You, although it might be one other decade earlier than Columbia Photos gained on this terrain once more. That finish to their chilly streak within the Greatest Image class arrived in 1949 with All of the King’s Males, whereas 1953 and 1954 would see the outfit scoring back-to-back wins on this class with From Right here to Eternity and On the Waterfront. Within the many years to come back, Columbia Photos would rating seven further Greatest Image wins for the films The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, A Man For All Seasons, Oliver!, Kramer vs. Kramer, Gandhi, and The Final Emperor. Spectacular, these victories stretch throughout a number of many years and aren’t simply confined to a short sliver of time within the historical past of movie.
As an alternative, Columbia Photos was churning out motion pictures every decade that would safe a Greatest Image win, with the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties being an particularly affluent time for the corporate on this class. Columbia had three totally different winners in every of those 20 years, comprising half of its complete Greatest Image winners within the course of. Nonetheless, it’s price noting that the 1987 movie The Final Emperor is, as of this writing, the final time a Columbia Photos film secured a Greatest Image win. Although Columbia Photos was answerable for Nineteen Nineties Greatest Image nominees like Sense and Sensibility, A Few Good Males, and Jerry Maguire, it ended up being a no-show on this class for years after the 1997 TriStar Photos launch As Good As It Will get.
It will be over a decade earlier than the 2009 movie District 9 (one other function launched by means of the studio’s TriStar Photos division) that Sony/Columbia Photos would return to the world of Greatest Image nominees. Within the 2000s, Columbia Photos received extra enamored with comedies like Are We There But?, the assorted Comfortable Madison titles, or numerous mainstream-skewing motion pictures like Vantage Level as a substitute of the sort of titles the Oscars gravitate in the direction of. Sony’s arthouse division, Sony Photos Classics, did rating some Greatest Image nominees like Capote on this interval, however Columbia Photos was a no-show. The studio has rebounded lately with common Greatest Image appearances and even scored a number of nominees on this class on the 92nd Academy Awards. Nonetheless, one other Greatest Image victory has but to seem for this oddball studio.
There’s a little bit of a caveat related to this explicit award-season document. Through the years, numerous huge film studios have typically absorbed the library titles of different struggling studios. Within the course of, generally film corporations inherit Greatest Image Oscar winners they didn’t really produce. An ideal instance of this phenomenon is Warner Bros., which counts 18 Greatest Image winners in its library of titles. That might be greater than sufficient to place it above Columbia Photos, however there’s a catch right here. Nearly all of these Greatest Image winners are MGM titles that WB purchased up within the late Nineteen Eighties. Titles like Grand Lodge, Gone with the Wind, and the 1959 Ben-Hur aren’t technically homegrown Warner Bros. motion pictures. Technically, Warner Bros. has solely eight Greatest Image winners that originated from itself or sister firm New Line Cinema, placing it effectively behind the 12 Columbia Photos Greatest Image winners.
In the meantime, good luck making an attempt to chop by means of the crimson tape on whether or not or not Miramax’s 4 Greatest Image wins within the late Nineteen Nineties and 2000s belong to Disney or not. Disney owned Miramax for almost 20 years and Mouse Home brass typically received thanked in Oscars acceptance speeches for Miramax movies. Nonetheless, Miramax has since been bought off by Disney whereas this huge film big has completed every thing it may possibly to distance itself from its days with Miramax within the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. That complete bruhaha is simply one other instance of how the historical past of film studios continually getting bought and resold could make issues so thorny. Even by means of all this pedantic mayhem, although, Columbia Photos impressively stands tall as having essentially the most homegrown Greatest Image Oscar winners by a substantial margin.