Bryna Productions
Bryna Productions is an American independent film and television production company established by actor Kirk Douglas in 1949. The company also produced a handful of films through its subsidiaries, Michael Productions, Joel Productions and Douglas and Lewis Productions, and outside the United States through Brynaprod. Other subsidiaries included Eric Productions, which produced stage plays, Peter Vincent Music, a music publishing company, Bryna International, a photographic service company, and Public Relations Consultants, which supervised the publicity of its early films. Douglas named the main company after his mother, Bryna Demsky Danielovitch ; its primary subsidiaries were named after his sons: Michael Douglas, Joel Douglas, Peter Douglas and Eric Douglas. In 1970, Bryna Productions was renamed The Bryna Company, when Douglas welcomed his children and second wife into the firm. Nevertheless, Michael, Joel and Peter, wanting to establish individual identities, went on to form their own independent film production companies.
The company had some major film successes, including Paths of Glory, The Vikings, Spartacus, Seven Days in May, Seconds, Grand Prix, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Final Countdown, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Four of the films Bryna Productions made have been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States National Film Preservation Board and have been selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry: Paths of Glory in 1992, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1993, Seconds in 2015 and Spartacus in 2017. The company was also recognized by the American Cinematheque in 1989, when it held a three-day festival with the screening of eight Bryna Productions films.
Twenty-one of Bryna Productions' films have won and been nominated for awards and prizes at various ceremonies and film festivals, including the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, the Grammy Awards, the Saturn Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Genie Awards, the Bodil Awards, the Directors Guild of America Award, the Writers Guild of America Awards, the Laurel Awards, the David di Donatello Awards, the Bambi Award, the Belgian Film Critics Association Award, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Society of Film Critics Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, the Turkish Film Critics Association Awards, the National Board of Review Awards, the People's Choice Awards, the Kinema Junpo Awards, the Sant Jordi Awards, the César Awards, the Nastro d'Argento Award, the Jussi Awards, the Huabiao Awards, the Golden Screen Award, the CableACE Awards, the Golden Reel Awards, the International Film Music Critics Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Boxoffice Blue Ribbon Award, the American Cinema Editors Award, the Fotogramas de Plata Award, the Hugo Awards; and at the Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival.
Bryna Productions often co-produced films with other notable independent film production companies, including Burt Lancaster, Harold Hecht and James Hill's Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Films, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh's Curtleigh Productions, Rock Hudson's Gibraltar Productions, James Garner's Cherokee Productions, Stanley Kubrick and James B. Harris' Harris-Kubrick Pictures, Saul Zaentz's Fantasy Films, John Frankenheimner's John Frankenheimer Productions, Richard Quine's Quine Productions, Hal B. Wallis' Wallis-Hazen Productions, Martin Ritt's Martin Ritt Productions, Ray Stark's Seven Arts Productions, Harold Jack Bloom's Thoroughbred Productions, Harold Greenberg's Astral Film Productions, Roland W. Betts' Silver Screen Partners II and Walt Disney's Walt Disney Productions and Touchstone Pictures. It also had financing and distribution deals with major Hollywood studios like United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal-International Pictures, Rank Film Distributors, National General Pictures and Buena Vista, for motion pictures, as well as United Artists Television, NBC, CBS and HBO, for television.
History
Formation of Bryna Productions and early projects (1949–1954)
Kirk Douglas formed an independent film production company at the suggestion of his friend and I Walk Alone co-star, Burt Lancaster, who was already having success with his own film production company, Norma Productions. Lancaster and his agent, Harold Hecht, formed Norma Productions in 1947, at a time when many actors, directors and producers were forming their independent units, which quickly became the largest and most successful independent film production unit in Hollywood during the 1950s. Douglas registered his new company, Bryna Productions, Incorporated, on September 28, 1949, and immediately began optioning properties and securing writers and directors, though it would take more than five years for a project to make it before the cameras. Douglas' mother, Bryna Demsky, after whom the company was named, was a stockholder in the firm.The first property acquired by Bryna Productions was Ben Hecht's short story The Shadow, about a magician who seeks vengeance against his twin brother for the alienation of his blind wife. Douglas made a deal with lawyer-turned-agent-turned-producer Charles K. Feldman to head Bryna Productions and produce The Shadow at Republic Pictures. Feldman hired screenwriter Charles O'Neal to write the screenplay, which was to star Douglas in dual roles of the twin brothers. In the role of the estranged wife, Douglas first wanted to cast Jane Greer, then Jane Wyman. By early 1952, Bryna Productions was attempting to film The Shadow in England.
In June 1950, Bryna Productions optioned Irwin Gielgud's story The Life of David Garrick, a story about the life and career of English actor David Garrick. The property was to be filmed under the title Garrick's Gayeties, for which Douglas hoped to co-star with Judy Garland in the role of Peg Woffington. In September 1950, Bryna Productions procured Ivan Thors' screenplay Nowhere to Go, a story about a displaced person fighting for a new home in the United States. Bryna Productions also owned the filming rights to Darwin Teihet's novel The Fear Makers, which Douglas hoped to direct himself.
In March 1952, Douglas revealed plans for Bryna Productions to make three films a year, with him to star in only one of the three yearly films. Producer William Schorr, who had previously been attached to Billy Wilder and produced the Douglas-starring film Ace in the Hole, became an executive partner at Bryna Productions. Schorr was to oversee the production of films, as associate producer, while Douglas would star in the pictures; Schorr would remain instrumental to Bryna Productions for the next four years. That year, Bryna Productions became tied to Strange Harvest, a yarn about a World War II G.I. who returns to visit Italy with his new American wife, only to discover that he has a young son from a war-time fling with an Italian woman. Strange Harvest was written by Sy Bartlett and Harold Conrad; Bartlett co-wrote the screenplay with Schorr, and the film was to be directed by David Miller on location in Italy.
Douglas hoped to film most of his early productions in Europe. In 1953, he and Schorr attempted to secure a two-picture deal with Italian producers Carlo Ponti and Dino De Laurentiis. The plan was for Douglas to star in the Italian producers' film Ulysses, in exchange for a co-production deal to film The Shadow, which Douglas hoped to finally get underway with Anatole Litvak secured as director. Ulysses came through but The Shadow was never made. In June 1953, Bryna Productions discussed a co-production deal with Sidney Sheldon to film Alice in Arms in Italy, adapted from a play in which Douglas had appeared on Broadway in 1945.
By January 1954, the local for Strange Harvest had been changed from Italy to Japan, when a financing deal was secured there, and Bryna Productions wanted Marlon Brando to star in the picture. Later in 1954, Bryna Productions acquired Robert Carson's story The Quality of Mercy, though its filming rights were up to challenge. Bryna Productions had been given permission by the author via a verbal agreement, whereas John Wayne and his business partner Robert Fellows had received a written agreement from Carson's agent, through their film production company Batjac Productions. A partnership was then formed between Batjac Productions and Bryna Productions to co-produce the film together, with Douglas starring and Ben Hecht writing the screenplay. Batjac Productions' existing Warner Brothers Pictures financing and distribution deal would back the picture, though it was ultimately never made. In April 1954, it was reported that Douglas was interested in producing and starring in a television series through Bryna Productions. In September 1954, Bryna Productions showed interest in filming Robert Wright Campbell's already-written film script The Dangerous Game.
Six-picture deal with United Artists (1955)
In early January 1955, Douglas formally activated Bryna Productions by signing a six-picture, three-year financing and distribution deal with United Artists. After signing the deal, Douglas and his second wife, Anne Douglas, were invited out to celebrate with cocktails at 21 Club in New York City by United Artists executives, president Arthur B. Krim and board chairman Robert S. Benjamin. That month, Stanley Margulies was appointed Publicity Director for Bryna Productions' new subsidiary, Public Relations Consultants, Incorporated, and the company's first two motion pictures were announced: The Viking Raiders, a swashbuckler about Vikings pillaging the coast of Brittany, adapted by Edison Marshall's novel and to be directed by Richard Fleischer; and Van Gogh, a biopic of Vincent Van Gogh, to be directed by Jean Negulesco. Douglas was to star in both. A month later, however, in February 1955, it was announced that The Indian Fighter, a story about a reckless adventurer who tries to foment a war between the Indians and the western settlers after the Civil War, with a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Frank Davis and also starring Douglas, would be the inaugural picture to be filmed. That same month, Norman A. Cook was appointed General Manager of Bryna Productions.The Van Gogh biopic property was subject to some debate as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer also owned the filming rights to a similar story, Lust for Life, based on Irving Stone's novel, with John Houseman secured as producer and Vincente Minelli inked as director. American producer Robert Goldstein was also in a partnership with Italian producer Giuseppe Amato, ready to film a Van Gogh biopic in Rome from an original Harry Brown screenplay. Instead of battling Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer over the property, Douglas chose to approach the company and offered to make the picture together, with his services as an actor.
In March 1955, Bryna Productions moved into its first official headquarter office at 9235 West Third Street, Beverly Hills, California. That same month, it was announced that the company hoped to film Jacquin Sanders' novel Freak Show, a provocative love story about a wrestler and a freak girl at a carnival. The Indian Fighter secured André de Toth as director in early March 1955, and was originally scheduled to begin filming in early April 1955, but due to Douglas' personal publicity tour promoting Man Without a Star for Universal-International Pictures, the shooting only began on May 23, 1955. The film was shot entirely on location, using CinemaScope cameras and Technicolor film, during five weeks in and around Bend, Oregon, without any studio retakes, for a cost of over $1,000,000. Bryna Productions also brought over Italian actress Elsa Martinelli for the femme lead and featured actors like Walter Matthau, Lon Chaney, Jr., Alan Hale, Jr., and Douglas' former wife Diana Douglas. After the filming was completed, Bryna Productions hired folk singer Terry Gilkyson to sing a couple of songs written by Irving Gordon and Franz Waxman to compose the score. Bryna Productions also acquired the filming rights to Robert Wright Campbell's original screenplay The Allison Brothers for $25,000, a story written especially for the author's brother, William Campbell.
Immediately after completing The Indian Fighter, Douglas began filming Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Lust for Life in France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands, following which he planned to produce and star in The Viking Raiders; the Norse film would, however, be pushed back by three years. While in Europe, Bryna Productions optioned German author Klaus Schuitz's story The Runaway Heart, which deals with an Italian girl who falls in love with an SS Nazi officer during World War II. The male lead was to be played by Douglas, while the Italian role was offered to Sophia Loren.
In October 1955, after returning from Europe for the filming of Lust for Life, Douglas named three new executives for Bryna Productions: Jerry Bresler was appointed Producer and General Manager; Myer P. Beck was appointed Producer's Representative; and David E. Weshner was appointed Sales and Distribution Representative.' The company then announced plans to film Robert Alan Aurthur's original story Shadow of the Champ. The plot revolved around a has-been boxing champion's romance with a lonely woman, and had already been adapted for television on The Philco Television Playhouse earlier that year.' The story's filming rights were advanced by United Artists for $100,000; the highest fee ever paid at the time for a television package-play.' The film was to be co-produced with Jonathan Productions, a company founded by Aurthur, David Susskind and Alfred Levy, with Douglas to play only a secondary character in the film.' Although Aurthur wrote the screenplay, Shadow of the Champ was ultimately never made, but the writer collaborated on four future projects with Bryna Productions: A Very Special Baby, Spring Reunion, Tales of the Vikings and Grand Prix.