Screen Gems
Screen Gems is an American film production label of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate, Sony Group Corporation. Screen Gems has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation, initially as a cartoon studio that was active from 1921 to 1946, then a television studio that was active from November 1948 to May 6, 1974, and later on as a film studio that was founded on December 8, 1998. Screen Gems currently serves as a film production division of Sony that specializes in genre films, mainly horror.
Screen Gems is currently one of the five live-action labels of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, alongside Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics, and 3000 Pictures.
Animation studio (1921–1946)
M.J. Winkler Productions (1921–1926)
When producer Pat Sullivan came to Harry Warner to sign a contract with him on his and Otto Messmer's series Felix the Cat, he declined and instead told his soon-to-be former secretary Margaret J. Winkler that she should form her own company and take control of the distribution of the series. Winkler formed M.J. Winkler Productions and soon also took control of Max and Dave Fleischer's series Out of the Inkwell. By 1923 she and Sullivan were arguing, and that same year the Fleischer Brothers formed their own distribution company named Red Seal. Winkler saw an unreleased short called Alice's Wonderland, a cartoon produced and directed by Walt Disney, and became impressed with the short. The two agreed to make a series about the cartoon. In 1924, Charles Mintz married Winkler, and the latter's career began to decline. Mintz quickly assumed Winkler's role in the company, later rebranding it Winkler Pictures.In 1925 Winkler's renewal contract for the Felix shorts was written, yet Winkler declined to renew due to her dispute with Sullivan. The following year the Alice Comedies stopped being distributed by Winkler. After Mintz become involved with the progress it was clear that Disney was unhappy with the production costs on cartoons, and he asked Disney and Ub Iwerks to develop a new character. The result was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the first animated character for Universal Pictures. In February 1928, when the character proved more successful than expected, Disney sought to meet with Mintz over the budget, wanting to spend more on the cartoons. Mintz refused, and hired away all of Walt Disney Studios's animators except Iwerks, Les Clark, and Johnny Cannon, who all refused to leave Disney. He moved the production of the Oswald cartoons to Winkler Pictures, along with Margaret Winkler's brother, George. After losing the Oswald contract to Walter Lantz, Mintz focused on Krazy Kat, which was the output of a Winkler-distributed property.
Winkler Pictures (1926–1931)
M.J. Winkler Productions became known as Winkler Pictures after Mintz took over in 1926 and partnered with Columbia Pictures for distribution in 1929.The Charles Mintz Studio (1931–1933)
In 1931, when the studio moved from New York to California, it was renamed The Charles Mintz Studio.Becoming Screen Gems (1933–1942)
The Charles Mintz studio became known as Screen Gems in 1933. The name was originally used in 1933, when Columbia Pictures acquired a stake in Charles Mintz's animation studio. The name was derived from an early Columbia Pictures slogan, "Gems of the Screen"; itself a takeoff on the song "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean". Mintz was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Short Subject. His first nomination was in 1935 for Holiday Land, and he was nominated again in 1937 for The Little Match Girl. For about a decade, Charles Mintz produced Krazy Kat, Scrappy, and the Color Rhapsody animated short series Columbia Pictures. Also, between 1936 to 1940, several Color Rhapsody films were subcontracted to Ub Iwerks with the use of his own animation studio.The studio's color cartoons were well received, while some other cartoons were not, mainly the later Krazy Kat and Scrappy shorts. Animator Isidore Klein was particularly frustrated with the Krazy Kat cartoons as it bear little resemblance to Herriman's comic strip by the mid-1930s. Furthermore, Columbia gave Mintz strict financial obligations where they advance a certain amount of money, resulting in Mintz repeatedly running over budget. In 1939, after becoming indebted to Columbia and suffering from declining health, Mintz relinquished ownership of his studio and the Screen Gems name to Columbia to settle longstanding financial problems. He would later pass away on December 30, 1939, from a heart attack. Both Krazy Kat and Scrappy’s series ended that year and were replaced by the Phantasy and Fable cartoons in which they were both featured in.
By 1940, Columbia would oversee management of the studio following ownership. The studio's production manager, Jimmy Bronis, became the general manager but was shortly replaced by Mintz's brother-in-law, George Winkler. The following year, in March 1941, Columbia hired Frank Tashlin, previously a writer for Walt Disney Productions and director for Leon Schlesinger Productions, as the studio's producer. Tashlin had a profound effect to the studio as he planned to revitalize it to greater heights. He would hire a large number of displaced animators from the 1941 Disney animators' strike, which included artists such as Phil Duncan, Grant Simmons, Volus Jones, William Shull, Howard Swift, John Hubley, Zack Schwartz, Basil Davidovich and returning animators such as Emery Hawkins and Ray Patterson. He would also direct the short The Fox and the Grapes. Based on the Aesop fable of the same name, the short would inadvertently spawn Columbia's most successful characters with The Fox and the Crow, a comic duo of a refined Fox and a street-wise Crow.
Later in October, Columbia reorganized the studio by dismissing all of its Mintz-era staff. Wrinker was replaced by Ben Schwalb as general manager, and would later replace Tashlin as producer in April 1942. Tashlin would delegated directorial duties to Bob Wickersham and Alec Geiss, the latter of which was described for having memorable scene acting according to Hawkins. He would continue to have close involvement as he would act as a creative supervisor for their cartoons.
Decline and closure (1942–1946)
Tashlin's stay at Screen Gems, despite proving to be an influential figure to the studio, would be short-lived, as he would later leave in June following an argument with Columbia higher-ups. When interviewed by Michael Barrier, he said that the management "can't stay happy long when things are going well, so we ended up in another fracas and I left." He would soon return to Leon Schlesinger Productions, joining several ex-Columbia artists who successfully made the transition. Meanwhile, Schwalb was replaced by Dave Fleischer, previously the co-founder and head supervisor of Fleischer Studios. Fleischer had already been hired as an executive producer in April of that year, with him producing the 1942 WWII short Song of Victory under Tashlin's supervision. But by the end of the year, he would ultimately take full control of studio amidst Tashlin's absence. To further increase cartoon production, Hubley and animator Paul Sommer were teamed up as co-directors, though Hubley would later leave when he was enlisted into the United States Army.Hubley described Fleischer as being very detached from his employees, calling him "one of the world's intellectual lightweights", and that he fancied himself as a good editor by editing completed cartoons in a way that broke continuity. He was later fired in late-1943 and was succeeded by a revolving door of producers. Initially, Fleischer was replaced by studio musician Paul Worth, who was then replaced by Three Stooges producer Hugh McCollum after Worth was convicted of forgery, and then by ex-Schlesinger assistants Ray Katz and Henry Binder. Geiss was also fired following a series of poorly received cartoons, with his role of director given to Howard Swift. The studio would also create several more recurring characters around this time, including Tito and His Burrito, Flippy and Flop, Igor Puzzlewitz, Willoughby Wren, ''Professor Small and Mr. Tall and an adaptation of Al Capp's comic series Li'l Abner, with varying levels of success.
Tashlin's departure had an immediate effect to the studio in a direction standpoint, with animation historians noting that the quality of there cartoons had declined soon after. Film historian Leonard Maltin claimed that after Tashlin left, the studio "tried to maintain some spirit on-screen, with varying results. Screen Gems cartoons of the 1940s feature some of the least endearing cartoon characters ever created, and suffer from misguided story direction." Hubley later told Barrier that he disliked his work at the studio and that Columbia "hated" the cartoons they were making. Capp was also reportedly displeased with the quality of the Li'l Abner'' cartoons, which was discontinued after five cartoons.
In addition to Tashlin's departure, several of the more daring ex-Disney animators that he hired also left for other studios, including Duncan, Davidovich, Schwartz, Hawkins and Patterson. Columbia was unable to find anymore experienced artists who were willing to stay for the long-term, however the studio did manage to gain some leverages. Bob Clampett was brought in as a gag writer before setting up his own brief animation studio for Republic Pictures, while Warner writers Michael Maltese and Tedd Pierce were said to have moonlighted for a few cartoons. Sid Marcus also returned as a director in 1944 while Alex Lovy was brought in to take Sommer and Wickersham's place as director.
Screen Gems was, in an attempt to keep costs low, the last American animation studio to stop producing black and white cartoons. The final black-and-white Phantasy shorts appeared in 1946, over three years after the second-longest holdouts, with the subsequent shorts being produced in Cinecolor. Columbia, still dissatisfied with the studio's output, decided to shut its doors for good in November, while continuing to release a backlog of shorts until 1949. The studio name was later repurposed for a television division, while the former Seward Street facility, which Screen Gems occupied since 1940, was taken over by Walter Lantz Productions in 1947.