Embassy Pictures was founded in 1942 by Joseph E. Levine to distribute foreign films in the United States. The company entered film production in 1945, and found success in the 1950s and 1960s with films like Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, Attila, and Hercules. Embassy also distributed art films, including Two Women, which won Sophia Loren an Academy Award for Best Actress, and Ingmar Bergman's earlier works. In the 1960s, the company became a production company and signed a deal with Paramount Pictures. The company's greatest success came with The Graduate, which led to its sale to Avco.
The company struggled in the 1970s but resumed production in the late 1970s under Robert Rehme, focusing on lower-budget genre films. In 1982, television producer Norman Lear and his partner Jerry Perenchio bought the studio, and it became involved in television production with hits like The Jeffersons and One Day at a Time. The company was eventually sold to The Coca-Cola Company and Dino De Laurentiis. Today, StudioCanal owns ancillary rights to the majority of Embassy's theatrical library, while MGM owns North American video rights and Sony Pictures Television owns worldwide television syndication rights.
History
Founding
The company was founded in 1942[1] by Joseph E. Levine, initially to distribute foreign films in the United States. The company entered film production in 1945, co-producing with Maxwell Finn the documentary Gaslight Follies, a compilation of silent film clips narrated by Ben Grauer.[2]
Success
Embassy found success in 1956 bringing the Japanese film Godzilla to the American general public (in a re-edited version), acquiring the rights for $12,000 and spending $400,000 promoting it under the title Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, and earning $1 million in theatrical rentals.[2] They then made a $100,000 deal to bring the French-Italian film Attila (1954) to the United States in 1958 and spent $600,000 promoting it, which returned $2 million in rentals.[2] Their breakthrough came the following year with Hercules, starring Steve Reeves and released by Warner Bros. Levine invested $120,000 on dubbing, sound effects and new titles and spent $1.25 million on promoting the film. It was one of the highest-grossing films of the year, with rentals of $4.7 million, starting a growth in the sword-and-sandal genre.[2]
Art house releases
After releasing the Hercules sequel, Hercules Unchained (1960), Embassy expanded to add 13 offices nationally as well as offices in Rome, London and Paris and signed deals with Italian production company Titanus and producer Carlo Ponti and began distributing art films, often European ones. In 1961, Embassy bought North American distribution rights for Two Women after Levine seeing no more than three minutes of its "rushes". The film, based on a novella written by Alberto Moravia, had been directed by Vittorio de Sica, and starred Sophia Loren (Ponti's wife) and Eleanora Brown, who acted out the respective roles of a mother and her young daughter whom World War II had displaced from their home. Levine's promotional campaign focused on one still photograph, which showed Loren, as the mother, wearing a torn dress, kneeling in the dirt, and weeping with rage and grief. Predicting that she would win the Academy Award for her performance, Levine brought Loren to the United States for interviews, bought space for, and placed, large advertisements in newspapers, and saw to it that Two Women appeared in the cities of residence of Academy Award jury members.
By the 1960s, Levine had transformed Embassy into a production company. In 1963, Levine was offered a $30 million deal with Paramount Pictures to produce films in the vein of his previous successes. Paramount would finance the films and Embassy would receive part of its profits.[3] Under the deal, Levine produced Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers (1964) and its prequel Nevada Smith (1966), which were successes, along with flops such as Harlow (1965), starring Carroll Baker. A third film based on a novel by Harold Robbins was also released as part of three-picture deal with Robbins, Where Love Has Gone (1964).[2]
Avco Embassy Pictures logo, used from 1968 to 1982
Embassy enjoyed its greatest success with The Graduate, which became the highest-grossing film of the year. This enabled Levine to sell his company to Avco for a deal worth $40 million, although he stayed on as chief executive.[4][5]
In 1969, Embassy appointed Mike Nichols to the board of directors and acquired his film production company, Friwaftt.[6] Levine also ended a four-year feud with Ponti and Loren and produced Loren's first film since she became a mother, Sunflower (1970).[6]
Levine also started a record label with music industry executives Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, Avco Embassy Records, later shortened to Avco Records. In 1969, the company bought out Mike Nichols' production company and signed him to make two movies.[7]
The company became less successful in the 1970s and only had hits with Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971) and A Touch of Class (1973).[2] In 1972, the company had begun cutting back on production and in 1973 recorded a loss of $8.1 million. Levine resigned as president on May 28, 1974, to re-enter independent production and was replaced by Bill Chaikin.[8] By 1975, Avco Embassy stopped making movies altogether.[9]
In 1968, Avco Embassy launched Avco Embassy Television, to syndicate films from the Avco Embassy library on television. In 1976, Avco Embassy sold their broadcasting division and Avco Program Sales to Multimedia, Inc., becoming Multimedia Entertainment (since folded into what is now NBCUniversal Syndication Studios).
Robert Rehme years
In late 1977, Avco Embassy announced its intention to resume production. In 1978, Robert Rehme was appointed president and chief operating officer and he convinced the company to give him $5 million for a production fund.
In late 1982, Embassy bought out Andre Blay Corporation and renamed the company to Embassy Home Entertainment; prior releases from its film catalog (as Avco Embassy Picture Corporation) had been handled through Magnetic Video, as well as reissues of the Blay Video catalog.
During this period, Rob Reiner, who up to that point had been most famous for playing Mike "Meathead" Stivic on All in the Family, began his directorial career with two Embassy releases, This is Spinal Tap (1984) and The Sure Thing (1985). His third film, Stand By Me (1986), started at Embassy, but it almost got cancelled because of the sale to Columbia days before filming was to begin. Norman Lear ended up putting up his own money for completion funds.[12]
Coca-Cola and others
Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy Communications (including Tandem Productions) to The Coca-Cola Company for $485 million on June 18, 1985.[13][14][15] Coca-Cola, which also owned Columbia Pictures at the time, sold Embassy Pictures to Dino De Laurentiis on November 1, 1985,[16] but kept Embassy's television division active. De Laurentiis folded the company into his De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, and the home video division became Nelson Entertainment, run by executives who had previously worked at DEG before it went bankrupt.
Although De Laurentiis was now owner of Embassy, he was not given rights to then-upcoming films such as Crimewave and Saving Grace (both 1986), and an adaptation of Stephen King's The Body, which became Stand by Me (1986), which became properties of Lear and Perenchio.[17][18]
By the early 1990s, key rights to the Embassy library transferred from company to company due to the bankruptcies of the companies that separately owned them (De Laurentiis for theatrical, Nelson for home video). Dino De Laurentiis's assets went to Parafrance International, in conjunction with Village Roadshow, while Nelson's assets were acquired by Crédit Lyonnais Bank and later sold to PolyGram. Nelson's parent company, NHI continued to exist well into the mid-1990s. In 1994, Parafrance's assets were acquired by the French production company StudioCanal which today owns ancillary rights to the majority of the Embassy theatrical library. However, North American video rights to the majority of Embassy's film library are owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (via Orion Pictures) due to them acquiring most of PolyGram's pre-March 31, 1996 film library which included the Epic catalog, which in turn incorporated the Nelson catalog, while Sony Pictures Television owns worldwide television syndication rights to the theatrical library as well as full ancillary and distribution rights to the Embassy Television library.
Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone, known professionally as Sophia Loren, is an Italian actress. She was named by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest stars of Classical Hollywood cinema and as of 2023, is one of the last surviving major stars from the era. Loren is also the only remaining living person to appear on AFI's list of the 50 greatest stars of American film history, positioned 21st.
Norman Milton Lear is an American producer and screenwriter, who has produced, written, created, or developed over 100 shows. Lear is known for many popular 1970s sitcoms, including the multi-award winning All in the Family as well as Maude, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time,The Jeffersons, and Good Times.
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate Sony.
Two Women is a 1960 war drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica from a screenplay by Cesare Zavattini and De Sica, based on the novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia. The film stars Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown and Raf Vallone. It tells the story of a woman trying to protect her young daughter from the horrors of war. The story is fictional, but based on actual events of 1944 in Rome and rural Lazio, during the Marocchinate.
Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis was an Italian and American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards. He also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
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Avco Records was a record label started by music producers/composers Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore together with film and TV producer Joseph E. Levine in 1968 as Avco Embassy Records.
Columbia Pictures Television, Inc. was launched on May 6, 1974, by Columbia Pictures as an American television production and distribution studio. It is the second name of the Columbia Pictures television division Screen Gems (SG) and the third name of Pioneer Telefilms. For 26 years, the company was active from 1974 until New Year's Day 2001, when it was folded into Columbia TriStar Television, a merger between Columbia Pictures Television and TriStar Television. A separate entity of CPT continues to exist on paper as an intellectual property holder, and under the moniker CPT Holdings to hold the copyright for the TV show The Young and the Restless, as well as old incarnations from the company's television library such as What's Happening!!
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Andrew Jerrold Perenchio was an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He was at one time the chairman and chief executive officer of Univision.
Carbon Copy is a 1981 comedy-drama film directed by Michael Schultz, produced by RKO Pictures and Hemdale Film Corporation, and released by Avco Embassy Pictures. The film stars George Segal, Susan Saint James, Jack Warden and Denzel Washington in his film acting debut. It was the first feature film produced by RKO after a break of many years.
Tandem Productions, Inc. was a film and television production company that was founded in 1958 by television director Bud Yorkin and television writer/producer Norman Lear.
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Joseph Edward Levine was an American film distributor, financier, and producer. At the time of his death, it was said he was involved in one or another capacity with 497 films. Levine was responsible for the U.S. releases of Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, Attila and Hercules, which helped revolutionize U.S. film marketing, and was founder and president of Embassy Pictures. Other films he produced included Two Women, Contempt, The 10th Victim, Marriage Italian Style, The Lion in Winter, The Producers, The Graduate,The Night Porter, A Bridge Too Far, and Carnal Knowledge.
Multimedia Entertainment, Inc. was an American television production/distribution company originally formed in 1968.
Attila is a 1954 Italian-French co-production, directed by Pietro Francisci and produced by Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti for Lux Film. Based on the life of Attila the Hun, it stars Anthony Quinn as Attila and Sophia Loren as Honoria, with French leading man, Henri Vidal, as the Hun's antagonist, Flavius Aetius. Irene Papas, in the second of three contract pictures for Lux Film, plays one of Attila's wives, Grune. Ettore Manni, Christian Marquand, and Claude Laydu are among the supporting cast of mostly French and Italian actors. American Scott Marlowe (1932–2001) made his screen debut in the film. Along with The Pride and the Passion and Houseboat, it was one of Loren's biggest box-office successes during the 1950s.
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) was an entertainment production company and distribution studio founded by Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis. The company is notable for producing Manhunter, Blue Velvet, the horror films Near Dark and Evil Dead II, King Kong Lives, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, as well as distributing The Transformers: The Movie.
Robert Rehme is an American film producer whose credits include the films Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The General's Daughter.
Sunflower is a 1970 Italian drama film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It was the first western movie to be filmed in the USSR. Some scenes were filmed near Moscow, while others near Poltava, a regional center in Ukraine.
Lux Film was an Italian film distribution company founded by Riccardo Gualino in 1934.
1 2 Harris, Kathryn (November 25, 1981). "Perenchio Lear to Purchase Avco Embassy Pictures: EMBASSY: Sale May Be $25 Million". Los Angeles Times. p.e1.
↑ PENN, STANLEY (May 6, 1968). "Avco to Buy Embassy Pictures From Levine For $40 Million of Common, Preferred Stock". The Wall Street Journal. p.8.
1 2 Green, Abel (March 19, 1969). "Mike Nichols On Avco Embassy Board; Joe Levine's Peace With Ponti-Loren". Variety. p.1.
↑ SLOANE, LEONARD (March 19, 1969). "Mergers Set in Show Business: Avco Buys Nichols Unit MERGERS SHAPED IN SHOW BUSINESS". The New York Times. p.61.
↑ Weiler, A. H. (May 30, 1974). "Levine, Producer, Quits as President Of Avco Embassy: Amicable Resignation". The New York Times. p.33.
↑ "Avco Apparently Will Produce Movies After 5-Year Hiatus: Concern Would Likely Work With Others Instead of Making Films on Its Own". The Wall Street Journal. December 6, 1977. p.10.
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