Enterprise Productions, Inc. (otherwise known as The Enterprise Studios) was an independent production company co-founded by actor John Garfield alongside producers David L. Loew and Charles Einfeld in 1946, right after Garfield's contract with Warner Bros. had expired. Having recently turned freelance, the idea was Garfield's outlet in obtaining creative control over his own projects, as well as encouraging fellow filmmakers to pursue their own humanistic advocacies through their work.
Garfield made two films with Enterprise: Body and Soul (1947) and Force of Evil (1948). Other productions include Arch of Triumph (1948), starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer; and Caught (1949), directed by Max Ophüls and starring James Mason and Barbara Bel Geddes.
During its existence, Enterprise had its films distributed in the United States by United Artists from 1947 to mid-1948; with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) distributing the films, starting with The Other Love , in select countries overseas. After the box office disappointment from Arch of Triumph, UA severed ties with Enterprise and the last three films were outright distributed by MGM. [1]
Eventually, after the box-office failure that Force of Evil brought (as well as Garfield's trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee), Enterprise folded in 1949. The film Caught was its last production. The careers of Robert Rossen, the director of Body and Soul, and Abraham Polonsky, director of Force of Evil, were seriously affected by HUAC.
Following the bankruptcy of Enterprise, the ownership of all of its films were acquired by Bank of America for non-payment of loans, and subsequently sold to Mundus Television in 1954 for television broadcast at a reported total of $45 million. Eventually the rights have been transferred to National Telefilm Associates (NTA), which re-branded itself as Republic Pictures. Currently, the entire Enterprise catalog is owned by Paramount Global, whose Melange Pictures holding unit owns the former library of predecessor-in-interest Republic Pictures, while Paramount Pictures distributes.
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production and distribution company and the namesake subsidiary of Paramount Global. It is the sixth-oldest film studio in the world, the second-oldest film studio in the United States, and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios located within the city limits of Los Angeles.
Force of Evil is a 1948 American film noir starring John Garfield and directed by Abraham Polonsky. It was adapted by Polonsky and Ira Wolfert from Wolfert's novel Tucker's People. Polonsky had been a screenwriter for the boxing film Body and Soul (1947), in which Garfield had also played the male lead.
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United Artists Corporation (UA) was an American production and distribution company founded in 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as a venture premised on allowing actors to control their own financial and artistic interests rather than being dependent upon commercial studios.
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Isadore "Dore" Schary was an American playwright, director, and producer for the stage and a prolific screenwriter and producer of motion pictures. He directed one feature film, Act One, the film biography of his friend, playwright and theatre director Moss Hart. He became head of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and replaced Louis B. Mayer as president of the studio in 1951.
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Rudolph Polk was an American concert violinist based in New York City during his early years and, during his later years, a Hollywood film director, film industry executive, and artist manager for Jascha Heifetz, Vladimir Horowitz, José Iturbi, and Gregor Piatigorsky. In Hollywood, Polk was the assistant musical director to Morris Stoloff at Columbia Pictures. After World War II, Polk was musical director for Enterprise Studios.
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