Company type | Film production |
---|---|
Industry | Entertainment |
Founded | 1927 |
Founder | W. Ray Johnston |
Defunct | 1933 |
Fate | Merged with Allied Pictures |
Successor | Monogram Pictures |
Sono Art-World Wide Pictures was an American film distribution and production company in operation from 1927 to 1933. [1] Their first feature film was The Rainbow Man (1929), while one of their most prominent was The Great Gabbo (1929) starring Erich von Stroheim and directed by James Cruze for James Cruze Productions, Inc. [2] One of the last films distributed by the company was A Study in Scarlet (1933) starring Reginald Owen as Sherlock Holmes.
Sono Art was the original U.S. distributor for four Alfred Hitchcock-directed films, Downhill (1927), Easy Virtue (1928), The Manxman (1929), and Blackmail (1929), as well as the British Anna May Wong vehicle Piccadilly (1929).
In 1933, Sono-Art merged with Rayart Pictures to form Monogram Pictures. The original Monogram merged into Republic Pictures in 1935; all Sono Art-World Wide and original Monogram productions have fallen into the public domain.
Kenneth Olin Maynard was an American actor and producer. He was mostly active from the 1920s to the 1940s and considered one of the biggest Western stars in Hollywood.
Jack Perrin was an American actor specializing in Westerns.
John Paterson McGowan was a pioneering Hollywood actor and director and occasionally a screenwriter and producer. McGowan remains the only Australian to have been made a life member of the Screen Directors Guild.
James Cruze was a silent film actor and film director.
Multicolor is a subtractive two-color motion picture process. Multicolor, introduced to the motion picture industry in 1929, was based on the earlier Prizma Color process, and was the forerunner of Cinecolor.
The Great Gabbo is a 1929 American Pre-Code early sound musical drama film directed by James Cruze, based on Ben Hecht's 1928 short story "The Rival Dummy", and starring Erich von Stroheim and Betty Compson. The film features songs by Lynn Cowan, Paul Titsworth, Donald McNamee and King Zany.
Wheeler Oakman was an American film actor.
Lafayette S. "Lafe" McKee was an American actor who appeared in more than 400 films from 1912 to 1948.
Tiffany Pictures, which also became Tiffany-Stahl Productions for a time, was a Hollywood motion picture studio in operation from 1921 until 1932. It is considered a Poverty Row studio, whose films had lower budgets, lesser-known stars, and overall lower production values than major studios.
Lee Zahler was an American composer and musical director of films, starting in the 1920s and well into the 1940s.
Ira Harry Morgan was an American cinematographer. He successfully transitioned from silent movies to sound films.
Benjamin Harrison Kline was an American cinematographer and film director. He was the father of Richard H. Kline.
Tremlet C. Carr was an American film producer, closely associated with the low-budget filmmaking of Poverty Row. In 1931 he co-founded Monogram Pictures, which developed into one of the leading specialist producers of B pictures in Hollywood.
Rayart Pictures was one of the early film production and distribution companies operating independent of the major Hollywood studios in the United States during the later silent film era from the mid-to-late 1920s and into the early "talkies" era of early films with sound in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It established its own distribution network, specializing in westerns. It was started by W. Ray Johnston in 1924, after whom the company was named. It was originally created as a low budget release agent, and like the other so-called Poverty Row studios, was based in a small plot off Sunset Strip, by Gower Street. An early Poverty Row studio, it was a forerunner of Monogram Pictures, which was also founded by W. Ray Johnston.
Edward C. Jewell (1894–1963) was an American art director who worked on the sets of over a hundred and fifty film productions during his career. He worked for a variety of studios including Columbia Pictures in the 1930s and Producers Releasing Corporation in the 1940s, and along with Dave Milton he is one of the best known set designers for second features. Earlier in his career he was part of the design team which worked on Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 epic The King of Kings.
Ralph M. Like (1894–1955) was an American film producer. He was involved with several independent film companies producing low-budget releases on Poverty Row. In 1932 he established Mayfair Pictures. Other companies he was involved with were Action Pictures and Progressive Pictures. After his studios folded in 1934, he produced only one further film You Can't Beat the Law for Monogram in 1943. Like also worked as a sound engineer at some of the major studios.
Fred Bain (1895–1965) was an American film editor. A prolific worker, he edited over a hundred and seventy films, mainly westerns and action films, and also directed three. He worked at a variety of low-budget studios including Reliable Pictures, Grand National and Monogram Pictures. He was sometimes credited as Frederick Bain.
George W. Weeks (1885–1953) was an American film producer. During the early 1930s he was involved with Sono Art Pictures and Mayfair Pictures. In the 1940s he released his films, including the Range Busters series featuring Ray "Crash" Corrigan, through Monogram Pictures.
Byron Robinson (1900–1957) was an American film editor. He worked for a variety of studios including Tiffany Pictures, Universal Pictures, Mayfair Pictures and Columbia Pictures.
Hans Jacoby (1898–1967) was a German art director who designed the film sets for many German productions. He worked for a number of companies during the Weimar Era, notably Bavaria Film, Terra Film and Universum Film AG. Of Jewish background, he emigrated to Austria following the Nazi takeover in Germany, where he worked on The Eternal Mask (1935). He later emigrated to Argentina where he worked under the name Juan Jacoby Renard and also directed one film Sombras en el río in 1939. He was employed by the Argentina Sono Film company.