Editing Paramount Pictures (section)

===Famous Players Film Company===
{{Main|Famous Players Film Company}}

{{Paramount evolution}}
Paramount is the sixth oldest surviving film studio in the world; after [[Gaumont Film Company]] (1895), [[Pathé]] (1896), [[Titanus]] (1904), [[Nordisk Film]] (1906), and [[Universal Pictures]] (1912). It is the last [[major film studio]] still headquartered in the [[Hollywood, Los Angeles|Hollywood]] district of [[Los Angeles]].<ref name="Bingen_Page_8" />

[[File:Paramount logo 1914.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|left|Paramount Pictures' first logo, with 24 stars, based on a design by its co-founder [[William Wadsworth Hodkinson]], used from 1914 to 1969]]
Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the [[Famous Players Film Company]]. Hungarian-born founder [[Adolph Zukor]], who had been an early investor in [[nickelodeon movie theatre|nickelodeons]], saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants.<ref name="TIMWU2010">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iM6sos2U554C |title=The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires – Tim Wu – Google Books |date=November 2, 2010 |isbn=9780307594655 |access-date=June 17, 2015 |last1=Wu |first1=Tim |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing |archive-date=March 9, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210309155658/https://books.google.com/books?id=iM6sos2U554C |url-status=live }}</ref> With partners [[Daniel Frohman]] and [[Charles Frohman]] he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the middle class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time (leading to the slogan "Famous Players in Famous Plays"). By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success. Its first film was ''[[Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth]]'', which starred [[Sarah Bernhardt]].

That same year, another aspiring producer, [[Jesse L. Lasky]], opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, later known as [[Samuel Goldwyn]]. The Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, [[Cecil B. DeMille]], who would find a suitable site in Hollywood. This place was a rented old horse barn converted into a production facility with an enlarged open-air stage located between [[Vine Street]], Selma Avenue, Argyle Avenue and [[Sunset Boulevard]]. It was later known as the [[Lasky-DeMille Barn]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Wertheim |first=Arthur Frank |author1-link=Arthur Frank Wertheim |title=The Silent Movies of W. C. Fields: How They Created The Basis for His Fame in Sound Films |date=2020 |publisher=BearManor Media |location=Albany, Georgia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bpApEAAAQBAJ&dq=lasky+1926+marathon+street&pg=PT242 |access-date=January 22, 2022 |language=en-US |archive-date=March 19, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220319083253/https://books.google.com/books?id=bpApEAAAQBAJ&dq=lasky+1926+marathon+street&pg=PT242 |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1914, their first feature film, ''[[The Squaw Man (1914 film)|The Squaw Man]]'' was released.

On May 8, 1914, Paramount Pictures Corporation (previously known as Progressive Pictures) was founded by a Utah theatre owner, [[W. W. Hodkinson]], who had bought and merged five smaller firms.<ref>{{cite web |last=Aberdeen |first=J.A. |title=W. W. Hodkinson: The Man Who Invented Hollywood |url=https://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/hodkinson_system.htm |website=Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers (SIMPP) |access-date=January 10, 2022 |language=en-US |archive-date=January 10, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220110115321/https://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/hodkinson_system.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> On May 15, 1914, Hodkinson signed a five-year contract with the Famous Players Film Company, the Lasky Company and Bosworth, Inc. to distribute their films.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Quinn |first=Michael J. |title=Paramount and Early Feature Distribution: 1914–1921 |journal=Film History |date=1999 |volume=11 |issue=1 |pages=98–113 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3815260 |access-date=January 10, 2022 |publisher=Indiana University Press |jstor=3815260 |language=en-US |archive-date=January 10, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220110124549/https://www.jstor.org/stable/3815260?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior:e05e8c0a1ca13314092ff13edd53b7ba&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents |url-status=live }}</ref> Actor, director and producer [[Hobart Bosworth]] had started production of a series of [[Jack London]] movies. Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor; until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis, which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation.