Early Paramount Studios

Hollywood’s Legendary Paramount Studios

3 Historians Detail the Complex Beginnings of a Major Force in Film-Making From the Earliest Days of the Silents.  The Actors, Owners, Producers, Directors, and Distributors Who Made History.

ParamountAnd, as Michael Christaldi, one of the authors of the new history of Paramount says, some of the early actors and directors are buried right next door in the old Hollywood Forever Cemetary.  The amount of detail that the three authors of Early Paramount Studios have locked in their memory chips is overwhelming.  The Book itself is mainly pictorial, with fabulous photos of the old Paramount Studios, Famous Players Studios, actors, owners and all the celebrities connected to the beginnings of Hollywood.  Because of space limitations in the book, a lot of text could not possibly be put in, hence the extended presentation at Larry Edmunds Bookshop, with authors Marc Wanamaker, Michael Christaldi, and E.J. Stephens.  For those serious fans out there, this 2 hour and 24 minute presentation is packed with information.  And even at that, we believe Marc could have gone on for another 2 hours.  The authors had a slide show and took questions from the audience.  It is so obvious that these three gentlemen have really done their homework, spending years researching the history of the studios. Support Larry Edmunds by buying the book from them.

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2 Responses to Early Paramount Studios

  1. Ed Murray says:

    Here’s some food for thought about Paramount Studios (and most of the others). The U.S. Government has always wanted to exert as much control over the media as they could secretly do so. The movie studios were prime targets, and many CIA and other government operatives were infiltrated into the studios to keep America great and cleanse the scripts of any kind of “commie” thoughts. One such agent was Charles Douglas Jackson. Just thought it might be timely to remind folks that Paramount and others have been used as propaganda machines by the U.S. Government. Yeah, Paramount made a lot of great movies, but let’s not get too gushy about them, they also housed teams of CIA censors. Think of all the great movies that were not made because of censorship. Here’s a clip from a recent article on the CIA and the studios:

    “…Jackson also took an active role in Operation Mockingbird. Documents released after his death show that Jackson was in contact with a CIA agent in Hollywood’s Paramount Studios. This agent was involved in trying to influence the content of the films the company was making. The agent is not named by Jackson but Frances Stonor Saunders claims in Who Paid the Piper? (2000) that it was Carleton Alsop, a CIA agent employed by Frank Wisner. There is no doubt that Alsop was one of the CIA agents working at Paramount. However, Hugh Wilford argues in The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008) that it was a senior executive at Paramount, Lugi G. Laraschi, the most important CIA figure at the studio. Laraschi was the head of foreign and domestic censorship at the studio, whose job was to “iron out any political, moral or religious problems”. Other studios, including MGM and RKO, had similar officers, and were probably CIA placements. In a private letter to Sherman Adams, Jackson claims the role of these CIA placements was “to insert in their scripts and in their action the right ideas with the proper subtlety”.
    “…On December 15, 1971, Jackson’s widow gave his papers to the Eisenhower Presidential Library. These documents revealed that he had been working as a CIA agent since 1948.”
    eisenhower.archives.gov/research/finding…/Jackson_CD_Records.pdf‎

    Go to this website to read the entire article: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjacksonCD.htm

    –Ed Murray
    edmurray1955@aol.com

  2. Pingback: Paramount Studios History Part 2 | What Up Hollywood

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