The United Artists Story (1960-1964)

By 1960, the major Hollywood studios were struggling. The combination of television's increasing popularity and the debts that would come attached to too many expensive box office failures sent most of them into positions of being acquired by other media and/or business conglomerates. UA, on the other hand, was having some of their best years ever. The years 1960-1964 brought them three Academy Award wins for Best Picture, the starts of two iconic long running franchises ("James Bond" and "The Pink Panther"), hit after hit from established production clients like The Mirisch Company and Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions, lucrative partnerships with acclaimed directors like Stanley Kramer and Billy Wilder, a multitude of films that would instantly rank among the finest to be produced for the entire decade. With rewards like that, this truly was the "big money" era for UA. Arthur Krim and Robert Benjamin, by now the full fledged owners of the company since Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford sold their remaining shares by the end of the 1950's, definitely made good on their commitment to turn UA's fortunes around for the better. By the end of the 1960's, the other studios would pride themselves more on following UA's example and strike up more deals with outside production companies instead of handling all the costs for particular films themselves.

The complete theatrical release output from UA for the first half of the 60's is listed here. During this point, UA did not need to rely so much on low budget "double feature fillers" anymore to fill their release slate quota and the amount of those kinds of films would decrease each year. By the second half of the decade, UA had fully entered the Hollywood "mainstream" and their increasingly higher profile films reflected that.

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