58 Fun Facts About Paramount Pictures

Which Famous Players star was billed as America's Sweetheart?

Mary Pickford was so valuable that in 1916 Famous Players gave her a production company of her own, with authority over the films she starred in.

Which studio is the only surviving American film studio older than Paramount?

Universal Pictures is the only surviving American studio older than Paramount; Carl Laemmle formed it in 1912 by merging independent producers that had fought the Motion Picture Patents Company's monopoly.

Which Hitchcock thriller did a reluctant Paramount release after he shot it cheaply with his television crew?

Psycho was shot in black and white by the crew of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; Hitchcock swapped his director's fee for 60 percent ownership of the film.

Which silent-era heartthrob played the title role in Paramount's 1921 desert romance The Sheik?

Rudolph Valentino became the screen's great lover as Sheik Ahmed; when he died suddenly in 1926, aged 31, crowds rioted outside the New York funeral home where he lay in state.

Which legendary French actress starred in Queen Elizabeth, the first film Famous Players released?

Sarah Bernhardt starred in the French-made Queen Elizabeth; its American run in 1912 made a fortune that bankrolled Famous Players' plan to film Broadway stars in their stage hits.

Which future mogul, then a glove salesman, co-founded the Lasky Feature Play Company with his brother-in-law Jesse Lasky?

Samuel Goldwyn, still called Goldfish, co-founded the company in 1913; his later Goldwyn Pictures was folded into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1924, yet he never worked there, producing independently instead.

Which director made the Lasky company's first feature in a rented Hollywood horse barn?

Cecil B. DeMille rented half of a working barn to shoot The Squaw Man in 1913; the studio later hauled the building to its new lot, and it survives today as a Hollywood film museum.

Which comedy team made its first five films, from The Cocoanuts to Duck Soup, at Paramount?

The Marx Brothers ended their Paramount run with Duck Soup, a box-office disappointment in 1933 that the American Film Institute now ranks among the 100 greatest American films.

Which Paramount film won Audrey Hepburn the Best Actress Oscar for playing a runaway princess?

Roman Holiday also won the story Oscar for Ian McLellan Hunter, who was fronting for blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo; the Academy reassigned the award to Trumbo in 1993, after his death.

Which adventure film opens with the Paramount logo dissolving into a real mountain peak?

Raiders of the Lost Ark opens on a Hawaiian peak chosen to match the logo; as a boy Steven Spielberg had mimicked the Paramount mountain with real scenery in his home movies.

Which 1950 Paramount classic cast Gloria Swanson, once the studio's own silent queen, as a forgotten star?

Sunset Boulevard blurs fact and fiction: the old film Norma Desmond screens at home is Swanson's own Queen Kelly, whose director, Erich von Stroheim, plays her butler.

Which sales practice forced exhibitors to buy a year of Paramount films to get one star's pictures?

Block booking made theatres take a studio's whole yearly programme to get its star pictures; the Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 1948.

Which Paramount spoof borrowed its plot and some dialogue from Zero Hour!, a serious 1957 drama the studio also released?

Airplane! grew from an accident: its writers taped Zero Hour! overnight while collecting late-night commercials to spoof, then built their comedy on its plot.

On which Hollywood street is Paramount's headquarters, at number 5555?

Melrose Avenue has housed the studio since the 1920s; when next-door neighbour RKO shut down, Paramount ended up absorbing its old lot as well.

Which animation studio made the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons that Paramount released?

Fleischer Studios grew out of Max Fleischer's invention of the rotoscope, a device that let animators trace their drawings over frames of live-action film.

Which 1983 Paramount hit follows a Pittsburgh steel-mill welder who dreams of becoming a ballerina?

Flashdance left Marine Jahan out of its credits, although she doubled for star Jennifer Beals in several of the film's famous dance sequences.

In which radio network did Paramount buy a half interest in the late 1920s?

Paramount bought half of CBS for stock in the network's early years but sold the holding back in 1932; decades later Viacom owned both Paramount and CBS.

Which duo starred in Paramount's Road comedies, which began with Road to Singapore in 1940?

Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, usually joined by Dorothy Lamour, kept breaking off to joke with the audience; Road to Utopia even turns a snowy peak into the studio's mountain trademark.

Which rental-car magnate took charge of Paramount's finance committee in 1931 as the Depression bit?

John D. Hertz, founder of Yellow Cab and Hertz car rental, chaired the finance committee from 1931 but quit in January 1933 in a dispute over his duties; the studio was declared bankrupt that year.

Which Broadway star wrote and headlined Paramount's suggestive 1933 hit I'm No Angel?

Mae West's hourglass figure was so famous that Allied servicemen in the Second World War nicknamed their inflatable life jackets Mae Wests.

The 1948 Supreme Court ruling against Paramount and the other big studios barred them from doing what?

Own movie theater chains was the banned practice: Paramount had to split off its cinemas as United Paramount Theatres, and the classic Hollywood studio system soon came to an end.

Which television network merged in 1953 with a company that had been split off from Paramount?

ABC was struggling until its new owner's cash funded a 1954 pact with Walt Disney: the company took about a third of his Disneyland park, and his weekly Disneyland series went to the network.

Which singing cowboy, also the first owner of baseball's Angels, bought Los Angeles station KTLA from Paramount in 1964?

Gene Autry paid $12 million for KTLA, which Paramount had launched in 1947 as the first commercial TV station west of the Mississippi; he sold it in 1982 for $245 million.

Which 1956 Paramount epic was a remake of its director's own 1923 silent film?

The Ten Commandments nearly killed its director: he suffered a heart attack on location in Egypt, yet went back to work and finished what proved to be his last film.

Which industrial conglomerate bought Paramount in 1966?

Gulf and Western had grown as a car-parts business until Charles Bluhdorn went on a buying spree that swept up zinc, sugar and cigar companies along with a Hollywood studio.

Which production chief restored Paramount's fortunes with Rosemary's Baby, Love Story and The Godfather?

Robert Evans was a clothing salesman when, as the story goes, Norma Shearer spotted him beside a hotel pool and had him cast as her late husband, Irving Thalberg; he was still a novice producer when Paramount hired him in 1966.

Which sitcom star sold her own studio, on the lot next door to Paramount, to the studio's parent in 1967?

Lucille Ball had run Desilu alone since buying out Desi Arnaz in 1962; the sale handed Paramount two of her studio's newest series, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.

Which film, the first that Marvel Studios financed itself, reached cinemas in 2008 through Paramount?

Iron Man opened a six-picture deal with Paramount; after Disney bought Marvel in 2009, it paid Paramount to give up the last two films, The Avengers and Iron Man 3.

Which executive, later founder of Fox Broadcasting, ran Paramount from 1974 to 1984?

Barry Diller started in a talent agency's mailroom and made his name in network television, where he pioneered the made-for-television movie of the week, before Paramount hired him in 1974.

Which pair of late-1970s musicals gave Paramount back-to-back worldwide hits?

Saturday Night Fever and Grease both starred John Travolta; the first grew out of a magazine report on Brooklyn disco life that its author later admitted he had largely made up.

Which network did Paramount launch in January 1995 with Star Trek: Voyager as its flagship?

UPN, the United Paramount Network, debuted in January 1995 with Star Trek: Voyager and ran eleven years before merging with The WB to form The CW in 2006.

Which video game company, owned by Paramount's parent in the 1970s, later gave the studio a hit film series?

Sega is short for Service Games, a business begun in Hawaii to supply coin-operated machines to American military bases; decades later Paramount released its Sonic the Hedgehog films.

Which comedian starred in 1980s Paramount hits Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America?

Eddie Murphy was still a regular on Saturday Night Live, which he had joined at 19, when Trading Places opened; in Coming to America he played four different characters.

Which Paramount teen comedy was adapted from a self-help guide called Queen Bees and Wannabes?

Mean Girls came from television comedy writer Tina Fey, who read the advice book, saw a film in it, wrote the script herself and played the maths teacher.

Which home-shopping company lost the 1993 bidding war for Paramount to Viacom?

QVC's rival offers forced Viacom to raise its bid again and again; to help pay the final price of about $10 billion, Viacom agreed to merge with video-rental giant Blockbuster.

Which two New York teams came with Madison Square Garden when Viacom bought Paramount's parent in 1994?

Rangers and Knicks were not Viacom's for long: to pay down its takeover debt it agreed within months to sell the Garden and both teams to Cablevision and ITT for about $1 billion.

Which film did Paramount join as co-financier after its record budget alarmed 20th Century Fox?

Titanic was the most expensive film yet made, at about $200 million, so Fox went looking for a partner; it then became the first film ever to gross over $1 billion.

Which studio did Paramount buy in December 2005 for $1.6 billion?

DreamWorks SKG had spent months negotiating a sale to a rival studio's owner, which tried to cut its price; Paramount stepped in and won the studio Steven Spielberg co-founded.

In 2014 Paramount became the first major studio to do what?

Distribute all its films only in digital form meant no more 35mm reels: Anchorman 2 was the last, and the first digital-only release, The Wolf of Wall Street, came from film-preservation champion Martin Scorsese.

With which streaming company did Paramount sign a multi-picture film deal in 2018?

Netflix had already bought The Cloverfield Paradox from Paramount earlier that year and released it without warning straight after the Super Bowl, skipping cinemas altogether.

Which 2018 Paramount horror hit did actor John Krasinski direct, co-write and star in?

A Quiet Place nearly had a different mother: Krasinski wanted his wife, Emily Blunt, but would not ask her, and she took the role only after reading his script for herself.

What did ViacomCBS rename itself in February 2022?

Paramount Global was the name adopted in February 2022, trading on the studio brand a year after the company's streaming service had been relaunched as Paramount+.

Which Skydance founder became chairman and chief executive of Paramount when the two companies merged in 2025?

David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, already knew the studio well: his Skydance had co-financed Paramount films for over a decade, beginning with the Coen brothers' True Grit.

In which studio, home of Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting, did Paramount's parent buy a 49% stake?

Miramax takes its name from Miriam and Max, the parents of the brothers who founded it in 1979; the stake brought Paramount distribution of a library of some 700 films.

What surrounds the mountain in Paramount's famous logo?

A ring of stars crowns a peak that founder W. W. Hodkinson is said to have sketched from memory: Ben Lomond, in the Wasatch Range above Ogden, Utah, where he once lived.

Which Paramount comedy moved the plot of Jane Austen's Emma to a Beverly Hills high school?

Clueless began as a television pitch for Fox, which let it go; nearly every studio then passed on Amy Heckerling's script until producer Scott Rudin took it to Paramount.

Which singer starred in Paramount's G.I. Blues and Blue Hawaii?

Elvis Presley made G.I. Blues as his first film after two years in the army; Blue Hawaii then introduced one of his best-loved ballads, Can't Help Falling in Love.

Which 1990 Paramount film starred Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg?

Ghost alarmed its own writer, who had pictured Stanley Kubrick directing and got Jerry Zucker, a maker of spoof comedies; one dinner won him over, and it became the biggest hit of 1990 worldwide.

Which 1927 Paramount film won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture?

Wings (1927), William Wellman's First World War flying drama starring Clara Bow, took the first Best Picture award in 1929; Gary Cooper's brief role helped launch his career.

Who refused the Best Actor Oscar he won for Paramount's The Godfather?

Marlon Brando sent activist Sacheen Littlefeather to decline it on stage in protest at Hollywood's portrayal of Native Americans; the Academy apologised to her almost fifty years later.

Which Paramount film, adapted from a Truman Capote novella, introduced the Oscar-winning song Moon River?

Breakfast at Tiffany's might have looked very different: Marilyn Monroe was a leading contender to play Holly Golightly before the part went to Audrey Hepburn.

Which slasher series, launched by Paramount in 1980, did not give its killer his hockey mask until the third film?

Friday the 13th did not even have Jason as its killer at first: the twist of the 1980 original is that his vengeful mother is behind the murders.

Which restaurant chain grew out of a Paramount licensing deal for a Best Picture winner?

Bubba Gump Shrimp Company opened on Cannery Row in Monterey, California, in 1996, turning the shrimping business Forrest Gump starts in the film into a real chain that now has branches across Asia.

Which Paramount hit led the US Navy to set up recruiting booths inside cinemas?

Top Gun began with a magazine: producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer read a California magazine feature on the Navy's fighter school at Miramar and built their next film around it.

Which long-running children's series made its home at Kaufman Astoria Studios, the Queens lot Paramount opened in 1920?

Sesame Street moved into a lot with a long past: Paramount shot silent and early sound films there, and the US Army took it over in the Second World War to make training films.

Which theme-park company bought Paramount Parks in 2006?

Cedar Fair, owner of Cedar Point in Ohio, paid about $1.24 billion for Kings Island and four other parks; in 2024 it merged with its old rival Six Flags and took that company's name.

Which John Hughes comedy for Paramount has its hero borrow a friend's father's vintage Ferrari?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off never wrecked a real Ferrari: only about 100 of the 250 GT California were ever built, so the production had replicas built and saved a genuine one for the close-ups.

Which 1987 Paramount thriller starred Michael Douglas as a married man stalked by Glenn Close after a weekend affair?

Fatal Attraction first ended with Alex taking her own life and framing Dan for murder; after test screenings, the cast was called back to shoot the violent finale audiences know.