Its successful films include King Kong, Flying Down to Rio (1933) and other musical films with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Citizen Kane and Suspicion (1941). Howard Hughes took control of the company in 1948
In this 1933 musical romance, choreographer and musician Fred Ayers (Fred Astaire) labors to help his friend and band leader Roger Bond (Gene Raymond) romance gorgeous Brazilian Belinha De Rezende (Dolores del Río), who is the fiancée of Julio (Raul Roulien). Along the way, Ayers and si...
During the 1930s RKO produced the well-known Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers series of musicals and the early films of Katharine Hepburn, including Bringing Up Baby (1938). Among RKO’s other better-known films are Cimarron (1931), from the novel by Edna Ferber; King Kong (1933), one of the...
"From the trolley scene inMeet Me in St. Louis(1944) to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's last dance on the silver screen (The Barkleys of Broadway, 1949) to Judy Garland's timeless, tuxedo-clad performance of "Get Happy" (Summer Stock, 1950), Charles Walters staged the iconic musical...
And although RKO lacked the corporate stability and creative identity necessary to establish a distinctive house style, it did create a number of "signature" film cycles and series, including a Depression-era run of Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, a wartime cycle of low-budget horror films,...