Biography for
Adolph Zukor More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

7 January 1873, Ricse, Austria-Hungary. [now in Hungary]

Date of Death

10 June 1976, Los Angeles, California, USA

Mini Biography

Aadolph Zukor's success began with penny arcades, offering moving peepshows that evolved into nickelodeon theaters that offered longer, larger moving pictures. On July 12, 1912, he premiered the first feature-length film, Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912), featuring French actress Sarah Bernhardt that ran for 40 minutes. From exhibition Zukor moved into production, and eventually consolidated several smaller companies into what we know today as Paramount Pictures Corporation. In 1914 he produced the first American-made feature film, The Prisoner of Zenda (1913), and that was followed by such successes as The Count of Monte Cristo (1913), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1913), The Sheik (1922) and The Covered Wagon (1923). He was also credited with personally bringing to the screen some of the industry's great stars.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Keath

Spouse

Lottie Kaufman

(1897 - 1956) (her death) 2 children

Trivia

Grandfather of Adolph Zukor II

Grandfather of Jim Zukor

Chairman emeritus of Paramount Pictures, until his death at age 103.

Paramount Pictures sold the candles on movie producer Adolph Zukor's one hundredth birthday cake for $1,000 dollars each, and then donated the proceeds to charity.

Founder of the Famous Players Film Company.

Paramount-Publix went bankrupt in 1933, and was reorganized as Paramount Pictures, Inc. He was forced out as part of the reorganization, but after Barney Balaban became Paramount president in 1936, he appointed Zukor chairman of the board. In return, Zukor always called Balaban "the boy." They served together 28 years, until Balaban was forced out of Paramount in 1964 after the failure of the big-budgeted The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964).

Paramount Pictures Corporation merged with Viacom International, Inc. Together, the merged companies own the United Paramount Network (UPN), the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and all its subsidiaries, the TVLand network, the Comedy Central network, the Black Entertainment Television (BET)network, Blockbuster Inc., The Spelling Entertainment Corporation and its subsidiaries, owned by Aaron Spelling, Showtime Networks Inc., the Country Music Television (CMT) network, the Spike TV network, the Video Hits 1 (VH1) network, Music Television (MTV) Networks, the Nickelodeon network, and Nick at Nite. Viacom split into two companies, the new Viacom Inc. and CBS Corporation on December 31, 2005. CBS Corporation re-branded Paramount's television distributing division as CBS Paramount Television, comprised of three divisions: CBS Paramount Network Television, CBS Paramount Domestic Television and CBS Paramount International Television.

He was credited as presenter to Paramount cartoons from 1935 to 1939. These cartoons were acquired by television distributors U.M.&M., National Telefilm Associates, and Associated Artists Productions, in 1955. The TV distributors were instructed to remove all evidence of Paramount's involvement in the cartoons. The "Adolph Zukor Presents" byline was kept on, but the "Paramount Presents" bylines were blacked out. The TV distributors apparently did not think that anyone would recognize Zukor as Paramount's chairman.

Personal Quotes

Those of us who became film producers hailed from all sorts of occupations - furriers, magicians, butchers, boilermakers - and for this reason highbrows have often poked fun at us. Yet one thing is certain: every man who succeeded was a born showman. And once in show business he was never happy out of it.

[After first reading the script of Broken Blossoms (1936)] You bring me a picture like this and want money for it? You may as well put your hand in my pocket and steal it. It isn't commercial. Everyone in it dies.

The public is never wrong.

[on Clara Bow] She danced even when her feet were not moving.

[on Rudolph Valentino] His acting is largely confined to protruding his large, almost occult eyes until the vast areas of white are visible, drawing back the lips of his wide, sensuous mouth to bare his gleaming teeth, and flaring his nostrils.

[on William S. Hart] He was the actor I loved the most. Although the scenarios of the first westerns were less complicated than those of today, he had a fastidiousness and a professional conscience without parallel to see that each line of the script was minutely respected. He was a gentleman of the kind not found today.

If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

Fish stinks from the head.

I was impressed by the moral potentialities of the screen.

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