February 5, 1919: United Artists is formed.

The four founders of the United Artists Corporation were the biggest stars in Hollywood, which, by this time, had already become the film center of the United States. These four were Mary Pickford, a Canadian-American who, along with her husband Douglas Fairbanks, was probably the first example of Hollywood royalty; Douglas Fairbanks himself, the famous swashbuckling silent film actor; D.W. Griffith, the pioneering but controversial director of The Birth of a Nation, and Charlie Chaplin, the only one of the four whose work did not become obsolete with the advent of the “talkies”.

Over the years, United Artists signed contracts with Samuel Goldwyn, Buster Keaton, Howard Hughes, Walt Disney, and other notables of the time, but by the 1940s, after Fairbanks and Pickford’s careers had already come to an end, the company slowly broke apart. In the 1950s, UA experienced a revival, and since then has released hits like The African Queen, West Side Story, the early James Bond films, Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, Fiddler on the Roof, Midnight Cowboy, Rocky, and even Gilligan’s Island. Recently, the studio has come under the control of Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner.