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Tiffany Pictures

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Tiffany Pictures, which also became Tiffany-Stahl Productions for a time, was a Hollywood motion picture studio in operation from 1921[1] until 1932. It is considered a Poverty Row studio, whose films had lower budgets, lesser-known stars, and overall lower production values than major studios.[2]

The Death Kiss (1932) produced by Tiffany Pictures, released by Sono Art-World Wide Pictures, and starring Bela Lugosi

History

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Tiffany Productions was a movie-making venture founded in 1921 by star Mae Murray, her then-husband, director Robert Z. Leonard, and Maurice H. Hoffman, who made eight films, all released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Murray and Leonard divorced in 1925.

Starting in 1925 with Souls for Sables, co-starring Claire Windsor and Eugene O'Brien, Tiffany released 70 features, both silent and sound, 20 of which were Westerns.[3] At one point, Tiffany was booking its films into nearly 2,500 theatres.[4]

To produce their films, Tiffany acquired the former Reliance-Majestic Studios lot at 4516 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles in 1927.

From 1927 to 1930, John M. Stahl was the director of Tiffany and renamed the company Tiffany-Stahl Productions. The head of Tiffany was Phil Goldstone, with his vice president Maurice H. Hoffman,[5] who later was president of Liberty Films, which merged into Republic Pictures. Leonard A. Young, who ran the L.A. Young Spring and Wire Company, bought into Tiffany from Hoffman in 1929.[6]

 
Title card for Mamba (1930)

Tiffany lacked a profitable distribution network.[4] The company filed for bankruptcy in 1932. As a result, it was absorbed into the short-lived Sono Art company, which handled its remaining releases.

Copyrights on most (if not all) of Tiffany's films were not renewed, and are now in the public domain.

The studio complex was later bought by Columbia Pictures and given to Sam Katzman and Irving Briskin as a base of operations for their film units.[7] Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer purchased Tiffany's nitrate original film negative library and burned the collection during the burning of Atlanta sequence in Gone with the Wind.[dubious – discuss][citation needed]

In January 2012, the Vitaphone Project announced that the U.S. premiere of a restored print of Mamba would be in March 2012 at Cinefest in Syracuse, New York.[8]

Partial list of Tiffany films

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Main article: List of Tiffany Pictures films

Some of Tiffany's later movies, such as The Death Kiss (1932), were released by Sono Art-World Wide Pictures. Among the films produced by Tiffany were:

They were sued by Tiffany & Co. for trademark infringement, as they used slogans such as "Another Gem from Tiffany".[citation needed]

References

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Citations
  1. ^ Crafton 1997
  2. ^ Lewis, Jack C. (2002). White Horse, Black Hat: A Quarter Century on Hollywood's Poverty Row. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-1-4617-3108-5.
  3. ^ Fernett, Gene (1973). Hollywood's Poverty Row 1930–1950. Coral Reef Publications. p. 31.
  4. ^ a b Crafton 1997, p. 215
  5. ^ Maas, Frederica Sagor (1999). The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood. University Press of Kentucky.
  6. ^ "Interregnum in Hollywood". Time. 15 February 1932.
  7. ^ Weaver, Tom. A Sci-Fi Swarm and Horror Horde: Interviews with 62 Filmmakers. McFarland. p. 108.
  8. ^ Vitaphone Project Newsletter (Vol. 10, Nr. 4)
Bibliography
  • Crafton, Donald (1997). The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound 1926–1931. University of California Press.
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