Columbia Pictures began its corporate life in 1920 as the
CBC Film Sales Company, a modest production operation specializing in ‘‘short subjects’’ created by Jack
Cohn, Joe Brandt, and Harry Cohn. Before launching
CBC, all three had worked for Universal Pictures—
Brandt and Jack Cohn in the New York office, and
Jack’s younger brother Harry on the West Coast at the
massive Universal City plant. The three young men
created CBC (Cohn-Brandt-Cohn) with seed money of
$100,000 from the Bank of Italy, a California-based
concern run by A. H. and A. P. Giannini that was vital
to Columbia’s development. Brandt and Jack Cohn ran
CBC and handled sales out of New York, while Harry set
up production on Hollywood’s legendary Poverty Row, a
block-long stretch of low-rent offices and makeshift studios on Beechwood Drive between Sunset Boulevard and
Fountain Avenue.
CBC’s one- and two-reel productions sold well,
and in 1922 the company began producing low-budget feature films that were sold through states-rights distributors. These cut-rate programmers also sold well, convincing Brandt and the Cohns to upgrade their
operation. In January 1924 they incorporated CBC as
Columbia Pictures, moving into new offices in New York
while expanding their Hollywood plant. Brandt and Jack
Cohn remained in New York as president and vice president in charge of sales, respectively, with Harry running
the studio as vice president in charge of production.
Columbia continued to expand in the following years,
developing a national distribution setup and steadily
absorbing its Poverty Row environs until it encompassed
most of the city block bordered by Sunset, Beechwood,
Fountain, and Gower Street—thus the appellation
‘‘Gower Gulch.’’ Columbia churned out low-grade programmers at an impressive rate during the late silent era,
many of them directed by Reeves (‘‘Breezy’’) Eason
(1886–1956) and George B. Seitz (1888–1944), but
none was of any real note or suitable for first-run release.
Columbia’s fortunes began to change in late 1927
with the arrival of Frank Capra, who was recruited by
the studio manager, Sam Briskin (1896–1968), to write
and direct a typically modest feature, That Certain Thing
(1928). At age thirty (six years younger than Harry Cohn),
Capra had considerable experience as a writer and director,
notably on several Harry Langdon silent comedies for
producer Mack Sennett (1880–1960). Capra quickly
caught on at Columbia, directing five pictures in less than
a year, and Cohn assigned him to the studio’s most
ambitious project to date, Submarine (1928), an action
drama co-starring Jack Holt (1888–1951) and Ralph
Graves (1900–1977). The film involved underwater photography and visual effects and was Columbia’s first to
utilize sound effects and a musical score. Launched with
a Broadway premier, a rarity for Columbia, Submarine
was a modest hit and solidified Capra’s status as
Columbia’s top director. He then directed another hit
‘‘service picture’’ with Holt and Graves, Flight (1929), as
well as Columbia’s first all-talkie, The Donovan Affair
(1929). By then Cohn was actively touting his star director
to the trade press, announcing that ‘‘Capra will make
nothing but ‘specials’ for Columbia from now on.’’
Columbia also issued its first successful stock offering in 1929, edging closer to the established Hollywood
powers—although still a minor-league studio. In 1930, at
the height of the talkie boom and one year after its first
issue on the New York Stock Exchange, Columbia’s
assets of $5.8 million were dwarfed by those of integrated
majors like Paramount ($306 million), Warner Bros. ($230
million), and MGM ($128 million). Even Universal, which
like Columbia did not own a theater chain, had far greater
assets of $17 million due to the value of its Universal City
plant. Moreover, the quality and quantity of Columbia’s
productions were scarcely on a par with the other studios’
output; they produced from fifty to sixty pictures per year
in 1929 and 1930, with at least a dozen budgeted at
$500,000 or more. Even Universal, with its relatively
meager assets, was producing about forty films per year,
including a few prestige pictures like Broadway (1929) and
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), each budgeted at
over $1 million. Columbia, meanwhile, produced some
two dozen features per year in 1929 and 1930, budgeted
between $50,000 and $150,000, with an occasional project
in the $200,000 range.
When the Depression hit the industry in 1931, however, Columbia was suddenly in a more favorable position
than its competitors for three basic reasons. First, it owned
no theaters and thus was not saddled with debilitating
mortgage payments. Second, Harry Cohn’s autocratic,
tight-fisted management style ideally suited the depressed
economic climate. And third, the efficient output of
B-grade programmers, serials, and shorts, along with the
occasional A-class picture and Capra-directed ‘‘special,’’
jibed perfectly with the Depression-era penchant for double bills and evening-long programs. Thus, Columbia’s
production and market strategy paid dividends during
the 1930s as the studio turned a profit year after year
and saw its assets increase to $15.9 million in 1940—a
phenomenal achievement matched only by MGM.