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Liberty Films
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liberty Films was an independent production company founded by Frank Capra. It produced only two films, It's a Wonderful Life, released by RKO, and the film version of the hit play State of the Union, released by MGM - the only film that Capra ever made which was released by that studio. (In later years, Capra bought the film and re-released it himself, so current prints do not show Leo the Lion roaring at the beginning.) Because of the box-office failure of "It's a Wonderful Life", Liberty Films eventually folded and its assets bought by Paramount Pictures and incorporated into their pre-1950 library. Then in 1955 Paramount sold It's a Wonderful Life to U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. along with their many of their short subjects, which were all later sold to National Telefilm Associates, which became Republic Pictures, which was sold to Paramount's current parent Viacom in 1999, hence Paramount now once again owns It's a Wonderful Life. Paramount meanwhile held on to State of the Union for another 2 years until MCA acquired most of Paramount's pre-1950 theatrical sound features in 1957 (and formed EMKA, Ltd. to hold the copyright) then bought the US branch of Decca Records, which owned Universal Studios, in 1962. This explains why EMKA/NBC Universal owns the rights to State of the Union today.
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