Adolph Zukor

Adolph 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.

Co-founded Artcraft Pictures Corporation in 1916, which eventually became Paramount Pictures.

Acquired control of Lewis J. Selznick's Selznick Pictures Corporation in 1917 and renamed it Select Pictures Corporation. Selznick later bought the company back and changed the name back to Selznick Pictures Corporation.

Founded production/distribution company Realart Pictures Corporation in 1920.

President of film production company Charles Frohman Inc., formed in 1922.

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).

He was credited as presenter to Paramount cartoons from 1935-39. These cartoons were acquired by television distributors U.M.&M., National Telefilm Associates and Associated Artists Productions in 1955. The television 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 television distributors apparently did not think that anyone would recognize Zukor as Paramount's chairman.

He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1617 Vine Street in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

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.

Paramount Pictures sold the candles on Zukor's 100th birthday cake for $1,000 each, and then donated the proceeds to charity.