Product Details
| Company |
King Bros. Productions, Inc.
|
| Certificate Type |
Capital Stock
|
| Date Issued |
October 8, 1969 |
| Canceled |
No
|
| Printer |
Security-Columbian Bank Note Company
|
| Signatures |
Machine printed
|
|
Approximate Size
|
12" (w) by 8" (h)
|
Product Images
|
Show the exact certificate you will receive |
|
Authentic
|
Yes
|
| Additional Details |
NA
|
Historical Context
Joseph Kozinsky was a New York fruit merchant who fathered five children, the brothers Frank, Maurice and Herman, and two sisters. The family moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s. The brothers did various odd jobs including selling newspapers and shining shoes before getting into slot machines. They borrowed $250 and built an empire up to 19,000 machines. They also branched into race horses.
In 1940 they, along with their sister Nettie Segal, were charged with tax evasion. The same year, Maurice Kozinsky looked at getting into slot machine movies. They formed Hollywood Quality Pictures Incorporated to develop slot machine projectors and met with Cecil B. De Mille to source films. Morris later recalled:
"De Mille, he has an inferior complex. It takes two weeks to get into see him. Well, we didn't like that. We're just plain businessmen. We finally told him we had to get some pictures. He said he was going to get Sally Rand to make some. Then he said he had a deal with some trapeze artists. Well, you know yourself, you're out with a gal relaxing in a bar, you don't want to see no bubble dancer or acrobat. You want to hear some good music. You want something with class. You want to see Bing Crosby maybe. That was the trouble. De Mille might make big epics but for us he didn't have no class."
The Kozinskys decided to abandon slot machine projecting for actual film production. Morris said he told his brother Frank:
"What is this racket, anyway? If De Mille can do it, why can't we? We're clever guys, we couldn't lose more than ten or twenty thousand dollars. Maybe we should make a movie. Then maybe we can forget how he made us look like mugs."
The brothers knew Hollywood personalities like Louis B. Mayer and Frank Capra from the racetrack and asked them for advice. "So we had to go ahead", said Morris. "Or else we would have looked cheap to Mayer and Capra because we'd told them about it."
They formed KB Productions and made the film
Paper Bullets, releasing through Producers Releasing Corporation in exchange for $19,500 and 50% of the profits. The movie was shot at Talisman Studios over six days. It was a success and the brothers were launched as film producers.
In 1942 the Kozinskys changed their name to King.
They had an enormous success with
Dillinger (1945). Morris told the press at the time:
"Nobody discovered us – we discovered ourselves. We didn't come in to this business as paupers and we won't go out of it as paupers ... It's like this- we're honest and our door is open to everybody. We've got no overhead – our overhead begins when we start shooting and ends the day we put the film in the can. That's the way we do business and we're not going to stop until we get an Academy Award and land one of our pictures in the Radio City Music Hall."
Dillinger was written by Philip Yordan, who would work for the brothers on numerous occasions. He later described them:
"Frank was like a 300-pound Chinaman. Always a big cigar in his mouth and a drawer full of Hershey bars. Always wondering why he was so fat because, he says, "I don't eat." Maurice had been a prize fighter and would always have black coffee, but he was heavy too. When I first met them ... they weren't gangsters but they had [investments in] slot machines and they were probably running something [illegal] in town. Nobody questioned it. They had a few bucks, not rich, but they had a few bucks ... They were very honest. And they always paid me."
The Kings had a production assistant, Arthur Gardner, who later recalled "Frank was the smartest brother and the leader. Maurie watched the money and Hymie just kind of tagged along ... Frank had a good story mind and supervised everything ... I believe Frank King would have succeeded in any business. He was a sharp as a tack."
In 1945 they announced plans to make their most expensive film yet, the musical
Golden Girl starring Belita. Instead they put her in a drama,
Suspense.
In September 1950, the King Brothers changed how they financed their films. They publicly floated their company, getting permission to use a million $1-par shares. They issued $300,000 worth of shares and used it to finance
Drums in the Deep South. $300,000 was later raised for
The Syndicate. The King Brothers paid $70,000 for 70,000 of their own shares. There were over 700 shareholders and the King Brothers took 50% of the profits.
The King Brothers later sued RKO for mismanaging the distribution and sale of three of their films,
The Brave One,
Carnival Story and
Drums in the Deep South, claiming $6,030,000 in damages.
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