Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. (
CPII) is an
American film production and
distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by
Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the
Japanese
conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies in the world, a member of the so-called
Big Six. It was one of the so-called
Little Three among the eight
major film studios of
Hollywood's Golden Age.
The studio, founded in 1919 as Cohn-Brandt-Cohn Film Sales by brothers Jack and
Harry Cohn and Joe Brandt, released its first
feature film in August 1922. It adopted the Columbia Pictures name in 1924 and went public two years later. In its early years a minor player in Hollywood, Columbia began to grow in the late 1920s, spurred by a successful association with director
Frank Capra.
With Capra and others, Columbia became one of the primary homes of the
screwball comedy. In the 1930s, Columbia's major contract stars were
Jean Arthur and
Cary Grant (who was shared with
RKO Pictures). In the 1940s,
Rita Hayworth became the studio's premier star and propelled their fortunes into the late 1950s.
Rosalind Russell,
Glenn Ford, and
William Holden also became major stars at the studio.