Metro Pictures
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Metro Pictures Corporation was an American motion picture production company founded in late 1915 by Richard A. Rowland (1880-1947), not to be confused with the later Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (although Louis B. Mayer (1884-1957) worked for Metro Pictures Corporation).
Metro Pictures started out distributing films made by Solax Studios. Mayer left to form his own company in 1918. Richard Rowland would continue to produce a number of films in New York City, Fort Lee, New Jersey, and in Los Angeles. Metro's biggest stars during the World War I period were Francis X. Bushman and Beverly Bayne and Harold Lockwood and May Allison.
In 1920, the company was purchased by Marcus Loew as a supplier of product for his theater chain. A few years later in 1924, Loew merged it with his recently acquired Goldwyn Pictures, then renamed the new entity Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925.
Although the Metro film library and stars were merged into MGM in 1924, Rowland's Los Angeles film studio continued a life of its own. It was known simply as Motion Picture Studios through the 1940s, General Service Studios, and Desilu Studios through the 1950s and 1960s. It became Ren-Mar Studios in 1974. In January 2010, Ren-Mar Studios was bought by Red Digital Cinema Camera Company. The complex was renamed "Red Studios – Hollywood" It is located on Cahuenga Blvd. north of Melrose Avenue in Hollywood (directly behind the Musicians AFM Local 47 on Vine Street).
David E. Kelley filmed several of his TV series there, including Picket Fences, Ally McBeal, and The Practice.
