Job Businessman, investor, government official
Top GenresDrama, Silent Films
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Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Overview:

Producer, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was born Joseph Patrick Kennedy on Sep 6, 1888 in Boston, MA. Kennedy Sr. died at the age of 81 on Nov 18, 1969 in Hyannis Port, MA .

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Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Facts
US ambassador to the Court of St. James.
In 1925 he was retained by the financially troubled owner of Film Booking Office of America (FBO), a "Poverty Row" studio specializing in cheaply made westerns, to help find a new owner. Kennedy formed his own group of investors and bought FBO for $1.5 million. Subsequently, he moved to California in March 1926 to focus on running the studio. At the time movie studios were permitted to also own exhibition companies (a practice that was stopped by a 1947 Supreme Court decision involving Paramount Pictures), so Kennedy launched a hostile buyout of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Theaters Corporation (KAO), which had more than 700 vaudeville and movie theaters across the U.S. In 1927 he acquired another production studio and film exhibitor, American Pathé, and its Pathé Exchange distribution subsidiary. In October 1928 he formally merged his film companies FBO and KAO with RCA's Photophone Division to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO). He topped this off by acquiring the Pantages Theater chain for $3.5 million, creating a major studio in the process with RKO Pictures.
RKO Pictures, under Kennedy's management, made an $8-million offer (approximately $85 million in 2005 dollars) to Alexander Pantages for his chain of theaters in order to boost RKO's exhibition operations. The Pantages Theater chain consisted of 63 premier, financially robust theaters that were the dominant movie exhibitor and vaudeville circuit in North America west of the Mississippi River. Having partnered with the movie distributor Famous Players (a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures) in 1920, Pantages had converted his theaters into "combo" houses that showed films as well as staged live vaudeville. However, Pantages' expansion effectively was blocked by the dominance of Kennedy's Keith-Albee-Orpheum Circuit in the East, which was now part of RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum). After Pantages declined the $8-million offer, Kennedy stopped distributing RKO films to Pantages. Despite the pressure, Pantages declined to knuckle under and sell out. A year later, in 1929, he was charged and tried for the rape of one of his 17-year-old ushers, Eunice Pringle. He was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. The trial battered his reputation and strained him emotionally, and he finally relented, accepting Kennedy's revised offer of $3.5 million for his chain. R
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