From founding to success The company was founded in 1942 by
Joseph E. Levine, initially to distribute foreign films in the United States. The company entered film production in 1945, co-producing with Maxwell Finn the documentary
Gaslight Follies, a compilation of silent film clips narrated by
Ben Grauer. In 1969, Embassy appointed Mike Nichols to the board of directors and acquired his film production company, Friwaftt. Levine also ended a four-year feud with Ponti and Loren and produced Loren's first film since she became a mother,
Sunflower (1970). The company became less successful in the 1970s and only had hits with Mike Nichols'
Carnal Knowledge (1971) and
A Touch of Class (1973). In 1972, the company had begun cutting back on production and in 1973 recorded a loss of $8.1 million. Levine resigned as president in 1974 to re-enter independent production and was replaced by Bill Chaikin. By 1975, Avco Embassy stopped making movies altogether. In 1968, Avco Embassy launched Avco Embassy Television, to syndicate films from the Avco Embassy library on television. In 1976, Avco Embassy sold their broadcasting division and Avco Program Sales to
Multimedia, Inc., becoming
Multimedia Entertainment (since folded into what is now
NBCUniversal Syndication Studios).
Robert Rehme years In late 1977, Avco Embassy announced its intention to resume production. In 1978,
Robert Rehme was appointed president and chief operating officer and he convinced the company to give him $5 million for a production fund. Under his stewardship, Avco Embassy concentrated on lower budgeted genre films, six of which were successful:
The Manitou (1978),
Phantasm (1979),
The Fog (1980),
Scanners (1981),
Time Bandits (1981) and
The Howling (1981). They benefited in part from the fact that
American International Pictures recently left the exploitation field, lessening competition in this area. Rehme left the company in 1981, having seen it increase its revenue from $20 million to $90 million. In 1981,
Tom Laughlin offered to buy the company for $24 million but withdrew his offer. reverted the name to the previous Embassy Pictures by dropping off "Avco", and renamed T.A.T. Communications Company as Embassy Communications, Inc. and
T.A.T. Communications Productions as Embassy Television and its distributor as Embassy Telecommunications. The company was producing such hits as
The Jeffersons,
One Day at a Time and
The Facts of Life, and by Tandem, ''
Diff'rent Strokes and Archie Bunker's Place. During this period, they launched Silver Spoons, Square Pegs, Who's the Boss?, It's Your Move and Gloria. They also expanded into making made-for-TV movies, including Eleanor, First Lady of the World (1982) and Grace Kelly'' (1983). In late 1982, Embassy bought out Andre Blay Corporation and renamed the company as Embassy Home Entertainment; prior releases from its film catalog (as Avco Embassy Picture Corporation) had been handled through
Magnetic Video, as well as reissues of the Blay Video catalog. In 1984, Embassy Pictures was renamed as Embassy Films Associates. That same year,
Fanny and Alexander, which it distributed in the United States, received the
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. During this period,
Rob Reiner, who up to that point had been most famous for playing Michael "Meathead" Stivic on
All in the Family, began his directorial career with two Embassy releases,
This is Spinal Tap (1984) and
The Sure Thing (1985). His third film,
Stand By Me (1986), started at Embassy, but it almost got cancelled because of the sale to Columbia days before filming was to begin. Norman Lear ended up putting up his own money for completion funds.
Coca-Cola period and closure Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy Communications (including Tandem Productions) to
The Coca-Cola Company for $485 million on June 18, 1985. Coca-Cola, which also owned
Columbia Pictures at the time, sold Embassy Pictures to
Dino De Laurentiis on November 1, 1985, but kept Embassy's television division active. De Laurentiis folded the company into his
De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, and the home video division became
Nelson Entertainment, run by executives who had previously worked at DEG before it went bankrupt. Although De Laurentiis was now owner of Embassy, he was not given rights to then-upcoming films such as
Crimewave and
Saving Grace (both 1986), and an adaptation of
Stephen King's
The Body, which became
Stand by Me (1986), which became properties of Lear and Perenchio. By the early 1990s, key rights to the Embassy library transferred from company to company due to the bankruptcies of the companies that separately owned them (De Laurentiis for theatrical, Nelson for home video). Dino De Laurentiis's assets went to Parafrance International, in conjunction with
Village Roadshow, while Nelson's assets were acquired by
Crédit Lyonnais Bank and later sold to
PolyGram. Nelson's parent company, NHI continued to exist well into the mid-1990s. In 1994, Parafrance's assets were acquired by the French production company
StudioCanal which today owns ancillary rights to the majority of the Embassy theatrical library. However, North American video rights to the majority of Embassy's film library are owned by
Amazon MGM Studios via its
Orion Pictures subsidiary due to them acquiring most of
PolyGram's pre-March 31, 1996 film library which included the
Epic catalog, which in turn incorporated the
Nelson catalog, while
Sony Pictures Television owns worldwide television syndication rights to the theatrical library as well as full ancillary and distribution rights to the Embassy Television library. ==Film library==