Actor Tom Cruise AP PHOTO

United Artists owner MGM announced Nov. 2 the move to put Cruise and Paula Wagner in control of the film company founded in 1919 by Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks.

It is poetic symmetry that United Artists, generally mothballed amid recent corporate changes at MGM after a short period as an art-house film banner, should come back in the hands of a Hollywood giant.

"The name United Artists has been relatively meaningless for decades. It's just been a corporate name with no vestige of its original significance," said critic and film historian Leonard Maltin. "Tom Cruise is one of the most powerful stars in the world. He's making the same move that his forebears did 85 years ago."

The Japan Times Weekly: Nov. 11, 2006
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