Paramount at 100: 116 Stars for a Landmark Photoshoot

2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the storied Paramount Pictures, the only studio to still call Hollywood (the L.A. neighborhood, not the state of mind) its home. Founded in 1912 as the Famous Players Film Company, it more than lived up to its billing, claiming silent greats such as Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, and Rudolph Valentino, not to mention Cecil B. DeMille, who made all his biblical epics for the studio. With the advent of talkies, and showing a special flair for sophisticated comedy, Paramount added another glittering array of stars to its roster, including Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and the Marx Brothers.

To mark the centennial, the studio assembled 116 of its greatest stars — from legends of the golden age to the faces of its present-day blockbusters — for a landmark group portrait on the Paramount lot, shot by photographer Art Streiber. The image arranged a century of Hollywood history into a single frame: the stars of Forrest Gump, Indiana Jones, Love Story, and Titanic standing shoulder to shoulder with the heirs of Lubitsch and Wilder.

A hundred years is a long run in an industry built on reinvention. The photo said, without a word of copy, that Paramount intended to keep going.

Source: PetaPixel (June 2012); behind-the-scenes account at Fstoppers.