1922 film
A Trip to Paramountown is a 1922 American short silent documentary film produced by Famous Players–Lasky and released through Paramount Pictures, to celebrate 10 years of Paramount's founding. The film runs about 20 minutes and features many personalities then under contract to Famous Players–Lasky and Paramount.
Overview
A Trip to Paramountown is a promotional vehicle intended to show film industry employees in their normal, everyday work settings. It was released in the wake of several scandals associated with the film industry, such as the manslaughter trial involving silent screen comedian Roscoe Arbuckle, the death of actress Olive Thomas, who actually had died in New York, the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, and the drug-induced decline of Wallace Reid, who had been given morphine by a studio doctor after an on-set train wreck in 1919, which resulted in Reid's drug addiction and eventual death in January 1923.
This film influenced later studio-related scripted film fare such as Paramount's own Hollywood (1923), Goldwyn's Souls for Sale (1923), and MGM's Show People (1928).
Paramount later released A Trip Through the Paramount Studio (1927) in response to MGM's MGM Studio Tour (1925).[1]
A Trip to Paramountown was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.[2]
Availability
A Trip to Paramountown was released on Flicker Alley's 2007 DVD of several rare Rudolph Valentino films.[4]
