Embassy Pictures

Embassy was responsible for films such as The Graduate, The Producers, The Fog, The Howling, Escape from New York, and This Is Spinal Tap, Swamp Thing, and television series such as The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time and The Facts of Life.

[2] They then made a $100,000 deal to bring the French-Italian film Attila (1954) to the United States in 1958 and spent $600,000 promoting it, which returned $2 million in rentals.

[2] Their breakthrough came the following year with Hercules, starring Steve Reeves and released by Warner Bros. Levine invested $120,000 on dubbing, sound effects and new titles and spent $1.25 million on promoting the film.

The film, based on a novella written by Alberto Moravia, had been directed by Vittorio de Sica, and starred Sophia Loren (Ponti's wife) and Eleanora Brown, who acted out the respective roles of a mother and her young daughter whom World War II had displaced from their home.

Levine's promotional campaign focused on one still photograph, which showed Loren, as the mother, wearing a torn dress, kneeling in the dirt, and weeping with rage and grief.

[3] Under the deal, Levine produced Harold Robbins's The Carpetbaggers (1964) and its prequel Nevada Smith (1966), which were successes, along with flops such as Harlow (1965), starring Carroll Baker.

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.

[4] In January 1982, television producer Norman Lear and his partner Jerry Perenchio bought the studio for $25 million,[10] reverted the name to the previous Embassy Pictures by dropping off "Avco", and renamed T.A.T.

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, 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).

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.

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.

Avco Embassy Pictures logo, used from 1968 to 1982
Embassy Television logo, used from 1982 to 1984