Bryna Productions

Bryna Productions (later renamed The Bryna Company) is an American independent film and television production company established by actor Kirk Douglas in 1949. The company also produced a handful of films through its subsidiaries, Michael Productions, Joel Productions and Douglas and Lewis Productions, and outside the United States through Brynaprod. Other subsidiaries included Eric Productions, which produced stage plays, Peter Vincent Music, a music publishing company, Bryna International, a photographic service company, and Public Relations Consultants, which supervised the publicity of its early films. Douglas named the main company after his mother, Bryna Demsky Danielovitch (Bryna is pronounced Brina with a long i); its primary subsidiaries were named after his sons: Michael Douglas, Joel Douglas, Peter Douglas and Eric Douglas. In 1970, Bryna Productions was renamed The Bryna Company, when Douglas welcomed his children and second wife into the firm. Nevertheless, Michael, Joel and Peter, wanting to establish individual identities, went on to form their own independent film production companies.

The company had some major film successes, including Paths of Glory, The Vikings, Spartacus, Seven Days in May, Seconds, Grand Prix, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Final Countdown, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Four of the films Bryna Productions made have been deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States National Film Preservation Board and have been selected for preservation in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry: Paths of Glory in 1992, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1993, Seconds in 2015 and Spartacus in 2017. The company was also recognized by the American Cinematheque in 1989, when it held a three-day festival with the screening of eight Bryna Productions films.

Twenty-one of Bryna Productions' films have won and been nominated for awards and prizes at various ceremonies and film festivals, including the Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Awards, the British Academy Film Awards, the Grammy Awards, the Saturn Awards, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Genie Awards, the Bodil Awards, the Directors Guild of America Award, the Writers Guild of America Awards, the Laurel Awards, the David di Donatello Awards, the Bambi Award, the Belgian Film Critics Association Award, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the National Society of Film Critics Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, the Turkish Film Critics Association Awards, the National Board of Review Awards, the People's Choice Awards, the Kinema Junpo Awards, the Sant Jordi Awards, the César Awards, the Nastro d'Argento Award, the Jussi Awards, the Huabiao Awards, the Golden Screen Award, the CableACE Awards, the Golden Reel Awards, the International Film Music Critics Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, the Boxoffice Blue Ribbon Award, the American Cinema Editors Award, the Fotogramas de Plata Award, the Hugo Awards; and at the Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival and the Chicago International Film Festival.

Bryna Productions often co-produced films with other notable independent film production companies, including Burt Lancaster, Harold Hecht and James Hill's Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Films, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh's Curtleigh Productions, Rock Hudson's Gibraltar Productions, James Garner's Cherokee Productions, Stanley Kubrick and James B. Harris' Harris-Kubrick Pictures, Saul Zaentz's Fantasy Films, John Frankenheimner's John Frankenheimer Productions, Richard Quine's Quine Productions, Hal B. Wallis' Wallis-Hazen Productions, Martin Ritt's Martin Ritt Productions, Ray Stark's Seven Arts Productions, Harold Jack Bloom's Thoroughbred Productions, Harold Greenberg's Astral Film Productions, Roland W. Betts' Silver Screen Partners II and Walt Disney's Walt Disney Productions and Touchstone Pictures. It also had financing and distribution deals with major Hollywood studios like United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Universal-International Pictures, Rank Film Distributors, National General Pictures and Buena Vista, for motion pictures, as well as United Artists Television, NBC, CBS and HBO, for television.

Kirk Douglas formed an independent film production company at the suggestion of his friend and I Walk Alone co-star, Burt Lancaster, who was already having success with his own film production company, Norma Productions. Lancaster and his agent, Harold Hecht, formed Norma Productions in 1947, at a time when many actors, directors and producers were forming their independent units, which quickly became the largest and most successful independent film production unit in Hollywood during the 1950s. Douglas registered his new company, Bryna Productions, Incorporated, on September 28, 1949, and immediately began optioning properties and securing writers and directors, though it would take more than five years for a project to make it before the cameras. Douglas' mother, Bryna Demsky, after whom the company was named, was a stockholder in the firm.

The first property acquired by Bryna Productions was Ben Hecht's short story The Shadow, about a magician who seeks vengeance against his twin brother for the alienation of his blind wife. Douglas made a deal with lawyer-turned-agent-turned-producer Charles K. Feldman (who, ironically, had tried to sue Lancaster and Norma Productions in 1948) to head Bryna Productions and produce The Shadow at Republic Pictures. Feldman hired screenwriter Charles O'Neal to write the screenplay (O'Neal retitled the film Mr. Shadow), which was to star Douglas in dual roles of the twin brothers. In the role of the estranged wife, Douglas first wanted to cast Jane Greer, then Jane Wyman. By early 1952, Bryna Productions was attempting to film The Shadow in England.

In June 1950, Bryna Productions optioned Irwin Gielgud's story The Life of David Garrick, a story about the life and career of English actor David Garrick. The property was to be filmed under the title Garrick's Gayeties, for which Douglas hoped to co-star with Judy Garland in the role of Peg Woffington. In September 1950, Bryna Productions procured Ivan Thors' screenplay Nowhere to Go, a story about a displaced person fighting for a new home in the United States. Bryna Productions also owned the filming rights to Darwin Teihet's novel The Fear Makers, which Douglas hoped to direct himself.

In March 1952, Douglas revealed plans for Bryna Productions to make three films a year, with him to star in only one of the three yearly films. Producer William Schorr, who had previously been attached to Billy Wilder and produced the Douglas-starring film Ace in the Hole, became an executive partner at Bryna Productions. Schorr was to oversee the production of films, as associate producer, while Douglas would star in the pictures; Schorr would remain instrumental to Bryna Productions for the next four years. That year, Bryna Productions became tied to Strange Harvest, a yarn about a World War II G.I. who returns to visit Italy with his new American wife, only to discover that he has a young son from a war-time fling with an Italian woman. Strange Harvest was written by Sy Bartlett and Harold Conrad; Bartlett co-wrote the screenplay with Schorr, and the film was to be directed by David Miller on location in Italy.