United Artists
Abrams and his new partner, Ben Schulberg, convinced Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith to break with their studios and form an independent distributing company; the result was United Artists, set up on 5 February 1919. Abrams was appointed its managing director.
During the company's early years, there were serious problems. The United Artists could not produce a continuous flow of films for theaters and suffered serious distribution problems caused by competing firms. Schulberg walked away within two months. Roughly a year later, he sued Abrams, alleging Abrams had breached their partnership agreement. These distribution problems were not solved until Joseph Schenck, Abrams' successor, took over.
During Abrams’ tenure, however, United Artists did release Griffith’s Way Down East (1921) and Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925). Both were enormously successful becoming two of the top ten grossing films of the 1920s (1920s in film).
Abram's involvement in United Artists, and his life, ended in Manhattan on 15 November 1926, from a sudden cardiac incident, aged 48.
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