Paramount Pictures is a motion picture studio which began in 1914 as a film distributor but by 1916 merged with silent film companies Famous Players and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company. The logo from 1914 onward consisted of a mountain and the studio name. By the 1920s, Paramount was distributing the animated shorts of Max Fleischer, and their contract stars in the sound era included Maurice Chevalier, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (including the Road to... movies), W. C. Fields, The Marx Brothers, Mae West, and later Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Later in the 1940s, Paramount ousted the Fleischer Brothers and released cartoon shorts under its own Famous Studios label, introducing Casper the Friendly Ghost and others who would subsequently star in Harvey Comics.
By the 1970s and 80s, Paramount produced hits such as Grease, The Godfather, the Star Trek films, Airplane!, Flashdance, Friday the 13th and its sequels, and Pretty in Pink. Following complex mergers involving Viacom, Paramount became the theatrical distributor of Nickelodeon animated features starring SpongeBob SquarePants and Rugrats.
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- A spoof of Paramount, Tantamount Pictures, appears in The Muppets Go to the Movies before the Western Small in the Saddle. A fly lands on the logo and is swatted.