Columbus Day has become a day of eroding celebration and increasing introspection on the topic of colonialism in recent decades. That feels like a particularly relevant subject as war consumes the Levant yet again, for reasons too complex and too dangerous to unpack here and now. Symbolic representations of nations and people like the one I'm writing about today can be far from harmless. Only with an effort of will am I reigning myself in today to keep it, not light (I'm never that), but germane to our usual themes.
I want to talk about the Goddess Columbia as a brand, for it has been the name of some of our best known entertainment companies, some of them over a century old. Because there are more than one that share the same name, I want to sort them out for the reader, as the man says, "for what it's worth". But first some backrground.
"Columbia" as a deity representing the people and land of America dates back well over two centuries. Using it as a place name has a very similar (essentially a twin) analog in the name America itself. Just as that name is adapted from explorer Amerigo Vespucci, Columbia is obviously derived from Columbus. One early playful employ of the coinage in this way occurs in Jonathan Swift's 1726 Gulliver's Travels. The celebrated African-American poet Phyllis Wheatley used the term more that once in verses in the 1770s and 1780s, ranking it alongside more established national personifications as Britannia, Hibernia, Scotia, and Germania.
American independence intensified resort to the idea. In 1784 the former King's College in New York City became Columbia College (now Columbia University). For the life of me, I'll never understand why the names of things like Kings and Queens counties, and William and Mary College, and the states of Maryland and Virginia and the Carolinas weren't renamed as well. Down with monarchy! But at any rate in rapid order, we also got Columbia, South Carolina (1786); the exploratory vessel Columbia (1787) which in turn gave its name to the Columbia River and British Columbia; the national capital in the District of Columbia (1791). The name Colombia for a South American nation dates to 1819.
The song "Hail, Columbia" (1789) was formerly the President's theme music until it was replaced by "Hail to the Chief" at which point it became the Vice President's Theme. "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" was composed around 1843.
A new phase begins in the later 19th century, and this is where it begins to feed into the entertainment business. Of particularly note is the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, at which time a statue of Columbia was placed atop Memorial Hall; and the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the entire fair designed to commemorate Columbus's first voyage. In between these two events came the dedication of The Statue of Liberty, a Goddess not unrelated to Columbia. Graphic depictions of the new Goddess began to proliferate with the newspaper and magazine revolution of the late 19th and early 20th century. She showed up in paintings and cartoons and recruitment posters.
Now come the brands:
The Columbia Phonograph Company (previously the American Graphophone Company) was founded in 1889, and named after its Washington, D.C. location. It has been known by many names over the decades, such as Columbia Records and CBS Records. It's the oldest continuously operating record company in existence. They acquired blues label Okeh in 1926. Early artists on their label included Bessie Smith, Paul Whiteman, Ted Lewis, Moran and Mack, and Louis Armstrong. Tony Bennett was a Columbia recording artist so I was in and out of their impressive Sixth Avenue building on one errand or another back when I worked for him. Other major artists associated with the label include Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, and producers and execs like John Hammond and Mitch Miller. Since 1988 it has been owned by Sony.
The Columbia Record Club and Columbia House Records and Tapes (remember those? I was one of their suckers!) were also divisions of Columbia Records.
In 1902 came the Columbia Amusement Company also known as the Columbia Burlesque Wheel, originally headed by Sam Scribner. This was a national burlesque circuit (when burlesque was very different) with theatres in most major American cities East of the Mississippi. Those who played the Columbia wheel included Bert Lahr, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, W.C. Fields, Mollie Williams, and Sliding Billy Watson. It was known for "clean burlesque", holding out against racy innovations like bare-legged chorus girls for as long as it could. Eventually competition from other circuits, touring Broadway revues, and independent operators, combined with hostile authorities and the Great Depression took their toll. The last iteration of the circuit closed in 1931.
Next year, Columbia Pictures will turn 100 years old as a brand! As we wrote in our earlier post, the Cohn Brothers rebranded in 1924. I'd often wondered what relation the studio had to the other entertainment companies and the answer turns out to be none per se. I will say that, aside from Universal I think Columbia it has the best brand, idea-wise, of any of the classic studios. (MGM and RKO are just initials; Warner and Fox are just the founders names). It's the only one that privileges the image of the Goddess. I imagine anyone else who tries to will encounter a phalanx of bellicose lawyers. Much more on the founding of the studio here.
It turns out that CBS (the Columbia Broadcasting System) does have a historical corporate relationship with the record company. As we wrote here, CBS had begun as United Independent Broadcasters in 1927. A few months later the Columbia Phonograph Company bought a controlling interest and rebranded it. Not long after that they sold it to the Levy Brothers who made their brother-in-law William S. Paley the President. He rapidly made the CBS radio network into an American institution, with television following a few years after that. The iconic eye logo dates to 1951, a clear necessity in order to differentiate their visual programming from that of Columbia Pictures. In 1938, CBS bought Columbia Records (hence CBS Records), an interesting case of a child eating its own parent.
A slightly different brand but one that's food for confusion, so I thought it would be useful to clarify. Columbia Pictures is unaffiliated with Columbia Records but it did have a record label. Colgems is well known to Monkees fans! Founded in 1966 its the label that released their records. It was a joint venture of Columbia's TV branch Screen Gems, and RCA Records (whose own history was affiliated with NBC and the then-defunct RKO). Other than the Monkees, Colgems also released movie sound tracks, some comedy records, and a few now forgotten sixties bands. It eventually became Arista, which Columbia Pictures sold in 1979.
There were other companies that evoked the name in their brands. The Columbia Brewing Company of St Louis was founded in the quatercentennial year of 1892 -- that's where we got the image at the top of this post. You may also know Columbia Sportwear; my son buys me their gear all the time. They were founded in Oregon in 1938 and are obviously named after the river.
Various local tribes have different names for that river, of course, such as Wimahl, Nch'i-Wàna, and swah'netk'qhu. A little reminder that today is also Indigenous People's Day.
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