Columbia 4k

The Columbia Pictures logo, featuring a woman carrying a torch and wearing a drape (representing Columbia, a personification of the United States), has gone through five major revisions.

In 1924, Columbia Pictures used a logo featuring a female Roman soldier holding a shield in her left hand and a stick of wheat in her right hand. The logo changed in 1928 with the figure wearing a draped flag and torch. The woman wore the stola and carried the palla of ancient Rome, and above her were the words "A Columbia Production" ("A Columbia Picture" or "Columbia Pictures Corporation") written in an arch. The illustration was based upon the actress Evelyn Venable, known for providing the voice of The Blue Fairy in Walt Disney's Pinocchio.

In 1936, the logo was changed: the woman now stood on a pedestal, wore no headdress, and the text "Columbia" appeared in chiseled letters behind her (Pittsburgh native Jane Chester Bartholomew, whom Harry Cohn discovered, portrayed the woman in the logo). There were several variations to the logo over the years—significantly, a color version was done in 1943 forThe Desperadoes.[74] Two years earlier, the flag became just a drape with no markings. The latter change came after a federal law was passed making it illegal to wear an American flag as clothing. 1976's Taxi Driver was one of the last films to use the woman in her classic appearance.

From 1976 to 1993, Columbia Pictures used two logos. The first, from 1976 to 1981 (1976 to 1982 for international territories) used just a sunburst representing the beams from the torch. The woman returned in 1981, but in a much smoother form than her 1936-76 appearance. The score accompanying the first logo was composed by Suzanne Ciani. The studio hired visual effects pioneer Robert Abel to animate the first logo.

The current logo was created in 1992, when the logo was repainted digitally by New Orleans artist Michael Deas, who was commissioned by Sony to return the woman to her "classic" look. Michael Deas hired Jenny Joseph, a graphics artist for The Times-Picayune, as a model for the logo. Due to time constraints, she agreed to help out on her lunch break. The animation was created by Synthespian Studios in 1993 by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, who used 2D elements from the painting and converted it to 3D. In 2012, Jenny Joseph gave an interview to WWL-TV: “So we just scooted over there come lunchtime and they wrapped a sheet around me and I held a regular little desk lamp, a side lamp,” she said, “and I just held that up and we did that with a light bulb." Deas went on to say, "I never thought it would make it to the silver screen and I never thought it would still be up 20 years later, and I certainly never thought it would be in a museum, so it’s kind of gratifying.”