Gladden Entertainment Corporation

Background
Gladden Entertainment was a film company founded by late Hollywood executive David Begelman, which supplanted Sherwood Productions, the company of which he was head of production. Begelman named the company after his wife Gladys. Gladden was overshadowed by Begelman's fraudulent schemes and unpaid taxes that would haunt him until he committed suicide in 1995. In February 1994, the founder left Gladden Entertainment, which would go bankrupt that April, and focused on a company he founded months earlier called Gladden Productions, but no movies ever came out of that new company. All films would eventually fall under control of Epic Productions, which would incorporate the Sherwood films into its Zeta library and the Gladden films into its Alpha library. Today, the company's films along with the pre-1996 PolyGram Filmed Entertainment library are owned by MGM through its Orion subsidiary.

(June 13, 1986-May 17, 1991)
Nickname: "The Ribbon G"

Logo: On a granite gray background, the shining string of a blue ribbon (with the shadow) flips in. The right side twists. The camera follows the circle as the ribbon's texture dissolves, before zooming out to reveal the "g". The shadow moves as the shining texture fades to solid and the words "GLADDEN ENTERTAINMENT CORPORATION" fades in. Two shining wipes from the top and bottom invert the "g" into a box as the "TM" fades in next to the bottom-right of the near-bottom of the box.

Variants:
 * On The Sicilian, as part of the opening credits in a white-on-black scheme, the "g" is already revealed. The text, which is shown underneath the "g", fades in fast. As the box forms, the wipe from the bottom reveals the gray area for the "g"'s tail, which wipes away by the top wipe as the "TM" fades next to the bottom-right of the box. The logo fades out to reveal "PRESENTS" in the center, in a exact the same length of the box.


 * On later titles (post-Sicilian), the normal logo is shortened with the same points of that film.

FX/SFX: Early CG.

Music/Sounds: None. Sometimes, the opening theme plays.

Availability: The original version can be seen on Mannequin, Wisdom and The Manhattan Project. The short version can be seen on Mannequin 2: On the Move, Gleaming the Cube, Millennium, Short Time, Weekend at Bernie's and The Fabulous Baker Boys. Current prints of many of their productions such as Mannequin and The Manhattan Project (on MGM DVD releases mainly) have it plastered, or remain intact but with the Fox logo replaced with the MGM lion. The Fox/Gladden combo can still be seen on both the Live Entertainment and MGM DVDs of The Fabulous Baker Boys, the Artisan DVDs of Weekend at Bernie's and Millennium, VHS releases and the German Koch DVD of Wisdom, and an HBO airing of Gleaming the Cube.

Editor's Note: None.