King Brothers Productions

Career

Joseph Kozinsky (born 1884 in Dnipro - died 1950) was a New York fruit merchant who, with his wife Sarah (known affectionately as 'Mama King'), produced five children, brothers Morris, Frank, and Hyman, and sisters Rose and Nettie. The family moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s. Morris and Frank did various odd jobs including selling newspapers and shining shoes before getting into slot machines. They borrowed $250 and built an empire up to 19,000 machines. They also branched into race horses.

In 1940, the brothers, along with their sister Nettie Segal, were charged with tax evasion, with the intention of exposing how kickbacks from pinball machine operators had been paid to Kent Kane Parrot and previous Los Angeles city officials.

Entering the film industry

The same year, Morris Kozinsky looked at getting into slot machine movies. They built a slot machine projector called the Hollywood TalkiTone and formed a partnership with film producer Cecil B. De Mille who was to make 16mm films for the machines through a new company, fronted by De Mille, Hollywood Quality Pictures Incorporated - although De Mille's exclusive contract with Paramount Pictures prevented him from taking an active part as a producer for the company. Morris later recalled:

De Mille, he has an inferior complex. It takes two weeks to get into see him. Well, we didn't like that. We're just plain businessmen. We finally told him we had to get some pictures. He said he was going to get Sally Rand to make some. Then he said he had a deal with some trapeze artists. Well, you know yourself, you're out with a gal relaxing in a bar, you don't want to see no bubble dancer or acrobat. You want to hear some good music. You want something with class. You want to see Bing Crosby maybe. That was the trouble. De Mille might make big epics but for us he didn't have no class.