MOVIES : United, They Stood : The quirky UA studio showcased talent such as Chaplin and Gish, Peckinpah and the Fab Four. A tribute brings them all back.

It wasn’t only actors who, to echo Norma Desmond, had faces in Hollywood’s past. Studios had them too.

While nothing more than the corporate logo now distinguishes a film made by Paramount from one turned out by Universal, it was not always that way. MGM, for instance, could be counted on for polished star vehicles, and Warner Bros. for crime melodramas and social relevance. And then there was United Artists, which, depending on your point of view, either had no identity to speak of or, if you looked closer, the most intriguing persona of all.

In an instructive precursor to the stir that now surrounds the founding of DreamWorks, United Artists was born in 1919 out of the desire of some of Hollywood’s most powerful moviemakers to keep more creative control (and more money) in their own impatient hands.

The founders included director D.W. Griffith, actor-director Charles Chaplin and stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, with Western star William S. Hart backing out at the last minute. Despite the high profiles of those involved, not everyone at the studios was impressed, with Metro President Richard Rowland coming up with the era’s most famous kiss-off when he said, “So the lunatics have taken charge of the asylum.”

Lunatic-ridden or not, and even if its current incarnation as something of an afterthought in the MGM/UA entity is not quite the epitome of glamour, United Artists has survived for 75 years. To celebrate that milestone, the UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have combined to present an impressive 90-plus film tribute called “Released Through United Artists,” which begins Thursday.

“Released Through” is an especially apt title, because United Artists was the only major that did without a physical lot to call its own. Under a variety of ownerships and financial schemes, the studio still managed an output of films that was fascinating and diverse. And in some ways UA’s ability, especially in the ‘50s and ‘60s, to be a little more artistic and iconoclastic while still making money, prefigures what independents like Miramax and New Line/Fine Line are up to today.

Opening night at UCLA is an opportunity to see United Artists at its best, with new black-and-white prints of a pair of splendid 1950s films. “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957) stars Burt Lancaster as all-powerful Broadway gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis in the role of his career as the most desperate of press agents. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick from a Clifford Odets-Ernest Lehman script, with camera work by James Wong Howe, this is the ultimate New York show-biz film.

Playing with “Success” is “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), the only picture ever directed by actor Charles Laughton, who described its story of children in desperate jeopardy as “a nightmarish sort of Mother Goose tale.” Written by James Agee from the Davis Grubb novel and beautifully photographed in a tribute to silent-film cinematography by Stanley Cortez, “Hunter” brought Lillian Gish to the attention of another generation of filmgoers and gave Robert Mitchum an unforgettable role.

Overall, the UCLA/LACMA series is large and diverse enough to offer a variety of ways to explore the studio’s output. For instance, it offers a healthy selection of films that were big deals in their time, titles like “Around the World in 80 Days,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “Hair,” “Twelve Angry Men” and “Judgment at Nuremburg,” whose names will ring a familiar bell.

Though the studio did not have a special reputation for them, the UA series is especially heavy on Westerns. These range from William S. Hart’s silent “Tumbleweeds” to the LACMA double-bills of “High Noon” and “Red River,” and “The Magnificent Seven” and “Vera Cruz.” Those with a special thirst for spaghetti Westerns can have it slaked on Aug. 13, when UCLA presents an afternoon double-bill of “A Fistful of Dollars” and “For a Few Dollars More” and an evening showing of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”

Because it is rarely revived, one of the series’ most enjoyable Westerns is Anthony Mann’s 1958 “Man of the West.” Shot in classic wide-screen color, this brooding story, which in some ways prefigures “The Wild Bunch,” stars a somber Gary Cooper as a reformed outlaw who finds himself thrown together with his former partner and mentor, the menacing Doc Tobin, nicely played by Lee J. Cobb.

Films that are not as widely seen as they deserve to be are the joys of any series this expansive, and United Artists had a hand in a great many. Among those that shouldn’t be missed are:

* “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964). The youthful energy and unstoppable exuberance of the Beatles pours off the screen with as much electricity today as it did 30 years ago, and the music has lost none of its charm either. If ever a film was ripe for a major reissue, this is it.

* “Birdman of Alcatraz” (1962). Convicted killer Robert Stroud actually wasn’t allowed to keep his precious birds on the Rock, but no one will want to quibble with either Burt Lancaster’s epic performance or John Frankenheimer’s finely controlled direction.

* “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (1974) and “The Killer Elite” (1975). Two of director Sam Peckinpah’s most idiosyncratic and off-the-wall efforts, wildly plotted but compulsively watchable. Warren Oates and Gig Young star in the first, James Caan and Robert Duvall joining Young in the second.

* “The Black Stallion” (1979). Directed by Carroll Ballard, shot by Caleb Deschanel, co-written by “E.T.’s” Melissa Mathison from Walter Farley’s venerable novel and starring Kelly Reno and Mickey Rooney, this is the most satisfying family film of the past 25 years.

* “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955). Part film noir, part science-fiction thriller, totally insane, this adaptation of the Mickey Spillane novel has Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer dealing with the case of a lifetime. A much-admired job of direction from Robert Aldrich.

* “The Misfits” (1961). Written by Arthur Miller for his then-wife Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, this is that rare all-star ensemble that actually adds up to more than its celebrated parts. With Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach, directed by John Huston.

* “To Be or Not to Be.” Starring Jack Benny as the greatest Shakespearean actor in Poland and Carole Lombard (in her final film) as his glamorous actress wife, this Ernst Lubitsch-directed satire on Nazism was well ahead of its time in 1942 but easily puts the more recent Mel Brooks remake to shame.

If all these films are old hat to you, the UA series is not lacking in the kind of true oddities die-hard fans live for. Here is a rare chance, for instance, to see “White Zombie,” a 1932 dance with the undead that stars Bela Lugosi as the infamous Murder Legendre, who commits “sins even the devil may be ashamed of.”

Even stranger is 1933’s “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum,” starring Al Jolson as the hobo mayor of Central Park. Famous for its occasional use of rhyming dialogue, this is a boggling Rodgers & Hart musical celebration of homelessness with lyrics like “you own the world when you don’t own a thing, what do you want with money?” The kind of politically incorrect fantasy that would be inconceivable today, it features cameos by such silent-film stars as Harry Langdon and Chester Conklin.

Both LACMA and UCLA have planned powerful endings for the series on Sept. 2. Tipping its hat to UA’s forthcoming Agent 007 feature, LACMA is hosting a James Bond marathon, including “Dr. No,” “Goldfinger,” “Thunderball” and “Moonraker.”

Over at UCLA, the series will end with a screening of Michael Cimino’s director’s cut of “Heaven’s Gate,” a film whose skyrocketing cost was a scandal in 1980 and nearly killed the studio, though at $40 million it couldn’t pay today’s combined salaries of Jim Carrey and Sylvester Stallone. That may be progress of a sort, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it.