LOS ANGELES — Tom Cruise's stewardship of United Artists restores a venerable but moribund film outfit to its roots as a Hollywood shingle run by superstars looking to control their own careers.

United Artists owner MGM announced yesterday that Cruise and producing partner Paula Wagner have been put in charge of the film company founded in 1919 by Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks.

It's poetic symmetry that United Artists, generally mothballed amid recent corporate changes at MGM after a short period as an art-house film banner, should come back in the hands of a Hollywood giant.

"The truth is that the name United Artists has been relatively meaningless for decades. It's just been a corporate name with no vestige of its original significance," said critic and film historian Leonard Maltin. "Tom Cruise is one of the most powerful stars in the world. He's making the same move that his forebears did 85 years ago."

The last United Artists movie Cruise appeared in, 1988's "Rain Man," won Oscars for best picture, co-star Dustin Hoffman and director Barry Levinson. Cruise was not nominated.

The "Rain Man" era was something of a last hurrah for United Artists, which had a stream of hits, classics and Oscar winners behind it, including "Some Like It Hot," "Rocky" and "Annie Hall."

The move comes after Cruise and Wagner's fallout with Paramount Studios, which severed its 14-year producing deal with the pair in August. Sumner Redstone — chairman of Paramount's parent company, Viacom Inc. — had blamed Cruise's odd antics over his romance with Katie Holmes and his Scientology preaching for undermining box-office returns on the actor's summer release, "Mission: Impossible III."

There was little doubt that a star of Cruise's caliber would find safe haven elsewhere. After all, even at 44, Cruise still has the boyish charm and rakish grin that helped make the star of "Top Gun," "Risky Business" and "War of the Worlds" the most durable audience draw of modern times.

The question was whether he still had the clout to maintain the same degree of control he enjoyed at Paramount, a deal that allowed him and Wagner to develop films there but left Cruise free to star in projects for other studios.

Wagner, who will be chief executive, and Cruise will have full control over United Artists' film slate, expected to be about four films a year, according to MGM. They will be part owners of United Artists, able to make anything from $100 million action flicks to lower-budget films, with Cruise free to pick and choose among films at rival studios.

Wagner said she views it as an "opportunity to take a brand that is classic and bring it into the present. It has such an illustrious past, we have a tradition to respect and uphold and at the same time help and nurture this brand to evolve into something for the future."