J. Arthur Rank

Joseph Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank (December 23 1888 – March 29 1972) was a British industrialist and film producer, and founder of the Rank Organisation, now known as The Rank Group Plc.

Commercial challenge

The problems encountered in the distribution of Turn of the Tide were addressed when J. Arthur Rank discovered that the people who controlled the British film industry had ties to the American movie industry and that for all practical purposes he was shut out of his own domestic market. American films occupied 80% of British screen time during the era before World War II.

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In 1936 Rank arrived at a solution to his distribution problems. Because the middlemen controlled the distribution pipeline from production to exhibition, he decided to buy a large part of both the distribution and exhibition systems. He began by forming a partnership with film maker C.M. Woolf (father of John Woolf), for the purpose of creating the General Cinema Finance Corporation (GCFC). They then used that company to buy out General Film Distributors who were the UK distributors for Universal Pictures).

Related Topics:
1936 - John Woolf - UK - Universal Pictures

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