"British National Films Company In 1934 the British National Films Company was formed in England by J. Arthur Rank, Lady Annie Henrietta Yule of Bricket Wood and producer John Corfield. Joseph Arthur Rank was a devout member of the British Methodist Church and the son of a millionaire flour miller. On the first day of the week, he was a Sunday school teacher, and he discovered that if he screened religious films instead of lecturing his class, he got a positive response. His idea spread to other classes held by other churches, and in 1933 this motivated Rank to form"
"as J. Arthur Rank's Rank Organisation. John Maxwell (producer) John Maxwell (1879–1940) was a British film producer. Maxwell was the co-owner of British International Pictures, which emerged as the largest British studio following the Film Act of 1927. Maxwell was a Scottish lawyer who first came into contact with the film industry in 1912. In 1927 he took over the newly-constructed British National Studios in Elstree after its founders ran into financial problems. Maxwell built a vertically integrated company incorporating film production, film distribution, initially through Wardour Films, and a large network of cinemas (ABC Cinemas) that enabled the company"
"filmed performances by the Royal Ballet. During the 1950s the British photographer Cornel Lucas set up the Pool Studio at Pinewood where he photographed many of the movie stars of this era of cinema, such as Marlene Dietrich and David Niven. In 1960 John Davis announced that Rank would concentrate on bigger budgeted, internationally focused productions. In 1961 they announced a production slate of a dozen films worth £7 million. From 1959 to 1969: the company made over 500 weekly short cinema films in a series entitled ""Look At Life"", each film depicting an area of British life. From 1971"
"Pictures<br> TC = Two Cities Films The Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities. It also diversified into the manufacture of radios, TVs and photocopiers (as one of the owners of Rank Xerox). The company name lasted until February 1996, when the name and some of the remaining assets were absorbed into the newly structured The Rank Group Plc. The company logo, the Gongman, first used in"
"and acting and singing sympathetically. In reporting on Mr. Battles 1948 departure from the U.S. for European stages, Louis Calta of ""The New York Times"" noted that while in Europe Battles would do a film for the Rank Organization. Rank, founded in 1937 by English industrialist J. Arthur Rank, was by 1948 a major player in British cinema, owning five film production studios and hundreds of cinema houses, and employing directing talents such as Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, and David Lean. Several of Rank's films from the 1940s, including ""The Red Shoes"", ""A Matter of Life and Death"", ""Black Narcissus"","
"Rank (film) Rank is a 2002 fourteen-minute short film directed by David Yates. It was nominated for the British Academy Film Award for Best Short Film at the BAFTAs. Producer Andrew O'Connell said ""We first went to the London Production Fund who gave us the full grant of £15,000. Then we approached Scottish Screen but as we were not a Scots production company they could only give us £5,000. We got Scottish co-producers, re-applied and got £25,000. We also got a lot of deals on post production and post production finance from The First Film Foundation – who are backed"
"The Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in the United Kingdom, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities. It also diversified into the manufacture of radios, TVs and photocopiers (as one of the owners of Rank Xerox). The company name lasted until February 1996, when the name and some of the remaining assets were absorbed into the newly structured The Rank Group Plc. The company logo, the Gongman, first used in 1935 by the group's distribution company"
"intention of producing ""family-friendly"" films (which John Davis had said was company policy) to challenge American competition, he nevertheless kept to his core beliefs. To that end in 1953 he set up the J. Arthur Rank Group Charity to promote Christian belief. The charity later became known as The Rank Foundation. He was a governor of The Peckham Experiment in 1949. In 1957 J. Arthur Rank was raised to the peerage as Baron Rank, of Sutton Scotney in the County of Southampton (Sutton Scotney is a small village between Andover and Winchester in Hampshire). Inspired by his personal knowledge of"
"was designed by Fiona Maynard. Rank at the Internet Movie Database Rank (film) Rank is a 2002 fourteen-minute short film directed by David Yates. It was nominated for the British Academy Film Award for Best Short Film at the BAFTAs. Producer Andrew O'Connell said ""We first went to the London Production Fund who gave us the full grant of £15,000. Then we approached Scottish Screen but as we were not a Scots production company they could only give us £5,000. We got Scottish co-producers, re-applied and got £25,000. We also got a lot of deals on post production and post"
"J. Arthur Rank's General Cinema Finance Corporation, the company which one year later would become the British film industry's most important company, The Rank Organisation. He became General Cinema Finance Corporation's chairman, and worked very closely with J. Arthur Rank for many years. In 1935 he was made chairman of the Bacon Development Board, and in April 1939 he was made was regional commissioner for Wales under the Civil Defence Scheme. In 1940 he became the chairman of the Coal Production Council, and he served in government as Additional Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply from 1940–1942, and as"
"but continued to handle all distribution for the Rank organisation until 1955, when it was renamed J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors. In 1939 Rank consolidated his film production interests in both the Pinewood Film Studios and the Denham Film Studios. In 1938 Rank bought the Odeon Cinemas chain. and the Amalgamated Studios in Elstree, although the latter were never used as film studios by Rank. In 1941, it absorbed the Gaumont British, which owned 251 cinemas, and the Lime Grove Studios, (later owned by the BBC) and bought the Paramount Cinemas chain, so that by 1942 the Rank Organisation owned"
"1930s, the ""Methodist Times"" newspaper in England began attacking the low moral standards exhibited by British films and by American films shown in Britain. In response, the London ""Evening News"" answered the ""Methodist Times"" by suggesting that if the Methodist Church was so concerned about the effect that the film industry was having upon family life in Britain, it should start producing its own family-friendly films. It was this exchange that motivated Rank to expand his movie interests into the commercial market. A young producer named John Corfield introduced Rank to Lady Annie Henrietta Yule of Bricket Wood, who was"
"of critically derided but immensely popular period melodramas, including ""The Man in Grey"" (1943) and ""The Wicked Lady"" (1945). New stars, such as Margaret Lockwood and James Mason, emerged in the Gainsborough films. Towards the end of the 1940s, the Rank Organisation, founded in 1937 by J. Arthur Rank, became the dominant force behind British film-making, having acquired a number of British studios and the Gaumont chain (in 1941) to add to its Odeon Cinemas. Rank's serious financial crisis in 1949, a substantial loss and debt, resulted in the contraction of its film production. In practice, Rank maintained an industry"
"Hickox. He is also the great nephew of Lord J. Arthur Rank who controlled the British film industry for many years. After starting as a club promoter in London he came to LA in 1986 and became a writer/director during the late 80s and 90s. His visual style often uses a dual-focus technique in which one person's face takes up most the screen in profile, with another person shown on the other half of the screen in the background. He then started directing action movies after a list of well-known '90s horror films including the in the ""Hellraiser"" series. This"
"Earl St. John Earl St. John (14 June 1892 – 26 February 1968) was an American film producer in overall charge of production for The Rank Organisation at Pinewood Studios from 1950 to 1964. He was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His father wanted him to become a soldier but he ran away from a military academy aged 17 and began his career as a page boy for Sarah Bernhardt's company. St John had an uncle in the film business who he went to work for when he was 21. He worked as a poster boy then took two religious"
"considered to be graduates of the school, even when they were not, such as Maureen Swanson. Rank later briefly ran a ""charm school"" for cinema managers. The company was the subject of a 1982 documentary, ""The Rank Charm School"" and a 1998 radio documentary, ""The Rank School of Charmers"". The Company of Youth The Company of Youth was an acting school for young contract players for the Rank Organisation who were being groomed for stardom. It was commonly known as the Rank Charm School. The Company of Youth was a conscious attempt by J. Arthur Rank to manufacture stars similar"
"the Religious Film Society to distribute the films that he wanted to show to other Sunday schools. Following distribution, Rank then decided to go into the business of producing religious films. ""Mastership"" was his first religious film production. It was a twenty-minute film made at Merton Park Studios at a cost of £2,700. ""Mastership"" was never shown commercially because it was merely intended as a form of evangelism and shown within other churches. Rank was pleased with the results, and other films went into production in Elstree at the better-equipped Rock Studios, which were later renamed British National. In the"
"The Company of Youth The Company of Youth was an acting school for young contract players for the Rank Organisation who were being groomed for stardom. It was commonly known as the Rank Charm School. The Company of Youth was a conscious attempt by J. Arthur Rank to manufacture stars similar to the Hollywood studio system. He was also inspired by the success Gainsborough Pictures had in developing British stars such as Stewart Granger, James Mason and Phyllis Calvert. Producer Sydney Box originally set up a Company of Youth at Riverside Studios in December 1945. Box put half a dozen"
"several careers including those of Donald Sinden, Dirk Bogarde, Diana Dors and Christopher Lee. Although she was not a member of the school, Petula Clark was under contract to Rank for a period of time and starred in a number of films released by the studio, including ""London Town"" (1946), one of the costliest flops in British film history. Also under contract to Rank was the Canadian actor Philip Gilbert. Despite backing some excellent films, Rank was in crisis by 1949, having built up a debt of £16 million, and reported an annual loss of £3.5 million. Managing Director John"
"hobby and similar to her financial interests in Arabian horse breeding. In 1934, Rank, Lady Yule and John Corfield formed the British National Films Company and went into production in answer to the challenge by the ""Evening News"". In 1935, British National commenced production of their first feature film, ""Turn of the Tide"". The script was based upon a 1932 novel by Leo Walmsley called ""Three Fevers"". The setting, which Rank knew from childhood, was Robin Hood's Bay on the north coast of Yorkshire, England. Having read the book, Rank decided that it would make an excellent family-friendly British film"
"were released within two months of each other: ""Oliver Twist"", directed by David Lean, and Powell and Pressburger's ""The Red Shoes"" (both 1948). Due to a shortfall in funds, brought about by financial overspends the previous year, Rank did not have enough money to market ""The Red Shoes"" sufficiently at first in the US, but it became Rank's biggest earner up to that point, grossing over £1 million (the equivalent of £26 million in 2012 terms). In 1948, John Davis was appointed managing director. By the following year, Rank had run up an overdraft of £16 million (the equivalent of"
"both extremely wealthy and extremely bored with life. In order to fill her life with activity, she engaged in big game hunting and breeding Arabian horses with a degree of success and lasting fame. Upon meeting J. Arthur Rank, she decided to add the making of films to her list. However, when it came to the business side of film production, Lady Yule did not share the same ideas as Rank with regard to making and distributing films to improve society; she did not believe in giving discounts to religiously motivated film productions. She thought that films were an interesting"
"who had impressed Caspary with ""The Stars Look Down"", and wanted to set up the film in England. Goldsmith arranged financing through John Cornfield Productions, a unit of the Rank Organisation. Caspary travelled to London to do an early draft of the script, which transplanted the action from Connecticut to Yorkshire. ""The movie will probably have one or two Hollywood names in it and will be an Arthur Rank release"", said said. ""Mr Rank is another who was wonderful to me – but then in England even the producers respect writers... England is counting on pictures to be one of"
"the genre – his best-known films at that point were the Academy Award-winning Western epic ""Cimarron"" (1931) and the Mae West comedy ""I'm No Angel"" (1933), both more than a decade old – and his Hollywood career was on a downslide, he was an odd choice indeed. J. Arthur Rank spent large sums of money for American songwriters (Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke), musicians (Ted Heath and his orchestra), and costumes by the legendary designer Orry-Kelly, while at the same time re-equipping the studio from the ground up. He was confident that box-office business was booming at the time"
"Film Society"" to which he then distributed films that he had also made. His first production was called ""Mastership"". When the ""Methodist Times"" newspaper began to complain about the negative influence that British and American films shown in Britain were having on family life, their editorial was answered by the London ""Evening News"" who suggested that instead of complaining, the Methodist Church should provide a solution. Rank took up the challenge and via an introduction by a young film producer named John Corfield, he discussed both the problem and a solution with Lady Yule of Bricket Wood. The net result"
"General Film Distributors General Film Distributors (GFD), later known as J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors and Rank Film Distributors Ltd., was a British film distribution company based in London. It was active between 1935 and 1996, and from 1937 it was part of the Rank Organisation. General Film Distributors was created in 1935 by the British film distributor C. M. Woolf (1879–1942) after he had resigned from Gaumont British and closed his distribution company Woolf & Freedman Film Service. In 1936, J. Arthur Rank and the paper magnate Lord Portal, convinced him to make it a daughter company to their"
"""refreshingly compassionate drama that benefits from being filmed on location at Robin Hood's Bay and Whitby."" Turn of the Tide Turn of the Tide (1935) is a British drama film directed by Norman Walker and starring John Garrick, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Wilfrid Lawson. It was the first feature film made by J. Arthur Rank. Lacking a distributor for his film, Rank set up his own distribution and production company which subsequently grew into his later empire. The film is set in a North Yorkshire fishing village, and relates the rivalry between two fishing families. The actors included John Garrick, Geraldine"
"to 1976 Rank only invested around £1.5 million a year in film production. According to executive Tony Williams ""the two main streams that they were down to was Carry On pictures and horror films made by Kevin Francis"". However, in 1976 Rank enjoyed much success with ""Bugsy Malone"" (which they co-produced with Paramount Pictures, who held its American rights). This encouraged them to re-enter film production. In 1977 Rank appointed Tony Williams head of production and over two years Rank made eight films worth £10 million, including ""Eagle's Wing"", ""The Shout"", ""The Thirty Nine Steps"", ""Riddle of the Sands"" and"
"Hospitality). J. Arthur Rank had stepped down as managing director of the Rank Organisation in 1952, but remained as chairman until 1962. From the 1950s, fewer adventurous films were produced and solidly commercial ventures, largely aimed at the family market, were made instead. These include the popular Norman Wisdom comedies, the Doctor films series and, later, Rank took on the Carry On film series. However some films of note were produced during this era including ""Carve Her Name with Pride"", ""Sapphire"" and ""Victim"", as well as a clutch of prestige topics such as the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and"
"Joe Wright Joseph Wright (born 25 August 1972) is an English film director. His motion pictures include the romance film ""Pride & Prejudice"" (2005), the romantic war drama ""Atonement"" (2007), the action thriller ""Hanna"" (2011), his adaptation of ""Anna Karenina"" (2012), Peter Pan origin story ""Pan"" (2015), and World War II political drama ""Darkest Hour"" (2017). Wright was born on 25 August 1972 in London, where his parents, John and Lyndie, founded the Little Angel Theatre, a puppet theatre in Islington. Wright always had an interest in the arts, especially painting. He would also make films on his Super 8"
"Turn of the Tide Turn of the Tide (1935) is a British drama film directed by Norman Walker and starring John Garrick, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Wilfrid Lawson. It was the first feature film made by J. Arthur Rank. Lacking a distributor for his film, Rank set up his own distribution and production company which subsequently grew into his later empire. The film is set in a North Yorkshire fishing village, and relates the rivalry between two fishing families. The actors included John Garrick, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Wilfrid Lawson speak in the local accent. The work is based on the novel ""Three"
"forming the Rank Organisation in 1938. In addition acquisitions of other cinema chains had taken place following the Rank takeover including the UK cinema operations of Paramount Pictures in 1939 and purchase of Gaumont British cinemas in 1941. By the time of Oscar Deutsch's death in 1941, 258 ODEON had opened throughout Britain. After the sale to J. Arthur Rank Corporation, ODEON also operated a wholly owned Canadian subsidiary, ODEON Theatres (Canada) Ltd., with more than a hundred cinemas in Canada, coast-to-coast. The head office of ODEON Canada was in Toronto, and later, the north Toronto suburb of Willowdale. This"
"the Rank film archive, then briefly attempted a career as an independent producer. Tony Williams (film executive) Tony Williams was an executive best known for his long association with the Rank Organisation, including a stint as head of production in the late 1970s. This ended when Rank decided to cease funding films altogether. Williams joined Rank as a trainee in the late 1960s and worked in theatre management and exhibition. He was appointed head of production for Rank in 1977. According to film critic Alexander Walker, ""his enthusiasm was boundless; his knowledge of boardroom politics and organisation rivalries was narrower."