Rank, J Arthur, Baron Rank

Rank, J(oseph) Arthur, Baron Rank (of Sutton Scotney)

(born Dec. 22/23, 1888, Hull, Yorkshire, Eng.—died March 29, 1972, Winchester, Hampshire) British motion-picture distributor and producer. His British National Film Co. made its first commercial picture in 1935. That year he and Charles Woolf established General Film Distributors to distribute Universal Pictures films in Britain. By 1941 Rank controlled two of the three largest movie theatre chains in Britain. The J. Arthur Rank Organisation (incorporated 1946) dominated British film production in the late 1940s and '50s. Rank served as chairman (1946–62) and president (1962–72) of the Rank Organisation, which shifted from filmmaking to hotel ownership and other more profitable enterprises in the late 1960s.