General Film Distributors (GFD), later known as J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors and Rank Film Distributors Ltd., was a

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

film distribution company based in London. It was active between 1935 and 1996, and from 1937 it was part of

the Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation (founded as the J. Arthur Rank Organisation) is a British entertainment Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1937 by industrialist J. Arthur Rank. It quickly became the largest and most vertical integration, ve ...

. General Film Distributors was created in 1935 by the British film distributor C. M. Woolf (1879–1942) after he had resigned from

Gaumont British The Gaumont-British Picture Corporation was a British company that produced and distributed films and operated a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. It was established as an offshoot of France's Gaumont. Film production Gaumont-British was fou ...

and closed his distribution company Woolf & Freedman Film Service.The Independent 1 July 1999: Obituary: Sir John Woolf
Retrieved 2011-09-02 In 1936, J. Arthur Rank and the paper magnate Lord Portal, convinced him to make it a daughter company to their General Cinema Finance Corporation, which had just acquired the British distribution rights for all

Universal Pictures Universal City Studios LLC, doing business as Universal Pictures (also known as Universal Studios or simply Universal), is an American filmmaking, film production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered at the 10 Universal Ci ...

titles (by buying a large chunk of Universal in the US). One year later it became the cornerstone in

The Rank Organisation The Rank Organisation (founded as the J. Arthur Rank Organisation) is a British entertainment Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1937 by industrialist J. Arthur Rank. It quickly became the largest and most vertical integration, ve ...

. General Film Distributors kept its own name within the Rank Organisation until 1955, when it was renamed J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors, which in turn was renamed Rank Film Distributors Ltd. in 1957. Rank Film Distributors was acquired by Carlton Communications in 1997 and closed. It was C.M. Woolf's secretary who devised the man-with-a-gong trademark which was adopted by the Rank Organisation when it was founded in 1937. Athletes who played the Gongman in the film sequence over the years, included boxer Bombardier Billy Wells and wrestler Ken Richmond. Also, George Francis Moss Snr played the Gongman.

Gongman The Gongman (also known as the "man-with-the-gong") is a company trademark for the J. Arthur Rank Organisation. It was used as the introduction to all Rank films, many of which were shot at their Pinewood Studios, and included those Rank distri ...

During the 20 years General Film Distributors had its original name, the company distributed over 450 mainstream films. A British DVD distributor, active since 2005, uses the same name, but as a DVD distributor, GFD is possibly related to the original company.

References

External links

Francis Donald Klingender, Stuart Legg: ''Money Behind the Screen'' (1937), pages 37-41
Retrieved 2012-10-31 {{Cinema of the United Kingdom Film distributors of the United Kingdom