Film Booking Offices of America

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Evelyn Brent , one of the company's stars.

The Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) (German: "Filmbuchungsbüros Amerikas"; also: FBO Pictures Corporation ) were an American film production company of the silent film era that mainly dealt with low-budget films . The company began as the American branch of a British foreign trade company under the name Robertson-Cole (US). Robertson-Cole has been producing his own films since 1920 and renamed himself Film Booking Offices of America in 1922 . In 1923, the studio signed a deal with Western actor Fred Thomson , who soon became one of Hollywood's most popular stars . Thomson was just one of the numerous screen cowboys who shaped FBO's image.

FBO, whose core business was in small American towns, also produced many romantic melodramas , action films, and cheerful short films . In 1926, a finance group led by Joseph P. Kennedy bought the company. In June 1928 FBO, which was RCA PhotoPhone used technique, the second Hollywood film studio, which has a sound film in feature length brought out. A few months later, Kennedy and RCA boss David Sarnoff arranged a merger that resulted in RKO Pictures , one of the "Big Five" of Hollywood's studio days .

history

Robertson-Cole (until 1922)

The company that later became the FBO began as the American subsidiary of the British foreign trade and film distribution company Robertson-Cole . RC Pictures, as they were sometimes called, had their headquarters in New York City and began operating as a film distributor. In 1919 the company merged with the Mutual subsidiary Exhibitors Mutual Distributing . On May 29, 1920 Robertson-Cole brought out his first self-produced feature film : The Wonder Man with George Carpentier ; Directed by John G. Adolfi . Robertson-Cole then acquired a 5.5-  acre studio site in the Colegrove district of Los Angeles , which was soon incorporated into Hollywood, and in January 1921 also the Hallmark Pictures company . The first Robertson Cole production to be officially filmed on the new studio premises was The Mistress of Shenstone with Pauline Frederick , released in February 1921 , directed by Henry King . In the same year the British owners of the studio began a collaboration with Joseph P. Kennedy. Kennedy, the father of the future US President John F. Kennedy , was a broker at Hayden, Stone & Co. at the time , but also owned a small cinema chain, the Maine-New Hampshire Theaters . Although Kennedy was not able to get the deal he wanted by then, his relationship with the studio was far from over.

Under a new name (1922–1925)

In 1922 Robertson-Cole was extensively reorganized. The founders left, but the company remained largely under British control. The main business area - film distribution - was renamed Film Booking Offices of America . Although the Californian studio still produced its films under the name Robertson-Cole for a while, FBO soon made a name for itself as a brand name for both distribution and production. The reorganized company was run until October 1923 by Pat Powers , a businessman who had previously founded and managed one of the production companies that had merged into Universal Studios in 1912 . Powers briefly renamed Robertson-Cole / FBO to Powers Studio , but there is no evidence that the company ever produced or released a film under that name.

In 1923, FBO released a series of short boxing films starring George O'Hara , Fighting Blood . O'Hara became one of the mainstays of FBO and often appeared together with Alberta Vaughn , for example in comedy series such as The Pacemakers (1925). Most of the films that FBO produced with O'Hara and Vaughn were two-reelers with a running time of around 20 minutes.

Joseph Kennedy, who was now a self-employed businessman, joined the FBO board of directors in 1923 . The company was owned at the time by the London investment firm Graham’s , and Powers was succeeded by Graham agent H.C.S. Thomson . Before Kennedy left the board of directors the following year, he arranged a contract for FBO with the popular American western actor Fred Thomson. In 1924 B. P. Fineman became head of production. His wife, Evelyn Brent , who had previously worked for 20th Century Fox , also switched to FBO and became the company's most important drama actress. In April 1925, FBO Vice President Joseph I. Schnitzer signed a new contract with Thomson granting him $ 10,000 a week. Thomson became the highest-paid western performer in the country and earned even more than Tom Mix . This contract even gave Thomson its own independent production unit within the studio.

Half of the films that FBO was responsible for distributing were its own, half were foreign and foreign productions. In the heyday of the business (1923–1928), FBO released an average of 110 feature and short films per year. The customers were mostly independent cinema chains and event organizers in small towns. Cinema chains owned by large studios such as B. the Paramount were, got their films from their own parent company.

In the production sector, FBO has focused on low budget films in the areas of westerns, romantic melodrama and cheerful short films. In the roughly eight years of its existence, the company produced a total of around 400 films, all of which came out either under the name Robertson-Cole or FBO Pictures . Between 1924 and 1926, FBO produced a number of more sophisticated films in a "Gothic Pictures" section. The studio brought out its most ambitious productions under the trademark "Gold Bond"; these films were aimed at showing in major cinemas where FBO productions were not usually shown. Since FBO neither had a large parent company in the background nor had its own cinema chain, the company had major liquidity problems in the early years and lost a lot of money on short-term, expensive loans.

Joseph Kennedy (1925-1927)

While at Hayden, Stone & Co. , Kennedy once boasted to a coworker, “Look at this bunch of trouser pressers who are becoming millionaires in Hollywood. I could take the whole business away from them. ”In 1925 he began doing just that, and formed a group of investors led by wealthy Boston attorney Guy Currier, which also included department store owner Louis Kirstein and meat manufacturer Frederick H. Prince . In August 1925, Kennedy offered $ 1 million for a majority stake in FBO. His offer was initially rejected, but in February 1926 the owners decided to take the money. Kennedy moved his family from Massachusetts to New York City and focused on his new business. He quickly resolved FBO's liquidity problems and set up a Cinema Credit Corporation .

In March, Kennedy traveled to Hollywood. The President of the Motion Picture Association of America , Will H. Hays , welcomed the new face in the film industry; in his eyes, Kennedy embodied both a desirable image for the film industry and Wall Street's confidence in the future of American cinema. Hays praised Kennedy as “extremely American” - plainly (as historian Cari Beauchamp has explained): not, like the majority of studio bosses, Jewish - and celebrated Kennedy's “background with elegant and conservative financial relationships, an atmosphere of home and family life and all the domestic virtues that the current Hollywood news audience never hears about ”.

Both Fineman and Brent left FBO. Kennedy installed Edward King as head of production, but also took on a controlling role in the company, both artistically and financially. He soon complained about stability to FBO and made it one of the reliably most profitable, their smaller companies in the Hollywood studio system . Westerns remained the mainstay of the studio alongside action and romance films; or as Kennedy put it: "Melodrama is our substance". The average cost of making FBO feature films was about $ 50,000, and few cost more than $ 75,000. For comparison, Fox manufacturing costs averaged $ 190,000 in 1927-28; at MGM it was $ 275,000. A great investment took Kennedy personally: he took Fred Thomson, around which several other studios tried under contract and it offered him $ 15,000 a week. That was the highest salary paid for a contract actor in the industry at the time; Tom Mix (Fox Film) received the same amount. In early 1927, Kennedy signed a contract with Paramount , which produced a series of four "super westerns" with Thomson. Kennedy earned it as a co-producer and the shooting took place at FBO. Three of these four films, which hit theaters in 1927, were released by FBO.

Introduction of the sound film (1927–1929)

With the introduction of the sound film , the development of the studio took a new direction: At the end of 1927 negotiations began with the radio company RCA , which was to provide the sound technology; in January 1928, RCA finally bought large parts of FBO. As part of a plan developed by RCA boss David Sarnoff , Kennedy acquired control of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain and the production facilities of Pathé - DeMille in May 1928 . On June 17, 1928, FBO released its first sound film: The Perfect Crime , with Clive Brook and Irene Rich ; Bert Glennon directed it . After Warner Bros. ( The Jazz Singer ), FBO was the second American film studio to bring a sound film to cinemas. The Perfect Crime was filmed mute, but was subsequently synchronized using the optical sound system ; this process was then called "synthetic clay". On August 22nd, Kennedy signed a contract with RCA for live recordings using the photophone method. Two months later, RCA acquired the majority of the company shares from both FBO and KAO.

On October 23, 1928, RCA announced its merger with FBO and KAO, from which the new company RKO Pictures emerged . RCA man David Sarnoff became director. Kennedy kept Pathé and received $ 150,000 in return for making the merger possible; he later made several million dollars selling the shares he owned in the company. Schnitzer took over Kennedy's previous position. William LeBaron , who was last head of production at FBO, kept this position after the merger. The majority of the previous contract actors were dismissed after the switch to the sound film. Films that FBO produced or supervised as distribution were released as "FBO" films until the end of 1929. The last official FBO production to hit American cinemas was the Louis King-directed adventure film Pals of the Prarie, starring Buzz Barton and Frank Rice , on July 1, 1929 .

Staff and films

Stars and Publicity

Most of the films that FBO / Robertson-Cole produced in the silent film era and in the transition to sound film are now considered lost . Partly for this reason, the names of many FBO stars are barely known today. A major lead actress in the early days of RC was Pauline Frederick , and Evelyn Brent was the most valued star outside the western genre. Other prominent actors included Warner Baxter , Joe E. Brown and the young Frankie Darro . Anna Q. Nilsson , Olive Borden , and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. have also appeared in some of the studio's larger productions . Leading actor in action and crime films was Richard Talmadge . He appeared in 18 films released by FBO, more than half of which were produced by his own company. Maurice "Lefty" Flynn starred in a dozen other FBO action films, each directed by Harry Garson ; Garson also had his own manufacturing company. Even Ralph Lewis worked from 1920 to 1928 in more than ten RC and FBO films of different genres.

The main actor in The Cowboy Cop (1926) was Tom Tyler . Tyler was FBO's most prolific western star and has appeared in 29 of the studio's films.

Central to the corporate identity of FBO were westerns and the studio's biggest western star, Fred Thomson. In both 1926 and 1927 Thomson appeared in the list that the Exhibitor's Herald regularly put up with the top stars of the year , right after Tom Mix. When Thomson's studio contract expired in the mid-1927s, he moved to Paramount, whose studio grounds were right next door. The second major western star to work for FBO for a long time was Tom Tyler . In June 1927, Moving Picture World read: “With Tom Tyler quickly taking the vacancy recently vacated by Fred Thomson, FBO's western program has risen to a rank like no other in the industry… Tyler is in his two years made quick progress at FBO and with his horse 'Flash' and his dog 'Beans' became one of the leading screen favorites. ”In 1928, Tom Mix also became a contract actor for FBO. In addition to these three big names, there was Harry Carey , who was also a major star and had made several films with FBO in 1922-23. Other FBO cowboy stars included Bob Custer , Bob Steele and the young Buzz Barton . One of the studio's most trusted western actors was a dog: Ranger. Legendary movie dog Strongheart starred in the FBO film White Fang (1925), and Rin Tin Tin made one of his first appearances in My Dad (1922).

The short films produced by FBO in large numbers - including the popular series with George O'Hara and Alberta Vaughn - have mostly been forgotten. Of particular interest in film history are two independently produced series of slapstick comedies in which prominent actors have participated: In 1924/25, FBO released several short films directed by Joe Rock in which Stan Laurel appeared without his later partner Oliver Hardy . In 1926/27 the company brought out more than a dozen short films with the inventive comedian and cartoon artist Charles Bowers .

In its early days, the studio had no qualms about using scandals for its publicity. After famous actor and lover Wallace Reid died of complications from morphine addiction in 1923, his widow, Dorothy Davenport, co- produced and starred a feature film on substance abuse: Human Wreckage , released by FBO in June 1923, featured Davenport (announced as Mrs. Wallace Reid) as the wife of a lawyer who turns into an anti-drug agent. When the greatest movie star of the time, Rudolph Valentino , separated from his wife, Natacha Rambova , she worked for a short time with FBO and appeared alongside Clive Brook in the film When Love Grows Cold (translated: "When love grows cold"; 1925) .

After Kennedy took control, the studio, which wanted to sell its films to families and the “average American”, tried to be more serious: “We cannot make films and make them as films 'for children', 'for women' or Declare 'for obese' or 'for thin'. We have to make films that are appealing to everyone. ”Although Kennedy put a stop to the scandal publicity, FBO continued to offer the audience great celebrities: this is how the film One Minute to Play (1926), directed by Sam Wood , marks the Football star Red Grange's film debut .

Major films and film artists

Evelyn Brent (right) in the title role of the film Lady Robin Hood (1925), directed by Ralph Ince. Her opponent on the left is Boris Karloff , who appeared in 6 FBO films between 1925 and 1927.

Kennedy had no illusions about the artistic status of his studio. A journalist once complimented him: "You've had some good films this year." Kennedy jokingly asked, "Which the hell were those?" In her book on RKO, Betty Lasky referred to the pre-Kennedy film Broken Laws (1924, with Dorothy Davenport, director: Roy William Neill ), which was one of the rare more demanding productions by FBO.

In the action genre, a Tarzan film from 1927 stood out. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs stated, “If you want to see Tarzan incarnate as I imagine him, watch Tarzan and the Golden Lion starring Mr. James Pierce .” The Reviewer of the Film Daily wrote, “(The Film) has a new level of thrill and atmosphere that could prove very attractive ”.

According to film historian Simon Louvish , the two-reeler West of Hot Dog (1924) contains "one of the best of Stan [Laurel] s gags", on a cinematic level similar to that of Buster Keaton's classic Sherlock, Jr. to be compared.

Some of the most impressive films the studio put out were overseas productions. In 1927, FBO selected an Austrian monumental film that had been produced three years earlier for distribution on the American market: The Slave Queen . The film had its director, Mihály Kertész, already at a job at Warner Bros. helped. In Hollywood he took the name Michael Curtiz . Under the title The Charge of the Gauchos , FBO also distributed the most successful silent film in Argentina's cinema history, Una Nueva y gloriosa nación (1928).

One of the cameramen for the latter film was Nicholas Musuraca . He began his career at FBO and became one of the most respected representatives in his field. The most famous director who worked regularly for FBO was Ralph Ince , the younger brother of the film pioneer Thomas H. Ince . In four of the 14 films he directed for FBO, he also appeared as an actor himself. One of these four films received special recognition: the New York Times described Chicago After Midnight (1928) as "an unusually well-acted and skillfully staged underworld story". After The Mistress of Shenstone , Henry King directed two more RC films with Pauline Frederick, also in 1921: Salvage and The Sting of the Lash . In 1924 Tod Browning directed two horror films with Evelyn Brent: The Dangerous Flirt and Silk Stocking Sal . Between 1921 and 1924 William Seiter directed half a dozen films for FBO, some of which were produced by FBO and some independently. From 1922 to 1926, Emory Johnson produced and directed at least eight films for FBO. The film historian William K. Everson describes Seiter and Johnson as two highly talented directors who have been wrongly mostly overlooked. Screenwriter Frances Marion , who won two Academy Awards in the 1930s , wrote the books for ten films in which her husband, Fred Thomson, appeared. The film editor and later RKO manager Pandro S. Berman edited his first film for FBO at the age of 22. The famous costume designer Walter Plunkett also received his training at FBO.

In addition to the work of Charles Bowers, FBO distributed other major animated films . From 1924 to 1926, the company brought films from John Randolph Bray's animation studio to cinemas, including Walter Lantz's Dinky Doodle series . From 1925 to 1927, the studio released about three dozen animated films directed by William Nolan based on newspaper comics by George Herriman , in which characters from Herriman's famous Krazy Kat comics appeared. FBO took over these films from the distribution team Margaret J. Winkler and Charles Mintz . In 1926, FBO and Winkler-Mintz agreed on another twelve-part series that - like Bowers' short films - combined animation and real film: the Alice Comedies staged by the young team Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Doris Kearns Goodwin: The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga . Simon & Schuster, New York 1987, ISBN 0-671-23108-1 , p. 341
    Richard B. Jewell, with Vernon Harbin: The RKO Story . Arlington House / Crown, New York 1982, ISBN 0-517-54656-6 , p. 8
  2. ↑ For a description of the film, see the New York Times Film Review , May 30, 1920.
  3. ^ The address was 780 Gower Street (Joel W. Finler: The Hollywood Story . Crown, New York 1988, ISBN 0-517-56576-5 , p. 12). Later the area belonged first to RKO and then to Desilu ; today it is owned by CBS Paramount Television .
  4. ^ Timothy James Lyons: The Silent Partner: The History of the American Film Manufacturing Company, 1910–1921 . Arno Press, New York 1974, ISBN 0-405-04872-6 , p. 90, note 123
  5. ↑ For descriptions of the film, see the film reviews in Moving Picture World (March 5, 1921) and Variety (March 18, 1921).
  6. ^ Goodwin, p. 342
  7. ^ Betty Lasky: RKO: The Biggest Little Major of Them All . Roundtable, Santa Monica CA 1989, ISBN 0-915677-41-5 , p. 13; Jewell, p. 8
  8. ↑ Lasky, p. 13
  9. ^ Cari Beauchamp: Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood . University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1998, ISBN 0-520-21492-7 , pp. 157f
    Joseph P. Kennedy (# 136) John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
  10. ↑ a b Jewell, p. 8
  11. ↑ Beauchamp, p. 168
  12. ↑ Beauchamp, p. 157
  13. ↑ FBO Announces Tom Tyler as Surprise Western Star ; in: Moving Picture World , August 8, 1925
  14. ↑ Lasky, pp. 12-15; Beauchamp, p. 180
  15. ↑ Quoted from Lasky, p. 12
  16. ↑ Goodwin, pp. 342f; Beauchamp, p. 180; Lasky, p. 13
  17. ↑ Lasky, pp. 14f; Goodwin, p. 344
  18. ↑ Goodwin, pp. 345f
  19. ↑ Quoted from Beauchamp, p. 180; see. Lasky, p. 14; see. also Goodwin, p. 341
  20. ↑ Lasky, p. 15
  21. ↑ Quoted from Goodwin, p. 348
  22. ↑ Goodwin, p. 348; Jewell, p. 9
  23. ↑ Finler, p. 36
  24. ↑ Beauchamp, pp. 210f; Richard Koszarski: An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928 . University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London 1990, ISBN 0-520-08535-3 , p. 116
  25. ↑ Beauchamp, pp. 211, 227
  26. ↑ Business: Cinemerger . ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Time , May 2, 1927; Lasky, pp. 24-26  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / content.time.com
  27. ↑ Donald Crafton: The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931 . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1997, ISBN 0-684-19585-2 , pp. 140, 304
  28. ↑ Crafton, p. 142
  29. ↑ Lasky, p. 33f
  30. ↑ Jewell, p. 10
  31. ↑ For information on Flynn see: John Christgau: The Origins of the Jump Shot: Eight Men Who Shook the World of Basketball . University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln 1999, ISBN 0-8032-6394-5 , pp. 55-59
  32. ↑ Beauchamp, p. 224
  33. ↑ Lasky, p. 17; Beauchamp, p. 227
  34. ^ Moving Picture World , June 11, 1927
  35. ^ Goodwin, p. 348
  36. ^ Donald Crafton: Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928 . University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1993, ISBN 0-226-11667-0 , p. 362, note 39
  37. ↑ Eric Schaefer: "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959 . Duke University Press, Durham / London 1999, ISBN 0-8223-2374-5 , p. 224
  38. ^ Goodwin, p. 341
  39. ↑ Quoted from Goodwin, p. 347.
  40. ^ Mordaunt Hall : 'Red' Grange's First Film . In: New York Times , September 6, 1926
  41. ↑ Quoted from Lasky, p. 14
  42. ↑ Lasky, p. 14
  43. ↑ a b Quoted from James W. Fenton: Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan: A Biography of the Author and His Creation . McFarland, Jefferson NC 2002, ISBN 0-7864-1393-X , p. 107
  44. ↑ Simon Louvish: Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy: The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy . St. Martin's, New York 2001, ISBN 0-312-26651-0 , pp. 171f
  45. ↑ Philip Kemp: Curtiz, Michael . In: John Wakeman (Ed.): World Film Directors, Volume 1: 1890–1945 . HW Wilson, New York 1987, ISBN 0-8242-0757-2 , pp. 172-181, p. 173
  46. ↑ Jorge Finkielman: The Film Industry in Argentina: An Illustrated Cultural History . McFarland, Jefferson NC 2004, ISBN 0-7864-1628-9 , p. 84
  47. ↑ Mordaunt Hall : To Irish Mother. Bootleggers and Night Clubs . In: New York Times , March 6, 1928
  48. ^ William K. Everson: American Silent Film . Da Capo, New York 1998, ISBN 0-306-80876-5
  49. ↑ Crafton, pp. 186f; Mark Langer: John Randolph Bray: Animation Pioneer , in: Gregg Bachman, Thomas J. Slater (Eds.): American Silent Film: Discovering Marginalized Voices , Southern Illinois Univ. Press, Carbondale 2002, ISBN 0-8093-2402-4 , pp. 94–114, pp. 105, 259 (note 40)
  50. ↑ Crafton, p. 285; Langer, p. 259, note 39