George Atkinson (stuntman)

George William Atkinson (born June 2, 1935 in Shanghai , † March 3, 2005 in Northridge , California ) was an American stuntman , amateur actor and businessman. He is considered the founding father of video rental stores in the USA.

Life

Atkinson was born in China and returned to the United States with his family at the age of 14 and moved to Los Angeles. There he worked as a stuntman and small actor in various films. After Ecki Baum opened the world's first video rental company in Kassel in 1975, Atkinson founded the first US video rental store in Los Angeles in the fall of 1977 .

Film studios in Hollywood then began to market video copies of their films. A film then cost about $ 50 . Atkinson believed that most people would not be willing to spend that sum on a video that they would only watch a few times. He then launched his rental, the Video Station on Wilshire Boulevard , with 50 at that time on the market contained video films each as VHS - and Betamax -copy. Among the first copies were the films French Connection - Focal Point Brooklyn and the western comedy Two Bandits . In order to raise funds for the acquisition of further films, he introduced club memberships. Annual membership was $ 50 and lifetime membership was $ 100. Membership gave them the right to rent a video for $ 10 a day. The business model quickly became a huge success and Atkinson, at the height of its success, ran a video rental chain of over 600 franchise- based stores . Atkinson left Video Station in the mid- 1980s because the company was too profitable on its balance sheets.

With the falling prices for video recorders, video libraries are gaining ground worldwide. In the US alone, there were 24,000 video rental outlets in 2005, lending more than 2.6 billion DVDs and VHS videos.

Atkinson died of emphysema at the age of 69 .

Web links

• George Atkinson in the Internet Movie Database (English)