J. Arthur Rank

Lord Rank, known professionally as J. Arthur Rank was the millionaire flour miller and devout Methodist who got into films to spread the gospel. When some early films that he was involved with didn't get an exceptionally good circulation he realized that control of cinemas was the key to success. He quickly established the Odeon chain of cinemas, started by Oscar Deutsch. Odeon's publicists liked to claim that the name of the cinemas was derived from his motto, "Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation", but it had been used for cinemas in France and Italy in the 1920s, and the word is Ancient Greek. The word "Nickelodeon" was coined in 1888 and was widely used to describe small cinemas in the United States starting from 1905. With builder Charles Boot he bought the grounds of an old Victorian house (Heatherden Hall) in Hertfordshire and turned it into Pinewood Studios. A long-term collaborator of Rank was 'Lady Yule' the wife of a Jute merchant. She helped him with the building and running of Pinewood studios. After Alexander Korda ran into financial difficulties in the late 30's Rank also bought Denham Studios. One of the best things about movie-making for Rank was the freedom given to people like The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger), David Lean, Carol Reed, etc. that allowed them to make some of the most successful and spectacular movies ever made in Britain. An over-ambitious attempt to expand into America brought him to near bankruptcy in the 1940s which in turn led to the sale of Denham and Pinewood Studios and a severe restriction on the ambitions of the Rank empire. Today the Rank name is best known (outside the UK) for the Rank Cintel, the standard device used for the transfer of film image to videotape.