The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment company, eventually a conglomerate, formed during 1937 and folded in 1996 by The Rank Group Plc. It was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities.

The company logo, the Gongman, remains a familiar emblem (and would be parodied at various times, including an episode of Gilligan's Island and Chuck Jones' Bugs Bunny cartoon, "Bunny Hugged").

J. Arthur Rank was already a wealthy industrialist through his father's flour milling business, Joseph Rank Ltd, when he made his somewhat unlikely start in film-making, financing short religious subjects in line with his Methodist beliefs. From these modest origins, the British film company emerged in 1937 as Rank sought to consolidate his film-making interests.

The company grew quickly, largely through acquisition. Significant developments included:

By the late 1940s J Arthur Rank (or the Rank Organisation as it was now called), owned:

Emeric Pressburger (5 December 1902 – 5 February 1988) was a Hungarian-British screenwriter, film director, and producer. He is best known for his series of film collaborations with Michael Powell, in a multiple-award-winning partnership known as The Archers and produced a series of classic British films, notably 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1946, also called Stairway to Heaven), Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948), and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951).

Imre József Pressburger was born in Miskolc, Hungary of Jewish heritage. Pressburger means someone from the town of Pressburg (Pozsony in Hungarian) He was the only son (he had one elder half-sister from his father's previous marriage) of Kálmán Pressburger, estate manager, and his second wife, Kätherina Wichs. He attended a boarding-school in Temesvár, where he was a good student, excelling at mathematics, literature and music. He then studied mathematics and engineering at the Universities of Prague and Stuttgart before his father's death forced him to abandon his studies.