Rank Organisation

The Rank Organisation was a British entertainment conglomerate founded by industrialist J. Arthur Rank in April 1937. It quickly became the largest and most vertically integrated film company in Britain, owning production, distribution and exhibition facilities. It also diversified into the manufacture of radios, TVs and photocopiers (as one of the owners of Rank Xerox). The company name lasted until February 1996 when the name and some of the remaining assets were absorbed into the newly structured the Rank Group Plc and in recent years asset stripping and streamlining of the business has left it a shadow of its former self, with all their remaining operating interests now in gambling.

The company logo, the Gongman, first used in 1935 by the group's distribution company General Film Distributors and seen in the opening titles of the films, became an iconic film emblem.

Origin

J. Arthur Rank, born in Kingston upon Hull, UK, 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.

Rank

Rank refers to the relative position, value, worth, complexity, power, importance, authority, level, etc. of a person or object within a ranking. The term includes:

Military

Mathematics

Places

Businesses

Organization

An organization or organisation (see spelling differences) is an entity comprising multiple people, such as an institution or an association, that has a collective goal and is linked to an external environment.

The word is derived from the Greek word organon, which means "organ".

Types

There are a variety of legal types of organizations, including corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, political organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and educational institutions.

A hybrid organization is a body that operates in both the public sector and the private sector simultaneously, fulfilling public duties and developing commercial market activities.

A voluntary association is an organization consisting of volunteers. Such organizations may be able to operate without legal formalities, depending on jurisdiction, including informal clubs.

Organizations may also operate in secret and/or illegally in the case of secret societies, criminal organizations and resistance movements.

Look at Life

Look at Life may refer to:

J. Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank

Joseph Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank (22 December 1888 – 29 March 1972) was a British industrialist who was head and founder of the Rank Organisation.

Family business

Rank was born on 23 December 1888 at Kingston upon Hull in England into a Victorian family environment, which was dominated by his father Joseph Rank who had built a substantial flour milling business. He was educated at The Leys School in Cambridge. Joseph is reported to have told his son Arthur that he was "a dunce at school" and that the only way that he could succeed in life would be in his father's flour mill. J. Arthur ventured on his own with Peterkins Self-Raising Flour, but when that business failed he returned to work for his father. That was the business (Joseph Rank Limited) that he later inherited and which became known as Rank Hovis McDougall (now owned by British food conglomerate Premier Foods).

Religious challenge

Rank was a devout member of the Methodist Church and in his middle age he taught Sunday School to which he began to show religious films. This practice expanded to other churches and schools and it led to his formation of the Religious Film Society to which he then distributed films that he had also made. His first production was called Mastership.