Film Booking Offices of America
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Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) was an American film studio of the silent era, a producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. Founded in 1920 as Robertson–Cole (U.S.), the American division of a British import-export company, a corporate reorganization led to its new name in 1922. In 1926, Joseph P. Kennedy led a group that acquired the studio. He was the company's president through autumn 1928, when it was part of the merger that created the major studio RKO.
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[edit] Business history
The company that would become FBO began as the Hollywood-based production subsidiary of the British importer, exporter, and film distributor Robertson–Cole. R-C Pictures, as it was sometimes known, had already entered the American film distribution market, forging an alliance with Exhibitors Mutual Distributing, a corporate descendant of the Mutual Film studio, in 1919.[1] The first of R-C's own feature productions to be released was The Wonder Man, directed by John G. Adolfi and starring Georges Carpentier, which debuted May 29, 1920. With its move into production, Robertson–Cole established a 13.5-acre studio in L.A.'s fortuitously named Colegrove district, then adjacent to but soon to be subsumed by Hollywood.[2] The first official Robertson–Cole production shot at the studio was a February 1921 release, The Mistress of Shenstone, directed by Henry King and starring Pauline Frederick. In 1922, Robertson–Cole underwent a major reorganization; the flagship U.S. operation changed its name to Film Booking Offices of America, a banner under which R-C had previously released more than a dozen independent productions.[3] The company, still under majority British ownership, operated primarily as a distributor of independent and foreign films—at the height of its activity (1923–28), it released an average of more than ninety features and shorts a year, including its own. As a production company, Film Booking Offices concentrated on low-budget movies, with an emphasis on Westerns; from 1923 forward, the company produced approximately 330 films, about 60 percent as FBO Pictures and the remainder as Robertson-Cole Pictures (a few higher-end productions of 1924–25 were made under the rubric of Gothic Pictures). The first official FBO feature production, released in June 1923, was Divorce, directed by Chester Bennett and starring Jane Novak and John Bowers.
As far back as 1921, the British owners of the studio had entered into a working relationship with Joseph P. Kennedy. The father of the future president was then a broker at the New York banking firm of Hayden, Stone, as well as the owner of Maine–New Hampshire Theatres, a small chain of movie houses.[4] Though he failed then to arrange the sale the studio's general partners were looking for, in 1923 Kennedy—now a fully independent businessman—joined the FBO board of directors. Before leaving the board the following year, Kennedy put together a major production deal between FBO and leading Western star Fred Thomson.[5] Kennedy subsequently formed his own group of investors and traveled to England in August 1925 with an offer to buy a controlling stake in Film Booking Offices for $1 million. The bid was initially rejected, but in February 1926, FBO's owners decided to take the money; the studio was now Kennedy's and in March he moved to Hollywood to focus on running it. Even as he appointed Edwin King as the studio's new production chief, Kennedy took a personal hand in guiding the company creatively as well as financially.[6] In short order, Kennedy brought stability to FBO, making it one of the most reliably profitable outfits in the minor leagues of the Hollywood studio system. If Westerns remained the studio's backbone, as Kennedy put it, "Melodrama is our meat."[7]
The advent of sound film would drastically alter the studio's course: Negotiations that began in late 1927 with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) on a deal for sound conversion led to RCA purchasing a major interest in FBO in January 1928. Four months later, as part of a strategy conceived with RCA head David Sarnoff, Kennedy acquired control of Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO), a vaudeville exhibition chain with over seven hundred theaters across the United States. On June 17, 1928, FBO's Perfect Crime, directed by Bert Glennon and starring Clive Brook and Irene Rich, debuted. It was the first feature-length "talkie" to appear from a studio other than Warner Bros. since the epochal premiere of Warners' The Jazz Singer eight months before. The film, which went into general release on August 4, had been shot silently; using RCA's sound-on-film Photophone system, the dialogue was dubbed in afterward—a process then known as "synthetic sound."[8] On August 22, Kennedy signed a contract with RCA for live Photophone recording; more importantly, he also tendered the company an option to buy his governing share of FBO. By October 23, 1928, RCA had acquired all of Kennedy's stock in both Film Booking Offices and KAO and announced it was merging the two companies to form the new motion picture studio Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO), with Sarnoff as chairman.[9] William LeBaron, the last FBO production chief, retained his postion after the merger, but the new studio, dedicated to full sound production, cut ties with most of FBO's roster of silent-screen performers. Movies that Film Booking Offices had either produced or arranged to distribute were released under the FBO banner through the end of 1929. The last official FBO production to reach American theaters was Pals of the Prairie, directed by Louis King and starring Buzz Barton and Frank Rice, released July 1, 1929.
[edit] Cinematic legacy
The majority of FBO/Robertson-Cole pictures were produced at low cost, during either the silent era or the transitional period of the conversion to sound cinema; over 90 percent of the studio's silent productions are thought to be lost, with no copies now known to exist. Consequently, many of FBO's star actors are barely remembered today: Pauline Frederick was the major headliner of the early R-C days; Evelyn Brent was FBO's most prized star. Warner Baxter, Joe E. Brown, and young Frankie Darro were among the other prominent FBO players. Anna Q. Nilsson starred in two of the studio's larger productions, as did Olive Borden; Ralph Lewis headlined a number of FBO pictures, both in-house productions and movies by independent producer-director Emory Johnson. The studio's cowboy stars included Harry Carey, Tom Tyler, Fred Thomson, Bob Custer, Bob Steele, teenager Buzz Barton, and the renowned Tom Mix, toward the end of his years as a box-office draw. Two of the studio's most popular Western headliners were dogs: Strongheart and Ranger.
In its earlier years, the studio did not hesitate to take advantage of scandal sheet–worthy events for movie conception and promotion. After the death of celebrated actor Wallace Reid, brought on by morphine addiction, his widow, Dorothy Davenport, signed on as producer and star of a cinematic examination of the sins of substance abuse: Human Wreckage, released by FBO in June 1923, five months after Reid's death, featured Davenport as the wife of a noble attorney turned dope fiend.[10] When the biggest movie star in the world, Rudolph Valentino, split from his wife, Natacha Rambova, she was swiftly enlisted by the studio to costar with Clive Brook in the sensitively titled When Love Grows Cold (1925).[11] Under Kennedy's control, studio production shifted away from provocative fare in an attempt to brand the studio's films as suitable for the "average American" and the entire family: "We can't make pictures and label them 'For Children,' or 'For Women' or 'For Stout People' or 'For Thin Ones.' We must make pictures that have appeal to all."[12]
At present, the best regarded FBO picture is the studio's fourth "talkie" and one of its last productions before the RKO merger—The Circus Kid, directed by George B. Seitz and starring Darro, Brown, and Poodles Hanneford, which was released in October 1928. One Minute to Play (1926), produced under the Robertson–Cole rubric and directed by Sam Wood, is well thought of by those few alive who have seen it, perhaps largely because it marks the film debut of football great "Red" Grange.[13] Offscreen, the best known director to work regularly at FBO was Ralph Ince, younger brother of the famous Thomas H. Ince; pulling double duty on occasion, he starred in four of the fourteen films he made for the studio. Nicholas Musuraca, who would become one of Hollywood's most respected cinematographers with RKO, established his career at Film Booking Offices. Editor Pandro S. Berman, son of a major FBO stockholder, cut his first film for the studio at the age of twenty-two; he would go on to renown as an RKO producer and production chief. Famed RKO costume designer Walter Plunkett was also an FBO graduate.
Many sources (including Douglas Crafton, cited herein) give FBO's full name incorrectly as "Film Booking Office of America"; the proper name is Film Booking Offices of America, as can be verified by reference to multiple versions of the company's official logo (remarkably, even this source misstates the name throughout the accompanying text).
[edit] Notes
- ^ Goodwin (1987) describes Robertson–Cole as an "American motion picture firm" (p. 341), which was certainly true in a functional way after a certain point, but Jewell (1982) makes clear that the company was founded in Britain and that its American operations were run by Britishmen through 1922 (p. 8). As Goodwin and Jewell concur, majority ownership of FBO remained in British hands until 1926.
- ^ See Finler (1988), p. 12, for a map showing the FBO studio (later owned by RKO, Desilu, and now CBS Paramount Television) in relation to the other main Hollywood production facilities. Finler misidentifies Melrose Ave., which runs east-west along the south of the studio, as "Beverly Boulevard." Gower St. runs north-south along the studio's western side.
- ^ Jewell (1982) notes that between the 1922 establishment of FBO and October 1923, one of the company's American investors, P. A. Powers, was effectively in command and "even changed the name to The Powers Studio for a short time" (p. 8). There is no record of the studio ever having produced or released a film under that banner. Confoundingly, Crafton (1997) writes that the business Joseph Kennedy purchased in 1926 was "a small Hollywood studio, Robertson-Cole, and its New York distributor, Film Booking Office (FBO)" (p. 136). This is incorrect, even aside from the misspelling of FBO's name; Film Booking Offices was the primary studio identity from 1922 forward. Crafton's nomenclature is belied by his own earlier listing of the significant U.S. film production companies of the mid-1920s, among which he names "Film Booking Office (FBO)," not Robertson–Cole (p. 68).
- ^ Goodwin (1987), p. 342.
- ^ JFK Library/Joseph P. Kennedy (#136) see "Biographical Note."
- ^ Goodwin (1987), pp. 342–344. Crafton (1997) misleadingly implies that Kennedy immediately installed William LeBaron as production chief after his takeover of FBO (p. 136). In fact, as Jewell (1982) describes, King was the first head of production named by Kennedy, with LeBaron assuming the job in 1927 (p. 9).
- ^ Quoted in Goodwin (1987), p. 348.
- ^ Crafton (1997), pp. 140, 304.
- ^ While all other latter-day published sources give October as the date of the merger, Crafton (1997) states, "The new holding company, Radio-Keith-Orpheum, was formed on 21 November 1928" (p. 142).
- ^ Schaefer (1999), p. 224.
- ^ Goodwin (1987), p. 341.
- ^ Quoted in Goodwin (1987), p. 347.
- ^ The assessment of The Circus Kid as "[a]t present, the best regarded FBO picture" is based on its evaluation by members of IMDb.com. A Power Search of all FBO productions was performed, with the instruction to "[d]isplay first 100 highest rated movies matching all other criteria." Of the three movies this focused search produced, The Circus Kid was easily the best known and the highest rated. A similar search was performed on Robertson-Cole (two results, with One Minute to Play receiving half as many votes but a rating equal to that of The Circus Kid) and Gothic Pictures (zero results). Searches performed 10/20/06. See also the contemporary New York Times reviews of The Circus Kid and One Minute to Play.
[edit] Sources
[edit] Published
- Crafton, Donald (1997). The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926–1931 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons). ISBN 0-684-19585-2
- Finler, Joel W. (1988). The Hollywood Story (New York: Crown). ISBN 0-517-56576-5
- Goodwin, Doris Kearns (1987). The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (New York: Simon & Schuster). ISBN 0-671-23108-1
- Jewell, Richard B., with Vernon Harbin (1982). The RKO Story (New York: Arlington House/Crown). ISBN 0-517-54656-6
- Schaefer, Eric (1999). "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959 (Durham and London: Duke University Press). ISBN 0-8223-2374-5
[edit] Online
- John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum/Joseph P. Kennedy (#136) descriptive summary of material from the inventory of the late president's papers
[edit] External links
- The Silent Films of FBO Pictures comprehensive listing of silent films produced by FBO/Robertson–Cole and released between 1925 and 1929—see also The Early Sound Films of Radio Pictures for FBO sound productions released in 1928 (the list does not clearly indicate the several FBO sound productions released in 1929); both part of Vitaphone Video Early Talkies website
