General Film Distributors (GFD), later known as J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors and Rank Film Distributors Ltd., was a British film distribution company based in London. It was active between 1935 and 1996, and from 1937 it was part of the Rank Organisation. General Film Distributors was created in 1935 by the British film distributor C. M. Woolf (1879–1942) after he had resigned from Gaumont British and closed his distribution company Woolf & Freedman Film Service.The Independent 1 July 1999: Obituary: Sir John Woolf
Retrieved 2011-09-02 In 1936, J. Arthur Rank and the paper magnate Lord Portal, convinced him to make it a daughter company to their General Cinema Finance Corporation, which just had acquired the British distribution rights for all

Universal Pictures Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Americ ...

titles (by buying a large chunk of Universal in the US). One year later it became the cornerstone in The Rank Organisation. General Film Distributors kept its own name within the Rank Organisation until 1955, when it was renamed J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors, which in turn was renamed Rank Film Distributors Ltd. in 1957. Rank Film Distributors was acquired by

Carlton Communications Carlton was a British media company. It was led by Michael P. Green and listed on the London Stock Exchange from 1983 until 2 February 2004, when it was bought by Granada plc in a corporate takeover to form ITV plc. Carlton shareholders gained ...

in 1997 and closed. It was C.M. Woolf's secretary who devised the man-with-a-gong trademark which was adopted by the Rank Organisation when it was founded in 1937. Athletes who played the Gongman in the film sequence over the years, included boxer Bombardier

Billy Wells William Thomas Wells, better known as Bombardier Billy Wells (31 August 1889 – 12 June 1967), was an English heavyweight boxer. Fighting under the name "Bombardier Billy Wells", he was British and British Empire Champion from 1911 un ...

and wrestler Ken Richmond. Also, George Francis Moss Snr played the Gongman. During the 20 years General Film Distributors had its original name, the company distributed over 450 mainstream films.IMDb: General Film Distributors (GFD)
Retrieved 2012-10-31 A British DVD distributor, active since 2005, uses the same name but is unrelated to this company.

References

External links

Francis Donald Klingender, Stuart Legg: ''Money Behind the Screen'' (1937), pages 37-41
Retrieved 2012-10-31 {{Cinema of the United Kingdom Film distributors of the United Kingdom