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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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J. Arthur Rank
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(1882–1972, baron 1957)
Entrepreneur responsible for two very different enterprises, each of which has developed into one of Britain's largest companies. He was son of a Yorkshire flour miller, Joseph Rank, who began the family business in a rented windmill in Hull in 1875. The firm was already large by the time Arthur Rank succeeded his elder brother as chairman in 1952; but Rank built it up enormously (in his own seventies and eighties), and acquired in 1962 two other long-established flour companies. The result is the present Ranks Hovis McDougall.
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The more famous side of Rank's life came about almost accidentally. He was a devout Methodist, and in 1933 he founded the Religious Film Society to spread the gospel on celluloid. The society's first film won a prize (The Turn of the Tide 1935) but Rank found it impossible to get distribution; his response was to buy a West End cinema to show it in. Irritated that American films dominated British screens, he joined the board of a new film production company, British National, and became one of the founders in 1935 of Pinewood Studios, about 27km/17m northwest of London (intended as Britain's answer to Hollywood, it is still in use today).
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In 1941 Rank acquired control of the Odeon Theatre group and of the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. In the decades since then the majority of Britain's cinemas have been called either Odeon or Gaumont, though the Gaumonts have been phased out in recent years.
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