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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.〔(Francis Donald Klingender, Stuart Legg: ''Money Behind the Screen'' (1937), pages 37-41 ) Retrieved 2012-10-31〕〔(The Independent 1 July 1999: Obituary: Sir John Woolf ) Retrieved 2011-09-02〕 In 1936, J. Arthur Rank and the paper magnate Lord Portal,〔(James Chapman: ''Past and Present - National Identity and the British Historical Film'' ), page 114 - Retrieved 2012-10-30〕 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 titles (by buying a large chunk of Universal in the US).〔(Geoffrey Macnab: ''J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry'' (1994) ), pages 21-23 - Retrieved 2012-10-31〕 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,〔(BFI: General Film Distributors ) Retrieved 2011-09-02〕 which in turn was renamed Rank Film Distributors Ltd. in 1957.〔(BFI: Rank Film Distributors ) Retrieved 2012-10-30〕 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.〔 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== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「General Film Distributors」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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