Film Booking Offices of America

The R-C years

The company that would become FBO began as Robertson-Cole, an importer, exporter, and motion picture distributor with headquarters in London and New York, founded in 1918 by Englishman Harry F. Robertson and American Rufus S. Cole. The company handled American-made trucks, cars, automobile accessories, and Bell & Howell motion picture equipment; its initial film distribution focus was on the Northern European, South Asian, and Latin American markets. From its U.S. office, R-C Pictures, as it was often branded, started American motion picture distribution late in 1918, purchasing film rights from independent production companies and selling them on to Exhibitors Mutual Distributing, a corporate successor of the Mutual Film studio. In November, R-C contracted to serve as the sole provider to Exhibitors Mutual, and its first acquisitions were released the following month. For its top-of-the-line "product", it purchased the movies of star actor Sessue Hayakawa, whose films were produced by his own company, Haworth Pictures Corporation. Other companies also made films expressly for R-C distribution: B.B. Features, Jesse D. Hampton Productions, National Film Corporation, Winsome Stars. To accompany its features, Robertson-Cole also acquired a wide variety of serials and other shorts, from Supreme Comedies with Harry Depp and Teddy Sampson to a biweekly series, On the Borderland of Civilization, filmed by adventurer Martin Johnson. Late in 1919, independent motion picture producer Frank Hall acquired Exhibitors Mutual and integrated it into his new Hallmark Exchanges. In January 1920, Robertson-Cole purchased Hallmark, securing the capacity to directly distribute the films to which it owned rights, including the in-house productions then being planned.

In March, the inaugural "convention of the branch managers and field supervisors of the Robertson-Cole Distributing Corporation" was announced. The company currently boasted a slate of twenty-five movies in theaters around the country, with its top films co-branded "Superior Pictures". The first R-C feature productions began to appear, including The Third Woman that same month, directed by Charles Swickard and starring Carlyle Blackwell and Louise Lovely, and The Wonder Man, directed by John G. Adolfi and starring boxer Georges Carpentier, which had a premiere on May 29 and went into general release in July. With its move into production, Robertson-Cole needed its own filmmaking studio: in June, it acquired a lot around fifteen acres (six hectares) in size in Los Angeles's fortuitously named Colegrove district, then adjacent to but soon to be subsumed by Hollywood. For exterior shoots, the company purchased 460 acres in Santa Monica, to be known as the "R-C Ranch". In September, contracts were signed for the construction on the Colegrove property of an administration building with a massive neoclassical façade and eight stages, each occupying nearly a third of an acre. The first film to shoot at the facility, while it was still being built, was the independent production Kismet (1920), directed by Louis J. Gasnier. With the West Coast operation up and running, Hayakawa's production company was absorbed into Robertson-Cole.

Rufus Cole also entered into a working relationship with Hallmark investor Joseph P. Kennedy, father of future U.S. president John F. Kennedy and then a broker at the New York banking firm of Hayden, Stone. In December, after lengthy negotiations, Kennedy set up his own wholly owned company, Robertson-Cole Distributing Corporation of New England, to handle the business's films in an area where he had a controlling interest in a regional theater chain (though it was locked out of Massachusetts by the leading exhibitors). In February 1921, the movie heralded as Robertson-Cole's first "official" production came out: The Mistress of Shenstone, directed by Henry King and starring Pauline Frederick, a former headliner with Famous Players–Lasky and Goldwyn Pictures. At the same time, the business was $5 million in debt from the L.A. studio purchase and draining money—banks were reluctant to issue lines of credit to any but the biggest film companies, and R-C was forced to pay interest rates as high as 18 percent to so-called bonus sharks to access working capital. The company's primary investor, the Graham's of London firm, turned to Kennedy to find a buyer, giving him a seat on the R-C board, paying him a monthly adviser's fee, and promising a sizable commission. Though he failed to arrange the sale Graham's was looking for (and his own offer to buy 25 percent of the business was turned down), Kennedy would become deeply involved with the studio in the coming years.

A new identity

In 1922, Robertson-Cole underwent a major reorganization as the company's founders departed. The flagship U.S. distribution business changed its name to Film Booking Offices of America, a banner under which R-C had released more than a dozen independent productions. The West Coast studio operation continued to make films under the Robertson-Cole name for some time, but FBO ultimately became the primary identity of the business for production as well as distribution. Between May 1922 and October 1923, one of the company's new American investors, Pat Powers, was effectively in command. Powers had previously led his own filmmaking company, part of the multiple mergers that created the large Universal studio in 1912. During his time in charge at FBO, his brand was added to many of its films: "P. A. Powers Presents". Among its outside suppliers of the period were Chester Bennett Productions, Hunt Stromberg Productions, and Tiffany Productions. While Kennedy left the board in July 1923 (and sold back his New England franchise for a sizable profit), he leveraged his friendship with top screenwriter Frances Marion and her husband, accomplished athlete, ordained minister, and neophyte actor Fred Thomson, to help arrange a distribution deal between FBO and Thomson for half a dozen independent Westerns. An in-house series of boxing-themed shorts, Fighting Blood, starring FBO newcomer George O'Hara, grew so popular it was often billed above the accompanying feature. O'Hara would become an FBO mainstay, as would Alberta Vaughn, who specialized in shorts: most of her films were two-reelers, a measure of film length indicating a running time of fifteen to twenty-five minutes. (Many feature films of the era were no more than five reels.)

H.C.S. Thomson of Graham's, already chairman of the board, became the business's managing director with the departure of Powers. B. P. Fineman was hired as the studio's production chief in 1924; Evelyn Brent, his wife, moved over from Fox to become FBO's top dramatic star. Fred Thomson's fame was surging, and in April 1925, FBO vice-president Joseph I. Schnitzer signed him to a studio contract paying $6,000 a week—roughly $110,152 in 2025 dollars. Behind only the enormously popular Tom Mix, Thomson was now the second-highest paid of all cowboy actors; his horse, Silver King, beloved by audiences, was covered by a $100,000 insurance policy. The deal also gave Thomson his own dedicated production unit at the studio. In December 1925, the Exhibitors Herald published its first annual list of the biggest box office films of the year (ending November 15) based on a national survey of theater owners. FBO's top five attractions were led by A Girl of the Limberlost, an adaptation of a novel by bestselling author Gene Stratton-Porter, who had died the previous December; this was followed by Broken Laws, an issue-driven melodrama detailing the dire consequences of not spanking naughty children, and three Fred Thomson "oaters": The Bandit's Baby, The Wild Bull's Lair, and Thundering Hoofs.

As a distributor, Film Booking Offices focused on marketing its films to small-town exhibitors and independent theater chains (that is, those not owned by one of the major Hollywood studios). As a production company, it concentrated on low-budget movies, with an emphasis on Westerns, action films, romantic melodramas, and comedy shorts. From its first productions in early 1920 through late 1928, just before it was dissolved in a merger, the company, as either Robertson-Cole Pictures or FBO Pictures, produced more than 400 features. The studio's top-of-the-line movies—"specials", in industry parlance—aimed at major exhibition venues beyond the reach of most FBO films, were sometimes marketed as FBO "Gold Bond" pictures. Between 1924 and 1926, seven of Evelyn Brent's star vehicles as well as two other high-end films were produced under the label of Gothic Pictures or Gothic Productions. With neither the backing of large corporate interests nor the daily money generator of its own theater chain and far from its London owners, the company faced persistent cash-flow difficulties. The significant financial drain of its reliance on short-term, high-interest loans continued.

Kennedy takes command

While still at the Hayden, Stone investment firm, Kennedy had boasted to a colleague, "Look at that bunch of pants pressers in Hollywood making themselves millionaires. I could take the whole business away from them." In 1925, he set out to do so, forming his own group of investors led by wealthy Boston lawyer Guy Currier, Filene's department store owner Louis Kirstein, and Union Stockyards and Armour and Company owner Frederick H. Prince. In August 1925, Kennedy traveled to England with an offer to buy a controlling stake in Film Booking Offices for $1 million. The bid was initially rejected—Graham's and co-financier Lloyd's had poured no less than $7 million into the company—but in February 1926, FBO's owners decided to take the money. From the studio's New York City headquarters, Kennedy swiftly addressed its perennial cash-flow problems, setting up a new business, the Cinema Credits Corporation, to provide FBO with reliable financing at favorable terms. He was elected FBO chairman in March and was soon traveling to Hollywood, where one of his first steps was to cut loose the various independent producers resident at the studio. The president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association, Will Hays—the industry's future censor in chief—was delighted by the new face on the scene; in his eyes, Kennedy signified both a desirable image for the film trade and Wall Street's faith in its prospects. As renowned journalist Terry Ramsaye wrote in Photoplay the following year, Hays had been seeking "to endow the febrile motion picture industry with an atmosphere of Americanism and substantiality. Kennedy is a valuable personality from this point of view. He is exceedingly American" (historian Cari Beauchamp explains the connotation: "not Jewish", in contrast to most of the studio heads). Ramsaye went on to celebrate Kennedy's "background of lofty and conservative financial connections, an atmosphere of much home and family life and all those fireside virtues of which the public never hears in the current news from Hollywood."

Studio chief Fineman departed around the time of Kennedy's purchase to work at the larger First National Pictures. The new owner hired Edwin King away from Famous Players–Lasky's New York studio to replace him, but took a personal hand in guiding the company creatively as well as financially. His brand, "Joseph P. Kennedy Presents", would proceed to appear on over a hundred films. Kennedy soon brought stability to FBO, making it one of the most reliably profitable outfits in the minor leagues of the Hollywood studio system. The focus was on films with Main Street appeal and minimal costs. "We are trying", he declared, "to be the Woolworth and Ford of the motion picture industry rather than the Tiffany." Some stars were less than pleased with Kennedy's penny-pinching; Evelyn Brent, in particular, was troubled by what she saw as FBO's declining production standards and was granted her release. Westerns remained the studio's backbone, along with various action pictures and romantic scenarios; as Kennedy put it, "Melodrama is our meat." Gene Stratton-Porter, then, was the gravy: according to the 1926 Exhibitors Herald survey, The Keeper of the Bees, for which shooting was completed while the novel was still being serialized in McCall's, was the number one picture in the entire country that year. The remainder of FBO's top five comprised, once again, three Fred Thomson pictures, along with another Stratton-Porter adaptation.