General Film Distributors

Credits

Editions by
Michael Kenchington, Jesse Coffey

Background

General Film Distributors was founded in 1935 by British distributor C. M. Woolf, who had resigned from Gaumont British and shut down his Woolf & Freedman Film Service at around the same time. Its Gongman trademark was the creation of Woolf's secretary. In 1936, J. Arthur Rank and the paper magnate Lord Portal made GFD a daughter of the General Cinema Finance Corporation, which had bought a large chunk of Universal Pictures and used its stake in the studio to gain the British rights to that studio's films. A year later, GFD became a cornerstone in the Rank Organisation, which had adopted the Gongman trademark as its own. The name continued to be used until 1955, when the company was rebranded as "J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors"; it was in turn renamed to simply "Rank Film Distributors" in 1957.

1st Logo (January 1937-May 1955)

Visuals: On a backdrop of draped curtains, a shirtless man (Carl Dane) hits a large gong thrice with his mallet. As this happens, the screen zooms up to the gong, and the words "GENERAL FILM DISTRIBUTORS LTD." fade in on the gong, while zooming in.

Technique: A mix of live-action and chroma-keyed camera-controlled animation.

Audio: The three “hits” of the gong.

Availability: Seen on films produced and/or distributed by this company, such as Young and Innocent and Pygmalion, among others.

• This is not known to have appeared on any colour films that Rank distributed before the 1944 Rank logo was introduced, as they usually go straight to the logos of the production companies (like The Archers or Two Cities).
• This logo is also plastered over by the 1999 Carlton International logo on new prints of We Dive at Dawn (1942), though the 2015 UK DVD release of the film from Strawberry Media plasters it with the 2013 ITV Studios Global Entertainment logo instead.
• This likely accompanied British prints of Universal Pictures products from the time period, although most current prints of Universal films are run from domestic copies.

2nd Logo (February 4, 1937-January 12, 1938)

Visuals: Against a grey bullseye background, there is a stylized man similar to the previous logo striking a gong that contains a rounded "GFD" in a metallic style. Underneath is the company's name in white and in a 3D format, which is also in a stacked formation.

Technique: A still illustration.

Audio: The opening theme of the film.

Availability: This was most likely used as a placeholder logo, as this is only known to be seen on London Melody and Sweet Devil.

General Film Distributors

The Rank Organisation ►