General Film Company

File:Locked Heart poster.jpg (1918), starring child actress Gloria Joy and the film's director, Henry King ]]

The General Film Company was a motion picture distribution company in the United States. Between 1909 and 1920, the company distributed almost 12,000 silent era motion pictures. It was created as part of the Edison Trust to monopolize film distribution.{{efn|General Film Company should not be confused with General Film Laboratories, which was formed in 1953 as a film processing company in the Hollywood area.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/los-angeles-evening-citizen-news-general/128077606/ |title=General Film Laboratories Formed, Opens Big Plant |newspaper=Los Angeles Evening Citizen News |location=Hollywood, Los Angeles |page=2 |date=April 6, 1953 |accessdate=July 12, 2023 |via=newspapers.com}}}}

Formation

The General Film Company was formed by the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) in an attempt to monopolize distribution. In 1909, the General Film Company tried to seize the equipment of independent distribution companies to discourage their activities.[http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm The Birth of the Movie and of the Recording Industries] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140407054106/http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm|date=2014-04-07}} page 36, Chapter 2: Creation Under Competition of Against Intellectual Monopoly, Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Cambridge University Press, July 7, 2008, {{ISBN|0-521-87928-0}}

Conflict

Using their control over several film patents, the General Film Company and MPPC tried to force independent distribution companies to sell out or lose their patent licenses.Page 312 of [http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/economicHistory/pdf/wp7003.pdf The decline and fall of the European film industry: sunk costs, market size, and market structure, 1890–1927], Gerben Bakker, The Economic History Review, Volume 58, Number 2, May 2005 , pp. 310-351 (42), Blackwell Publishing Competing organizations, such as the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company, the National Independent Moving Picture Alliance and the Film Service Association, emerged to challenge the trust.[http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/film_history/v019/19.3alvarez.pdf The Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company], Max Joseph Alvarez, Film History: An International Journal, Volume 19, Number 3, 2007, pp. 247-270, Indiana University Press. By 1912, the power of the General Film Company had declined and the U.S. Justice Department started prosecution of the MPPC and the General Film Company under the Sherman Act.{{cite news|author = |title = Orders Movie Trust to be Broken Up|url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1915/10/02/100179164.pdf|date = October 2, 1915|newspaper = New York Times}}

Sold

On March 30, 1918, the General Film Company was sold, along with the MPPC, to the Lincoln & Parker Film Company of Worcester, Massachusetts. Thomas Edison reacquired these assets when the Lincoln & Parker Company went bankrupt and sold them to producer Robert L. Giffen in October 1919.[http://edison.rutgers.edu/chron2.htm#18 Chronology: 1879-1931], [http://edison.rutgers.edu/index.htm Thomas A. Edison Papers], Rutgers University

Notes

References

External links

[https://www.imdb.com/company/co0003282/ General Film Company] at the Internet Movie Database
[https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/general-flimco-and-pushcart-peddlers General Flimco and the Pushcart Peddlers]
[https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/detours-way-hollywood Detours Way Hollywood]