Connection
Film Booking Offices of America
If you like this company, let us know!
Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) (also known as FBO Pictures Corporation) was an American film studio of the silent era, a producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films that were sometimes well-made. The business began in 1918 as Robertson-Cole (U.S.), the American division of a British import–export company and Robertson-Cole was formed by the English-born Harry F. Robertson and the American Rufus Sidman Cole. Robertson-Cole bought the Hallmark Exchanges (formerly the Mutual Exchanges that became known as Exhibitors-Mutual Exchanges) from Frank J. Hall in 1920. Exhibitors-Mutual/Hallmark had distributed Robertson-Cole product, and acquiring the exchanges gave them the right to distribute their own films plus Hall's product, with the exception of Charlie Chaplin reissues he had the rights to.
Robertson-Cole initiated movie production in the United States in 1920. That year, it incorporated Robertson-Cole Studios, Inc. and bought 460 acres in Santa Monica, California to establish a studio. The property, which became known as the "R.C. Ranch", enabled Robertson-Cole to centralize movie production, which previously had been scattered. The movie company had relied on equipment rentals to produce motion pictures. Two years later, a corporate reorganization led to the company's new name, with FBO becoming the official name of the distributing operation and Robertson-Cole Pictures Corp. the name of the production operation. In 1923, the studio contracted with Western actor Fred Thomson, who would soon emerge as one of Hollywood's most popular stars. Thomson was just one of numerous screen cowboys with whom FBO became identified.
The studio, whose core market was America's small towns, also put out many romantic melodramas, non-Western action pictures, and comedic shorts. In 1926, financier Joseph P. Kennedy led a group that acquired the company. In June 1928, using RCA Photophone technology, FBO became only the second Hollywood studio to release a feature-length "talkie." A few months later, Kennedy and RCA chief David Sarnoff arranged the merger that created RKO, one of the major studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Best films
(1921)Filmography of Film Booking Offices of America (125 films)
Distribution
Add to a movie list
Her Purchase Price (1919)
Directed by Howard C. Hickman
Origin USA
Actors Bessie Barriscale, Alan Roscoe, Joseph J. Dowling, Kathlyn Williams, Irene Rich, Henry Kolker
Bonds of Honor (1919)
Directed by William Worthington
Genres Drama
Actors Sessue Hayakawa, Tsuru Aoki (青木 鶴子), Marin Sais, Dagmar Godowsky, Herschel Mayall
Mickey (1918)
, 1h33Directed by James Young, F. Richard Jones
Origin USA
Genres Drama, Comedy, Comedy-drama
Actors Mabel Normand, George Nichols, Minta Durfee, Wheeler Oakman, Laura La Varnie, Lew Cody
Mickey (Normand), an orphan brought up by miners in a mining settlement, unexpectedly finds herself in a triangle through no fault of her own after being sent to New York City to live with her aunt.