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ABC Cinemas
ABC Cinemas (Associated British Cinemas) was a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. Originally a wholly owned subsidiary of Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), it operated between the 1920s and the 1980s. The brand name was reused in the 1990s until 2000.
ABC Cinemas was established in 1927 by solicitor John Maxwell by merging three smaller Scottish cinema circuits. It became a wholly owned cinema subsidiary of British International Pictures when it was merged with the production arm of British National Pictures Studios, which had been formed by Maxwell in 1926.
During the 1930s, it grew rapidly by acquisitions and an ambitious building programme under the direction of chief architect W. R. Glen, who had been appointed in about 1929 and maintained a distinct house style. It acquired First National Pathé Limited which gave it trading connections to First National Pictures in the United States. Existing cinemas which could not be re-modelled were usually operated as separate circuits. In 1937, the parent company, BIP was renamed Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC). ABC also ran cinemas under the Ritz brand such as the Ritz Cinema, Muswell Hill.
After he died in 1940, his widow Catherine sold a large number of shares to Warner Bros., who eventually became the largest shareholders and able to exercise control, though ABPC was separately quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
By 1945, it operated over 400 cinemas (usually called the Savoy or Regal) and was second only to Rank's Odeon and Gaumont chains. By the close of the 1950s, ABC had started rebranding most cinemas as ABC and dropped names like Regal. UK exhibition was characterised by alignments between distributors and exhibitors. ABC had access to Warner Brothers, MGM and its own ABPC productions, whereas rival Rank had 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Walt Disney, Columbia, Universal, United Artists and its own productions. Rival ABC, Odeon and Gaumont cinemas in a town showed their own releases and barred each other from showing the same film.
Television led to a sharp decline in cinema audiences after 1952, though with the coming of commercial television from 1955 ABPC had expanded into the new medium with the creation of ABC Television Limited, which gained the Independent Television contracts for the North of England and Midlands at the weekend. ABC-TV lost its franchises in 1968 and was merged with Rediffusion to become Thames Television.
As a result of the decline, many suburban ABC theatres closed. Most of those remaining began, from the late 1950s to lose their individual names and were simply branded "ABC". In 1959 Rank abandoned the separate Odeon and Gaumont release and put the best cinemas from each circuit onto a new Rank release. The remaining cinemas were given a new "national" release but this was unattractive to distributors and in 1961 Paramount switched to ABC after refusing a "national" release for the Dean Martin comedy All in a Night's Work. The "national" release soon ended entirely and there were in future just ABC and Odeon release patterns. In 1967, Seven Arts, the new owners of Warner, decided to dispose of its holdings in ABPC and subsequently EMI launched a successful take-over bid for the company. Associated British Picture Corporation was later to be renamed Thorn-EMI Screen Entertainment Ltd, although the cinema chain retained its name. In 1986, this was later divested by EMI to the Australian businessman Alan Bond who sold the EMI film/cinema assets a few days later to the Cannon Group for a reported £50 million profit in seven days. EMI retained ABPC's lucrative television interests. Eventually, the advent of largely American-owned multiplexes led to the end of barring and the old distributor alignments, which had in any case been rendered largely irrelevant by cinema closures often leaving only one cinema in a town, which had access to all films but usually had to give precedence to its traditional alignment (so an Odeon might have a poor "Rank" release in its biggest screen and a big "ABC" release in a small cinema and vice versa).
In the 1940s, ABC set up the first major Saturday cinema club for children, "The ABC Minors". At the beginning of each Saturday morning session, the "ABC Minors Song" would be played to the tune of 'Blaze Away' by Abe Holzmann (1874–1939), whilst the lyrics were presented on the screen with a bouncing red ball above the words to help the audience keep the place.[citation needed]
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ABC Cinemas
ABC Cinemas (Associated British Cinemas) was a cinema chain in the United Kingdom. Originally a wholly owned subsidiary of Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), it operated between the 1920s and the 1980s. The brand name was reused in the 1990s until 2000.
ABC Cinemas was established in 1927 by solicitor John Maxwell by merging three smaller Scottish cinema circuits. It became a wholly owned cinema subsidiary of British International Pictures when it was merged with the production arm of British National Pictures Studios, which had been formed by Maxwell in 1926.
During the 1930s, it grew rapidly by acquisitions and an ambitious building programme under the direction of chief architect W. R. Glen, who had been appointed in about 1929 and maintained a distinct house style. It acquired First National Pathé Limited which gave it trading connections to First National Pictures in the United States. Existing cinemas which could not be re-modelled were usually operated as separate circuits. In 1937, the parent company, BIP was renamed Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC). ABC also ran cinemas under the Ritz brand such as the Ritz Cinema, Muswell Hill.
After he died in 1940, his widow Catherine sold a large number of shares to Warner Bros., who eventually became the largest shareholders and able to exercise control, though ABPC was separately quoted on the London Stock Exchange.
By 1945, it operated over 400 cinemas (usually called the Savoy or Regal) and was second only to Rank's Odeon and Gaumont chains. By the close of the 1950s, ABC had started rebranding most cinemas as ABC and dropped names like Regal. UK exhibition was characterised by alignments between distributors and exhibitors. ABC had access to Warner Brothers, MGM and its own ABPC productions, whereas rival Rank had 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Walt Disney, Columbia, Universal, United Artists and its own productions. Rival ABC, Odeon and Gaumont cinemas in a town showed their own releases and barred each other from showing the same film.
Television led to a sharp decline in cinema audiences after 1952, though with the coming of commercial television from 1955 ABPC had expanded into the new medium with the creation of ABC Television Limited, which gained the Independent Television contracts for the North of England and Midlands at the weekend. ABC-TV lost its franchises in 1968 and was merged with Rediffusion to become Thames Television.
As a result of the decline, many suburban ABC theatres closed. Most of those remaining began, from the late 1950s to lose their individual names and were simply branded "ABC". In 1959 Rank abandoned the separate Odeon and Gaumont release and put the best cinemas from each circuit onto a new Rank release. The remaining cinemas were given a new "national" release but this was unattractive to distributors and in 1961 Paramount switched to ABC after refusing a "national" release for the Dean Martin comedy All in a Night's Work. The "national" release soon ended entirely and there were in future just ABC and Odeon release patterns. In 1967, Seven Arts, the new owners of Warner, decided to dispose of its holdings in ABPC and subsequently EMI launched a successful take-over bid for the company. Associated British Picture Corporation was later to be renamed Thorn-EMI Screen Entertainment Ltd, although the cinema chain retained its name. In 1986, this was later divested by EMI to the Australian businessman Alan Bond who sold the EMI film/cinema assets a few days later to the Cannon Group for a reported £50 million profit in seven days. EMI retained ABPC's lucrative television interests. Eventually, the advent of largely American-owned multiplexes led to the end of barring and the old distributor alignments, which had in any case been rendered largely irrelevant by cinema closures often leaving only one cinema in a town, which had access to all films but usually had to give precedence to its traditional alignment (so an Odeon might have a poor "Rank" release in its biggest screen and a big "ABC" release in a small cinema and vice versa).
In the 1940s, ABC set up the first major Saturday cinema club for children, "The ABC Minors". At the beginning of each Saturday morning session, the "ABC Minors Song" would be played to the tune of 'Blaze Away' by Abe Holzmann (1874–1939), whilst the lyrics were presented on the screen with a bouncing red ball above the words to help the audience keep the place.[citation needed]