Pathé Exchange, the American branch of the major French studio Pathé Frères and better known simply as Pathé, was a film production and distribution company that emerged during the silent era in Hollywood. At its peak, it held nearly 50% of the American film production and distribution market. Known for its trailblazing newsreel and wide array of shorts, it grew out of the American division of the major French studio Pathé Frères, which began distributing films in the United States in 1904.

Ten years later, it produced the enormously successful The Perils of Pauline, a twenty-episode serial that came to define the genre. The operation was incorporated as Pathé Exchange toward the end of 1914 and spun off as an independent entity in 1921; the Merrill Lynch investment firm acquired a controlling stake. The following year, it released Robert J. Flaherty's groundbreaking documentary Nanook of the North. Other notable feature releases included the controversial drama Sex (1920) and director/producer Cecil B. DeMille's box-office-topping biblical epic The King of Kings (1927/28). During much of the 1920s, Pathé distributed the shorts of comedy pioneers Hal Roach and Mack Sennett and innovative animator Paul Terry. For Roach and then his own production company, acclaimed comedian Harold Lloyd starred in many feature and short releases from Pathé and the closely linked Associated Exhibitors, including the 1925 smash hit The Freshman.

In late 1926, controlling interest in the studio was acquired by investment banker Elisha Walker's Blair & Co. firm, which soon allied it with the Keith-Albee and Orpheum theater chains and in 1928 brought in financier and Hollywood maestro Joseph P. Kennedy to manage it. Under Kennedy, Pathé contracted with RCA Photophone for conversion to sound film and took over the assets of Producers Distributing Corporation, DeMille's former outlet. Finally, in January 1931, the studio was acquired by the much larger RKO Pictures. It continued making features as the semiautonomous division RKO Pathé into 1932, when all feature production was subsumed under the "RKO Radio Pictures" banner; the RKO Pathé unit and brand were maintained for short subjects and the trademark newsreel. The latter was purchased in 1947 from RKO by Warner Bros., which rebranded it Warner Pathé News. RKO Pathé, which in its final decade produced industrials and TV commercials along with theatrical shorts, closed its doors in 1956; Warners ended the newsreel the same year.

Pathé Exchange had survived as a small holding company for the few assets, including an East Coast film lab and a home-movie operation, that RKO had declined to acquire; the business was subsequently reorganized, first as Pathé Film Corporation and ultimately as Pathé Industries. The company reentered the movie production and distribution business for nearly a decade beginning in 1942 with the purchase of Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) and Pathé's subsequent establishment of Eagle-Lion Films. Among the historically significant releases from this period are the film noir Detour (1945, PRC) and the science-fiction film Destination Moon (1950, Eagle-Lion). By 1951, Pathé Industries was out of the motion picture business. In 1961, its successor company, the America Corporation, briefly revived the brand with a distribution subsidiary, Pathé-America. It was sold the following year to Astor Pictures and soon dissolved.

Pathé Frères, founded in 1896 and by the middle of the next decade France's leading film studio, began distributing its films in the United States in 1904. By October 1906, its films commanded as much as 50 percent of the entire U.S. market. In 1908, Pathé Frères was invited to join the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), created by a combine of production firms that aimed to lock up the American market completely. As a result, Pathé utilized MPPC's General Film Company distribution company to release its films. Pathé Frères established production facilities in New Jersey—first in East Bound Brook, then Jersey City—and leased an outdoor spread in Edendale, an L.A. suburb, for the shooting of Westerns. In 1911, the company launched the first ever newsreel produced in the United States, the Pathé Weekly; by early 1914, the renamed Pathé News was coming out five days a week. The year prior, alongside its General Film releases, Pathé also began distributing through the recently founded Eclectic Film Company, in which Pathé Frères was evidently a major investor.

In March 1914, from its studio in Jersey City (with many climactic scenes shot in the nearby film hub of Fort Lee), Pathé Frères entered the market for serials. Its initial such effort, The Perils of Pauline, starring Pearl White and codirected by company veteran Louis Gasnier, was a massive success, with popular demand so great that the original plan for thirteen episodes was extended to twenty and a record-breaking number of release prints were struck to supply exhibitors around the country. Several sequels followed, as the original, in the words of film historian Richard Lewis Ward, "became the hallmark for the genre". As of August 1914, Pathé's American release schedule, aside from its weekday newsreel, encompassed a Perils of Pauline chapter every other Monday, alternating with a "Cartoon Comedy or Comedy and Short Scenic Educational subjects in Natural Colors"; on Tuesdays, a one- or two-reel comedy; and on Wednesdays and Fridays, features of three reels or more. Later in the year, Pathé stopped releasing its films through General Film Company, acquired the Eclectic Film distribution exchanges, and formally incorporated an American subsidiary: Pathé Exchange. Investors Charles Merrill and Edmund Lynch, then just starting their careers, joined the company's board of directors in early 1915.

Released in April 1920, the drama Sex, starring Louise Glaum, was a hit across much of the country, though it caused controversy in some prudish precincts; the Pennsylvania Board of Censors required it be retitled Sex Crushed to Earth for distribution within the state. Pathé Frères cofounder Charles Pathé retired from the presidency of Pathé Exchange in September, and the following year the business was spun off from its French parent company, with a controlling stake acquired by Merrill Lynch. For many years, Pathé was closely associated with the distribution company Associated Exhibitors, which handled independent productions. Among Pathé's independent releases were the influential documentary feature Nanook of the North (1922), the first major commercial success in the genre. Its regular release schedule during this period revolved around its newsreel (now coming out twice a week), the "Pathéserials", cartoons by animator Paul Terry, and comedy shorts from Hal Roach and Mack Sennett. Trailblazing film comedians Laurel and Hardy (Roach), the Our Gang troupe (Roach), and Harry Langdon (Sennett) all first reached movie screens under the "Pathécomedy" banner.

By far Pathé's biggest star of this era, comedian Harold Lloyd, made many shorts for Roach, originally released by Pathé and then, beginning in May 1921, Associated Exhibitors. Lloyd shifted to features with the joint Pathé/Associated Exhibitors release A Sailor-Made Man that December. After four more full-length pictures with Roach—and a return to exclusive Pathé distribution—he launched his own production company with Girl Shy (1924). Following two further Pathé releases, including the massive hit The Freshman (1925), Lloyd departed for the major Paramount studio. Of the six feature films in Pathé Exchange history to reap $1 million or more in North American rentals, five were Lloyd vehicles. In October 1926, the ailing Associated Exhibitors was largely subsumed into Pathé. That same month, Merrill Lynch sold its controlling interest in the studio to fellow New York investment firm Blair & Co., headed by Elisha Walker.