Tweet a question about international distribution

I recently watched an independent western by J P McGowan (with Franklyn Farnum) on Thought Equity, and then The Slave Market with James Cruze and Marguerite Snow with a date of 1921, although it was probably an un- or re-released 1913 or 1914 Thanhouser. So how were the "lesser" films picked up overseas? I assume the bigger production companies had networks or overseas branches, at least for a while. Did they distribute product other than their own? Were the films sold in a package?

Not quite sure what part of distribution you are talking about, but major companies had branches in other lands from the beginning or teamed with others in some countries. MGM, for instance had a deal in UK with Jury's and I have seen MGM posters/lobbys with Jury on them before 1930.

Most majors seemed to have had distribution offices in Australia such as in my city of Melbourne. Mutual had an exchange in the downtown area which was later used by a Sydney newsreel/feature film company, Cinesound, to store their prints of newsreels made in a deal with our lead newspaper(still is but Murdoch-owned now) to make Herald-Sun/Cinesound newsreels. I understood the vault, or whatever it was, was underground and the material was later sent to a city dump. No proof of that.

Universal was here and disitributed local Cinesound features as well. Columbia also had a go with local production putting some money up. Admirable, yes, but then when they took the film(Smith c1946) to America they cut it down and renamed it. It was then little distributed in that country. Regardless of that history tells us Australian films, pre-modern history, got little screen room in Australia as US production took the available screentime. Some distributors leased or owned theaters like Paramount, TCF and MGM or had first release contracts with chains like UK Rank(and bought a share of the chain) with Cinesound's owners who still run theaters in one form or another. Some foreign language versions of American films were made in Europe as companies had production there like Fox Europa. WB, MGM & Universal.

The subject is very involved and I am sure others have details they can add in this forum question.

Major US companies occasionally picked up independent or minor studio films for Australian distribution. This would have been the best bet for an independent producer - the majors tended to have very active regional offices and film exchanges, and the preponderance of block booking meant a guaranteed release. It can be quite odd to see, for example, an advertisement for a patriotically British film plastered with the logo of a prominent US film company.

Robertson-Cole (aka the Film Booking Office) was one smaller US producer/distributor which distributed a good deal of independent and overseas productions in addition to their own low-budget features. They had a pretty solid network in the early 1920s, mainly in regional southern and western Australia.

If an independent producer wasn't able to strike a distribution deal, they would have had a very small chance of a large international release. They may have had a small outside chance by dealing directly with small independent exhibitors, but this would have been the exception to the rule, and an enormous uphill battle on the part of the producer, as the majority of independent exhibitors were either locked into block-booking deals with the major studios or afraid of alienating the exchanges from which they rented their product on a film-by-film basis. In fact, I am not immediately aware of any international company doing this (though for Australian independents, it was virtually the only way to get your film released).

As moviepas said, I'm sure there are others with more in-depth knowledge on this.

west of zanzibar credit.jpg (51.09 KiB) Viewed 132 times

In 1928's West Of Zanzibar, the UK distributor credit Jury-Metro-Goldwyn Ltd. appears underneath "Directed by Tod Browning."