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Producers Distributing Corporation

From Alfawiki
Producers Distributing Corporation
Company typePrivate
IndustryFilm distribution
Founded1924
FounderJeremiah Millbank, Cecil B. DeMille (partner)
Defunct1927
FateMerged into Pathé Exchange; assets later absorbed by RKO Radio Pictures
Headquarters
Culver City, California
,
United States
Key people
Cecil B. DeMille (proprietor, leading creative force), Jeremiah Millbank (financier)
ProductsFilm distribution

Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC) was a short-lived film distribution enterprise in Hollywood, founded in 1924 and ceasing operations by 1927. The company’s leading creative force and proprietor of its Culver City production lot was the renowned director Cecil B. DeMille.

Corporate history

The origins of PDC trace back to film industry innovator William Wadsworth Hodkinson, who established Paramount Pictures in 1912. Toward the end of 1924, Hodkinson divested one of his underperforming distribution firms to Jeremiah Millbank, a wealthy financier known for his conservative political stance. Millbank then formed a partnership with DeMille, rebranding the enterprise as Producers Distributing Corporation. As part of this investment, Millbank acquired the former Thomas H. Ince Culver Studios, notable for its main structure modeled after Mount Vernon.

In March 1927, PDC combined forces with the modest Pathé Exchange studio, which was under the influence of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) theater chain. Early in 1928, Joseph P. Kennedy, who owned the Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) studio, assumed control over KAO. Later that year, RCA, under general manager David Sarnoff, aimed to advance its new RCA Photophone sound-on-film technology by acquiring and merging KAO and FBO to establish RKO Radio Pictures. Kennedy maintained authority over Pathé, which possessed PDC’s assets including the Culver City studios, before selling Pathé to RKO in January 1931 and subsequently departing from the motion picture industry.

It is important to note that PDC bears no relation to the similarly named company founded by Ben Judell in 1939 that later became the Poverty Row studio Producers Releasing Corporation, nor is it connected to the Producers Distribution Agency created in 2010 by John Sloss and Bart Walker.

Filmography

References

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