page_title: Film Booking Offices of America
section_title: Notable films and filmmakers
hierarchical_section_title: Film Booking Offices of America / Cinematic legacy / Notable films and filmmakers
caption_attribution_description: English: Film Booking Offices publicity photo for the film Lady Robin Hood (1925), featuring star en:Evelyn Brent (in mask) and en:Boris Karloff
context_page_description: Film Booking Offices of America, also known as FBO Pictures Corporation, was an American film studio of the silent era, a producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. It was founded in 1920 as Robertson–Cole, the American division of a British import–export company formed by the English-born Harry F. Robertson. Robertson-Cole bought the Hallmark Exchanges from Frank G. 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 which 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 Pacific Palisades, 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.
context_section_description: Kennedy had no illusions about his studio's place in the realm of cinematic art. A journalist once complimented him on FBO's recent output: "You have had some good pictures this year." Kennedy jocularly inquired, "What the hell were they?" In her history of RKO, author Betty Lasky points to the pre-Kennedy Broken Laws (1924), directed by Roy William Neill and starring Dorothy Davenport (again billed as Mrs. Wallace Reid) as exemplifying the rare "unforgettable picture of the higher caliber" put out by FBO.
  Among the studio's action movies, one standout production was a 1927 Tarzan picture. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs declared, "If you want to see the personification of Tarzan of the Apes as I visualize him, see the film Tarzan and the Golden Lion with Mr. James Pierce." The Film Daily reviewer wrote that the movie "has a rather new order of thrills and atmosphere that might prove distinctly attractive." The two-reeler West of Hot Dog (1924), according to historian Simon Louvish, contains "one of Stan [Laurel]'s finest gags," involving a level of cinematic technique that bears comparison to Buster Keaton's classic Sherlock Jr.
  Some of the studio's most impressive releases were foreign productions. In 1927, FBO picked up for U.S. distribution a celebrated Austrian biblical spectacular made three years earlier: Die Sklavenkönigin (The Slave Queen, aka Moon of Israel) had already won its director, Michael Kertész, a job with Warner Bros. In Hollywood, he would change his name to Michael Curtiz. Una Nueva y gloriosa nación (1928), the most successful film in the history of Argentine silent cinema, was shot in Hollywood and distributed in the United States by FBO as The Charge of the Gauchos.
  One of the two cinematographers of Una Nueva y gloriosa nación was Nicholas Musuraca, who established his career at Film Booking Offices. With RKO, Musuraca would become one of Hollywood's most respected cinematographers.
  Among FBO's other offscreen talent, the best known director to work regularly at the studio was Ralph Ince, younger brother of famous filmmaker Thomas H. Ince. Pulling double duty on occasion, Ralph Ince starred in four of the fourteen films he made for FBO. One production in which Ince served in both capacities was particularly well received: Chicago After Midnight (1928) was described by the New York Times as "[a]n unusually well-acted and adroitly directed underworld story." After The Mistress of Shenstone, Henry King directed two more R-C films with Pauline Frederick, also in 1921: Salvage and The Sting of the Lash. Tod Browning directed two Gothic Pictures specials in 1924 starring Evelyn Brent: The Dangerous Flirt and Silk Stocking Sal.
  From 1921 to 1924, William Seiter directed a half-dozen FBO releases, some produced directly for the studio, others independently. Between 1922 and 1926, Emory Johnson produced and directed at least eight films for FBO. Historian William K. Everson has pointed to Seiter and Johnson as two of the overlooked directorial talents of the silent era.
  Screenwriter Frances Marion, who would win two Oscars in the 1930s, penned ten of the FBO pictures starring her husband, Fred Thomson. Editor Pandro S. Berman, son of a major FBO stockholder, cut his first film for the studio at the age of twenty-two; he would go on to renown as an RKO producer and production chief. Famed RKO costume designer Walter Plunkett was also an FBO graduate.
caption: A masked Brent in the title role of Lady Robin Hood (1925), directed by Ralph Ince.[61] Her cowering foe is played by Boris Karloff, who appeared in six FBO pictures between 1925 and 1927.
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