After a decade of Michael Powell and the quota regulations, the potential had gone out of British production companies. On the other hand the film industry was booming. Throughout the 1930s, audiences continued to grow. There were funds now pouring into the exhibition side of the business which remained profitable and miraculously so, during the Great Depression. Gaumont-British and Associated British Cinemas respectively became highly lucrative circuits and were organized as large vertical combines, with their own production, renting and exhibition branches.
Gaumont-British Picture Corporation run by the Ostrer family, was comprised of three companies : the Gaumont and Gainsborough studios in London, a nationwide film distribution network and the Gaumont-British cinema circuit. Come the year 1929, the company would control close to 300 cinemas throughout England. The chief competitor was ABC, fronted by a reputed megalomaniac - John Maxwell, who later tired to wrest control of Gaumont-British from the Ostrer family(Maurice, Mark and Isadore ). By the onset of the 1930's, ABC possessed around ninety cinemas, the successful British International Pictures studio at Elstree and the distribution firm - Wardour Films. In the winter of 1933, the company was reorganized as the Associated British Picture Corporation and by 1938 it had increased its number of cinemas to three-hundred and twenty-five.
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| A little free press for Oscar |
Another major film exhibitor was the energetic and affable Oscar Deutsch, whose chain of Odeon cinemas was built up over the course of a decade; his first cinema having been built at Perry Barr, Birmingham in 1930. A new approach to urban planning in the Thirties, would create large suburbs which contained ideal sites for the new Odeons. These cinemas were broadly uniform in their functional art-deco appearance and created a modern brand image for the circuit.
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| The Odeon, golden-age style |
By 1937, Odeon merged with County Cinemas to form a circuit of two-hundred and fifty cinemas and had first call on all United Artists as well as Korda films. At this juncture, Odeon was now the third circuit in size and worth a then astronomical six-million pounds as a company. Towards the end of the year 1939, the Odeon board was enlarged to include two members of the new General Cinema Finance Corporation, one of them was the future mogul - J. Arthur Rank.