British newsreel producer (1910?1970)
Pathe News
was a producer of
newsreels
and
documentaries
from 1910 to 1970 in the
United Kingdom
. Its founder,
Charles Pathe
, was a pioneer of moving pictures in the silent era. The Pathe News archive is known today as "
British Pathe
". Its collection of news film and movies is fully digitised and available online.
[1]
History
[
edit
]
Its roots lie in 1896
Paris
,
France
, when
Societe Pathe Freres
was founded by
Charles Pathe
and his brothers. Charles Pathe adopted the national emblem of France,
the cockerel
, as the trademark for his company. After the company, now called Compagnie Generale des Establissements Pathe Frere Phonographes & Cinematographes, invented the cinema newsreel with
Pathe-Journal
. French Pathe began its newsreel in 1908 and opened a newsreel office in
Wardour Street
,
London
in 1910.
The newsreels were shown in the cinema and were silent until 1928. At first, they ran for about four minutes and were issued fortnightly. During the early days, the camera shots were taken from a stationary position but the Pathe newsreels captured events such as
Franz Reichelt
's fatal parachute jump from the
Eiffel Tower
and suffragette
Emily Davison
's fatal injury by a racehorse at the 1913
Epsom Derby
.
During the
First World War
, the cinema newsreels were called the
Pathe Animated Gazettes
, and for the first time this provided newspapers with competition. After 1918, British Pathe started producing a series of cinemazines, in which the newsreels were much longer and more comprehensive. By 1930, British Pathe was covering news, entertainment, sport, culture, and women's issues through programmes including the
Pathetone Weekly
, the
Pathe Pictorial
, the
Gazette
and
Eve’s Film Review
.
In 1927, the company sold British Pathe (both the feature film and the newsreel divisions) to
First National
. (French Pathe News continued until 1980, and the library is now part of the
Gaumont-Pathe
collection.) Pathe changed hands again in 1933, when it was acquired by British International Pictures, which was later known as
Associated British Picture Corporation
.
[2]
In 1958, it was sold again to
Warner Bros.
and became Warner-Pathe. Pathe eventually stopped producing the cinema newsreel in February 1970
[3]
as it could no longer compete with television. During the newsreels' run, the narrators included
Bob Danvers-Walker
,
Dwight Weist
, Dan Donaldson,
Andre Baruch
and
Clem McCarthy
among others.
Digitisation
[
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]
The library itself was sold with Associated British Picture to
EMI Films
and then others, including
The Cannon Group
(which split the feature film and newsreel divisions) and the
Daily Mail and General Trust
, before relaunching in its own right in 2009.
[4]
The feature film division is now part of
StudioCanal
and is no longer connected with
Pathe
, the French film company and the original parent of British Pathe. In 2002, partially funded by the UK
National Lottery
, the entire archive was digitised. The British Pathe archive now holds over 3,500 hours of filmed history, 90,000 individual items and 12 million stills. On 7 February 2009, British Pathe launched a
YouTube
channel of its newsreel archive.
[1]
From March 2010, British Pathe relaunched its archive as an online entertainment site, making Pathe News a service for the public as well as the broadcasting industry.
[5]
In May 2010,
The Guardian
was given access to the British Pathe archive, hosting topical videos on its website.
[6]
In May 2012, British Pathe won the
FOCAL International Award
for Footage Library of the Year.
[7]
In April 2014, British Pathe uploaded the entire collection of 85,000 historic films to its YouTube channel as part of a drive to make the archive more accessible to viewers all over the world.
[8]
[9]
As of 2024, the British Pathe YouTube channel had 1.3 billion views and 3.09 million subscribers.
[
citation needed
]
By 2020, the British Pathe archive now includes material from the
Reuters
historical collection. Additionally, as historically the British Pathe newsreels covered events in the island of Ireland, while it was variously part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Northern Ireland, the Irish Free State, and later a Republic, that part of the archive was shared with the
Irish Film Institute
's
Irish Film Archive
, curated as
The Irish Independence Film Collection
. This also resulted in a more accurate cataloguing of the locations, people, and the historical context, than the UK office would have historically had.
Television use
[
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]
British Pathe produced a number of programmes and series as well as newsreels, such as
Pathe Eve
and
Astra Gazette
. In 2010,
BBC Four
reversioned the 1950s Pathe series
Time To Remember
, which was narrated by the actor
Stanley Holloway
,
[10]
and broadcast it as a thematic 12-part series.
[11]
BBC News
continues to use extracts in its coverage of various events, such as Windrush, and World War II.
Name changes
[
edit
]
British Pathe has been known under the following names:
- C.G.P.C. (1910?1927)
- First National-Pathe (1927?1933)
- Associated British-Pathe/RKO-Pathe (1933?1958)
- Warner-Pathe (1958?1970)
- British Pathe News (1990?1995)
- British Pathe (since 1995)
Pathe News in America
[
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]
The U.S. version of
Pathe News
, which began in 1911 as
Pathe Weekly
, was no longer associated with the British version and Pathe Freres' other newsreels around the world after 1921, when Pathe Freres' American subsidiary,
Pathe Exchange
, was spun off as an independent business.
RKO Radio Pictures
acquired the twice-weekly
Pathe News
along with most of the rest of the Pathe Exchange assets in 1931, rebranding it
RKO Pathe News
. In 1947,
Warner Bros.
purchased the newsreel from RKO, rebranding it in turn as
Warner Pathe News
. Warner also produced a series of 38 theatrical short subjects and 81 issues of the
News Magazine of the Screen
series, which added to the Pathe film properties and were part of the company's extensive film library. Producer/editor
Robert Youngson
was primarily responsible for these series and won two
Academy Awards
for them.
In 1956, Warner Bros. discontinued the production of the theatrical newsreel and sold the Pathe News film library, the 38 theatrical short subjects, the
Pathe News Magazine of the Screen
, the crowing rooster trademark and the copyrights and other properties to Studio Films, Inc.?shortly thereafter named Pathe Pictures, Inc.? At this time, the new owners, Barnett Glassman, Samuel A. Costello and Joseph P. Smith acquired ownership and subsequently re-branded the name and film properties of both companies to Pathe News, Inc.
A 50% interest in the Pathe News Film Library was sold to Sherman Grinberg in 1958. The Sherman Grinberg Film Library licensed the marketing rights to the Pathe News Film Library. Pathe News, Inc retained the sole exclusive right to sell the library. The series of 38 theatrical short subjects and 81 issues of the
News Magazine of the Screen
series,
Milestones of the Century
, the
Men of Destiny
series,
Showtime at the Apollo
, as well as many other titles are marketed by Historic Films Archive, LLC.
In 2016, the children of Joseph P. Smith, acquired 100% of the stock. Today, Pathe News, Inc. is a family-owned private company.
Other U.S. newsreel series included
Paramount News
(1927?1957),
Fox Movietone News
(1928?1963),
Hearst Metrotone News/News of the Day
(1914?1967),
Universal Newsreel
(1929?1967) and
The March of Time
(1935?1951).
See also
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References
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External links
[
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]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Pathe News
.
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