Product Details
Certificate TypeCommon StockDate IssuedFebruary 10, 1938 (green)
May 2, 1940 (maroon)CanceledNoPrinterCentral Bank Note CompanySignaturesMachine printedApproximate Size11 1/2" (w) by 7 1/2" (h)Additional DetailsNA
Historical Context
As early as 1900, the French company Pathé, the largest and most successful film studio in the world at the time, distributed its films in the United States. In 1904, it launched an American subsidiary, Pathé Company, based in Buffalo, New York.
In 1909, Pathé was asked to join the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). As a result, Pathé utilized MPPC's General Film Company distribution company to distribute its films.
Beginning in 1914, the Pathé Frères' film production studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey produced the successful serialized episodes, The Perils of Pauline. Pathé stopped all production in the US by 1914 and in 1915 re-incorporated Pathé Company to Pathé Exchange.
Financial problems forced the company - acquired in 1921 by Merrill Lynch banking interests - to sell its American producing and distributing business to RKO in 1931, which became RKO Pathé.
Left over from Pathé Exchange, among other assets, was a laboratory - the oldest in the country - acquired in August 1935 by its newly reorganized successor, Pathé Film Corporation, with Robert R. Young, future railroad magnate, a major factor in the enterprise.
With the formation of Pathé Film Corporation, the company acquired control of Harry H. Thomas’ First Division Exchanges, Inc. which had become heavily indebted. Pathé then organized a holding company for its production and distribution activities, First International Pictures, Inc. which owned the majority of First Division’s stock.
First Division was dissolved into a new Pathé-sponsored producing and distributing organization in April 1936, Grand National Films, Inc. With mounting losses, however, Pathé had liquidated its GN holdings by November 1936, concentrating instead on its laboratory operation at Bound Brook, New Jersey, established by the original Pathé in 1907.
To keep its plant busy, Pathé supplied a $200,000 loan to aid Monogram’s reformation in 1937, and received a substantial share of its stock—sold back in mid-1941 - along with a five-year printing contract. Lab work was Pathé’s bread and butter, the company outputting 51.5 million feet of film in 1936 and 78.7 million feet in 1937. A second lab opened in mid-1938.
RKO’s agreement with Pathé Film Corp. reportedly did not allow it to enter into production or distribution under its own name until January 1936, after the expiration of a five-year pact. Income from Pathé’s film rentals in 1936 almost rivaled its film developing and printing, but the company withdrew in earnest from distribution - never under the Pathé name - by year’s end.
In February 1939 the wholly-owned assets of Pathé Film Corporation, including its Monogram stock, became part of a new company, Pathé Laboratories, Inc. which by January 1940 had three plants, excluding a 35% interest in a lucrative Dupont lab inherited from Pathé Exchange, Inc. in 1935 and still held by the Pathé Film Corporation. The latter, disposing of its Dupont stock to its namesake, was dissolved in December 1941.
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