Portal:Film/Selected article/23

Film Booking Offices of America (FBO) was an American film studio of the silent era, a producer and distributor of mostly low-budget films. The business began as Robertson-Cole (U.S.), the American division of a British import–export company. Robertson-Cole initiated movie production in 1920; two years later, a corporate reorganization led to the company's new name. In 1923, the studio contracted with Western actor Fred Thomson, who would soon emerge as one of Hollywood's most popular stars. Thomson was just one of numerous screen cowboys with whom FBO became identified. The studio, whose core market was America's small towns, also put out many romantic melodramas, non-Western action pictures, and comedic shorts. In 1926, financier Joseph P. Kennedy led a group that acquired the company. In June 1928, using RCA Photophone technology, FBO became only the second Hollywood studio to release a feature-length "talkie." A few months later, Kennedy and RCA chief David Sarnoff arranged the merger that created RKO, one of the major studios of Hollywood's Golden Age.