British International Pictures

From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki

Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC), originally British International Pictures (BIP), was a British film production company active from 1927 until 1970. The company was founded by John Maxwell after he had purchased British National Studios and their Elstree Studios complex, renaming the company British International Pictures. In their early years the company's most prominent work was that done by Alfred Hitchcock, including his 1929 feature "Blackmail", which is commonly regarded as being the first British "talkie".

Hitchcock left the company in 1933. After the Second World War, the company signed a deal with Warner Brothers for the distribution of its films in the United States, and this led it to change its name to Associated British Picture Corporation. The company was to produce much of its best and most well-remembered work under this name in the 1950s, including films such as "The Dam Busters" (1954) "Ice Cold in Alex" (1958).

In 1955, ABPC also became the parent company of a new British ITV television franchise contractor, Associated British Corporation, which held the commercial television licence for broadcasting to the Midlands at the North of England at weekends. This company later became Thames Television, and although it lost its broadcasting franchise in 1992 still exists in the form of the talkbackTHAMES independent production company.

During the 1960s, however, the fortunes of the film company slumped, and in 1969 it was purchased by EMI. The following year it was renamed EMI Films, under which title it was still an active concern in the film industry until 1990.