Pathé Newsreels were produced from 1910 until the 1970s, when production of newsreels was in general stopped. Pathé News today is known as British Pathé and its archive of over 90,000 reels is fully digitised and online.
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British Pathé is one of the oldest names in the motion picture industry. Its roots lie in 1890s Paris when the company was founded as Société Pathé Frères (Pathé Brothers Company) by Charles Pathé who pioneered the development of the moving image. Charles Pathé was a dynamic personality who was directly responsible for the rapid growth of the young motion picture industry and the discovery of many of its major artists. In fact, employees of the early Pathé company in America composed a veritable Who's Who in the motion picture industry. British Pathé was later established in London in 1902 and by 1910 it had opened its first building in Wardour Street, London. In 1895, Charles Pathé adopted the national emblem of France, the cockerel, as the trademark for his company.
The newsreels were shown in the cinema and in the early days they were silent, they ran for about four minutes and were issued biweekly. Even though during the early days the camera shots were taken from a stationary position, the Pathé newsreels captured events such as the suffragette Emily Davison being killed when she threw herself under the King’s Horse at the 1913 Derby.
During the First World War, the cinema newsreels were called the Pathé Animated Gazettes and for the first time this provided newspapers with competition. After 1918, British Pathé started producing a series of Cinemazines where the Newsreels were much longer and more comprehensive. After 1928, sound was introduced and by 1930, British Pathé were covering news, entertainment, sport, culture and women’s issues through programmes including the Pathétone Weekly, the Pathé Pictorial, the Gazette and Eve’s Film Review.
In 1947, the film assets of the successor companies of Pathé News, Inc. were purchased by Warner Brothers from RKO Radio Pictures, which had acquired them in 1931. Warners, as had RKO before them, continued to produce the theatrical newsreel Pathé News Film Library. Warners also produced a series of 38 theatrical short subjects, and 81 issues of the News Magazine of the Screen series, which added to the Pathé film properties and are now part of the company's extensive film library.
In 1956, Warner Bros. discontinued the production of the theatrical newsreel and sold the Pathé News film library, the 38 theatrical short subjects, the Pathé News Magazine of the Screen, the crowing rooster trade mark and the copyrights and other properties to Studio Films, Inc. — shortly thereafter named Pathé Pictures, Inc. — which subsequently relinquished the name and film properties of both companies to Pathé News, Inc.
Voiceover talent consisted of Bob Danvers-Walker, Dwight Weist, Dan Donaldson, André Baruch, and Clem McCarthy, among others. 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).
Pathé eventually stopped producing the cinema newsreel in 1970 as they could no longer compete with television, however, the library lived on. Over its 80 year lifetime, it accumulated over 3,500 hours of filmed history, 90,000 news items and 12 million stills.
In 2002, partially funded by the National Lottery, the entire archive was digitised.
British Pathé produced a number of programmes and series as well as newsreels, such as Pathé Eve and Astra Gazette. In 2010 BBC Four reversioned the 1950s Pathé series Time To Remember, which was narrated by the actor Stanley Holloway,[1] and broadcast it as a thematic 12-part series.[2]
In May 2010 The Guardian was given access to the British Pathé archive, hosting topical videos on their website guardian.co.uk.[3]
In November 2010 The Daily Mail gave its readers free DVDs of the seven part British Pathé series A Year To Remember: The War Years. The series comprised seven discs, each focusing on a different year from 1939–1945.[4]
From March 2010, British Pathé relaunched its archive as an online entertainment site, making Pathé News a service for the public as well as the broadcasting industry.[5]
In August 2011, British Pathé launched a YouTube channel. [6]