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Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on October 12, 2006
Enterprise and Society 2006 7(4):740-776; doi:10.1093/es/khl040
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

"Selling America to the World"? The Rise and Fall of an International Film Distributor in its Largest Foreign Market: United Artists in Britain, 1927–1947

Peter Miskell

PETER MISKELL is a lecturer in business historymember of the Centre for International Business History at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. Contact information: The University of Reading Business School, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AA, United Kingdom. E-mail: p.m.miskell{at}reading.ac.uk.

Few industries are as widely associated with the spread of American values, ideas, and products as the film industry. U.S. firms certainly dominated the global market for feature films, but did they do so simply by "selling America to the world" or was there more to be gained by catering to the diverse tastes of international audiences? This article examines the operations of a leading U.S. film distributor in its largest foreign market. United Artists, like other U.S. firms, was forced to offer a minimum proportion of British films for distribution in the United Kingdom in the 1930s and 1940s. Was this requirement a burden, or were the firm’s British films actually at the heart of its success in the U.K. market?


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