Grand National Films Inc.
film production company
Grand National Films, Inc (or Grand National Pictures, Grand National Productions and Grand National Film Distributing Co.) was an American independent motion picture production-distribution company in operation from 1936 to 1939. The company had no relation to the British Grand National Pictures (although the British firm used the American company's logo).
History and releases
Edward L. Alperson, a film exchange manager, founded Grand National in 1936 on the basis of First Division Pictures, of which he was on the board of directors. What United Artists was to major independent producers, Harry F. Thomas's First Division was to low-budget producers: a convenient releasing outlet for individual pictures, and successful within its own market. Its feature-length releases, usually produced by Mayfair Pictures, Willis Kent, or Bernard B. Ray, were split between westerns, mysteries, "problem" melodramas, and action fare. First Division was also the original distributor of The March of Time, short-subject documentaries that were well received during their first year of production (1935); RKO took over the series after four installments.
In April 1936, Alperson took over First Division's film exchanges, existing product line, and contracts. The First Division name had become associated with low-budget productions, so Alperson renamed the company Grand National Film Distributing Company, aiming to release higher-grade features for independent theaters, just like fellow upstart Republic Pictures. By the summer, he had begun development of a California-based production entity, Grand National Productions, sharing the production facilities of comedy-shorts company Educational Pictures. By October, he had his first original films ready for release.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as film production company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3113674. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1936, 1939 and 1935.
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This entry incorporates text from “Grand National Films Inc.” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.