Consolidated Film Industries

Consolidated Film Industries was a film laboratory, and film processing company, and was the leading film laboratory in the Los Angeles area for many decades. CFI processed negatives and made prints for motion pictures and television. The company or its employees received many Academy Awards for scientific or technical achievements.

CFI was incorporated in New York in March 1924 by Herbert Yates. It was reincorporated in Delaware in 1927 by the merger of several earlier companies, including Republic Laboratories, which he bought in 1918, and the Allied Film Laboratories Association, which he formed in 1919.

The prospectus claimed, Consolidated Film Industries, Inc. of Delaware was being incorporated to succeed a Company of a similar name formed in March 1924 under the laws of New York, for developing of motion picture negatives, printing the necessary positives and delivering the positives as instructed by the motion picture producers or distributors, thus rendering an essential service to the motion picture industry. The Company operates six plants, known in the motion picture business as "laboratories," in New York, New Jersey, and California. One of these acquired properties was the Biograph Studios film laboratory facilities in the Bronx, New York.^[1]

Consolidated Film Industries, Inc. was the largest concern of its kind, and is the largest purchaser of motion picture film in the world. The business has been built up on the sound foundation of quality and service at a price, in most instances, below the motion picture producer's own laboratory cost. This low price made possible through the Company's efficient and large scale operations.

Consolidated Film Industries acquired Prizmacolor in 1928, and was acquired by Technicolor, Inc. in 2000.

In movies and television which used the company's color processing, they were typically only referred to by their initials, the credit usually reading "Color by CFI".

For a time in the late eighties CFI was jokingly said to stand for "Can't Find It".

Gladys Baker, the mother of Marilyn Monroe, worked for Consolidated as a negative film cutter; Monroe's biological father is believed to have been fellow Consolidated employee Charles Stanley Gifford.^[2]

Scientific or Technical Academy Awards

• 1957: To Ted Hirsch, Carl Hauge and Edward Reichard of Consolidated Film Industries for an automatic scene counter for laboratory projection rooms. (Class III award)
• 1961: To Carl Hauge, Robert Grubel and Edward Reichard of Consolidated Film Industries for the development of an automatic developer replenisher system. (Class III award)
• 1965: To Sidney P. Solow, Edward H. Reichard, Carl W. Hauge and Job Sanderson of Consolidated Film Industries for the design and development of a versatile Automatic 35mm Composite Color Printer. (Class II award)
• 1965: To Edward H. Reichard and Carl W. Hauge of Consolidated Film Industries for the design of a Proximity Cue Detector and its application to motion picture printers. (Class III award)
• 1965: To Edward H. Reichard, Leonard L. Sokolow and Carl W. Hauge of Consolidated Film Industries for the design and application to motion picture laboratory practice of a Stroboscopic Scene Tester for color and black-and-white film. (Class III award)
• 1969: To Carl W. Hauge and Edward H. Reichard of Consolidated Film Industries and E. Michael Meahl and Roy J. Ridenour of Ramtronics for engineering an automatic exposure control for printing-machine lamps. (Class III award)
• 1969: To Eastman Kodak Company for a new direct positive film and to Consolidated Film Industries for the application of this film to the making of post-production work prints. (Class III award)
• 1971: To Leonard Sokolow and Edward H. Reichard of Consolidated Film Industries for the concept and engineering of the Color Proof Printer for motion pictures. (Class II award)
• 1972: To Producers Service Corporation and Consolidated Film Industries; and to Cinema Research Corporation and Research Products, Inc. for the engineering and implementation of fully automated blow-up motion picture printing systems. (Class III award)
• 1973: To Edward H. Reichard and Howard T. La Zare of Consolidated Film Industries, and Edward Efron of IBM for the engineering of a computerized light valve monitoring system for motion picture printing. (Class II award)
• 1977: To Consolidated Film Industries and the Barnebey-Cheney Company for the development of a system for the recovery of film-cleaning solvent vapors in a motion-picture laboratory. (Class II award)
• 1982: To Leonard Sokolow for the concept and design and to Howard T. Lazare for the development of the Consolidated Film Industries' Stroboscan motion picture film viewer. (Scientific and Engineering Award)

References

1. ^ Tuska, Jon (1999). The Vanishing Legion: A History of Mascot Pictures, 1927-1935. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company. p. 42. ISBN 0-7864-0749-2. 
2. ^ "Marilyn Monroe's Early Life" by Susan Doll HowStuffWorks.com Accessed 24 October 2009