Joseph is reported to have told his son Arthur that he was "a dunce at school" and that the only way that he could succeed in life would be in his father's flour mill.

J. Arthur ventured on his own with Peterkins Self-Raising Flour, but when that business failed he returned to work for his father.

Rank was a devout member of the Methodists and in his middle age he taught at Sunday School to which he began to show religious films.

Rank took up the challenge and via an introduction by a young film producer named John Corfield, he discussed both the problem and a solution with Lady Yule of Bricket Wood.

The first commercial production by this company was Turn of the Tide (1935), a film based upon a 1932 novel by Leo Walmsley called Three Fevers.

Some commercial screens began showing Turn of the Tide as a second feature, but this was not enough exposure for the company to make a profit.

Having first created a film production company and having made a movie at another studio, Rank, Lady Yule and John Corfield began talking to Charles Boot who had recently bought the estate of Heatherden Hall at Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, for the purpose of turning it into a movie studio that would rival those in Hollywood.

From the 1950s, fewer adventurous film projects were attempted and Rank concentrated on producing solidly commercial ventures, mainly aimed at the family market.

[7] As of July 2020[update] there are three chairpersons of the organisation: Rank's son-in-law, Robin Cowen, and his grandsons Fred Packard and Joey Newton.

There are two Rank Prizes, and the Funds also recognise, support and foster excellence among young people in the two fields of nutrition and optoelectronics.

Fred was one of the founders of the Brazilian investment banking firm Banco Garantia, along with Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicuperia.

J. Arthur Rank's name was parodied on the PBS children's educational TV show The Electric Company as "J. Arthur Crank" (voiced and later performed by Jim Boyd), a character wearing a plaid shirt, suspenders and a porkpie hat, who was in a perpetually cranky mood (hence his name)[14] whenever he interrupted sketches to complain when spellings or pronunciations confused him or when he was mistaken for someone else.