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Solid Reality. Joseph Arthur Rank is a burly grandfather's-clock of a man, at 59 tick-tock solemn and sure, and rather bumblingly humorous when wound up. He stands 6 ft. 1 in. with his limp brown hair stuck down flat, and bulks a solid 15 stone (210 lbs.). He resembles General de Gaulle, except that he does not share the look of a supercilious camel. His great tired nose droops even lower than De Gaulle's. It curls under just in time to disclose an uncertain mustachelet which changes position with each shave.
"Arthur," says a man who knows him well, "has spent millions for his movie business just to get an emotional outlet." Arthur himself has defined that emotion: "I want nothing of this for myself. . . . I am doing this work for my God and for my country." No one who has seen artless Arthur struggle to assemble these words, like a man worrying boulders to a wall, can doubt that he means them.
Like many a Yorkshireman, he is a Methodist and pledged to temperance. But he is not stuffy about others' drinking, and has even been known to wax convivial on lime juice and ginger ale.
Only once in his life, when he was 42 and seriously ill, have his lips touched hard liquor. The doctor pried his teeth apart and forced some brandy down his throat to stimulate his heart. Arthur immediately revived, sat up and spat. "If I had been a drinker," he now says, "the brandy would have had no effect on me. By never drinking, my life was saved by drinking. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
In spite of what one associate calls his "appalling virtues," almost everyone likes him. He has some manly vices. He chainsmokes cigarets and munches his way through a good 100 pounds of expensive chocolates a year. He even gambles (for small stakes) at bridge and golf. He plays golf in the low 80s, and is one of the best bird shots in Britain.
He usually golfs on the private approach course on his 300-acre estate at Reigate, Surrey. There, beside the golf course, stands an imposing establishment: a 35-room Georgian house, 20 cottages, swimming pool, tennis courts, a stable, and kennels housing 200 of the best Labradors and pointers in England.
Boy Gets Girl. This is the home of Arthur Rank, his wife, Nell, and one daughter, Ursula, 27. (The other daughter, Mrs. Fred Packard, lives in Hollywood.) "The Rank love story," sigh friends, "is one of the most beautiful ever told." The Ranks are, in fact, two exceedingly happy multimillionaires. They are inseparable. Nell, who has contributed her millions and her shrewd advice to her husband's moviemaking, accompanied him to the U.S.
On Sundays in the country Rank drives five miles to the Reigate Methodist Church (in wartime he cycled to save petrol) to teach his Sunday-school class. The Reverend J. Eric Dixon does not consider Arthur an unmixed blessing. "The press," he snorts, "is always down here badgering us. That's why it's such a bad Sunday school." But the children climb all over the teacher. Chirped little Peter Robinson: "He's a real smasher, he is."