Celebrity Productions

Patrick Anthony "Pat" Powers (8 October 1869 – 30 July 1948) was an Irish businessman who was involved in the movie and animation industry of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. He was born in Waterford, Ireland and immigrated to America when he was a teenager. According to the Buffalo Courier-Express obituary dated August 1, 1948, Powers was considered a native Buffalonian. His sister, Mary Ellen Powers, lived in Buffalo for her entire life.

Powers partnered with Joseph A. Schubert, Sr. and sold phonographs from 1900-07. In 1907, they formed the Buffalo Film Exchange, which purchased films from producers and rented them to nickelodeons. In 1910, Powers left Buffalo for New York City, where he founded the Powers Motion Picture Company, also billed in the credits of his movies as "Powers Picture Plays". Early examples of the Powers studio's films include The Woman Hater (1910) with Violet Heming, Pearl White, and Stuart Holmes.

In 1912, Powers' company merged with Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP) film company and others to create Universal Pictures. He served as treasurer of the Universal Motion Picture Company.

Between the 1922 reorganization of Film Booking Office of America and October 1923, Powers, as one of the company's new American investors, was effectively in command. Powers had previously led his own filmmaking company, part of the multiple merger that created Universal Pictures in 1912. Powers apparently changed the name of Robertson-Cole/FBO to the Powers Studio for a brief period, though there is no record of the company ever having produced or released a film under that banner. In 1928, Joseph P. Kennedy and RCA head David Sarnoff merged FBO and the Keith-Albee-Orpheum theater circuit to form RKO Radio Pictures.

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