Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: "F&B/CECO/SOS"

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Topic: "F&B/CECO/SOS"

Michael Zelazny
Film Handler

Posts: 1
From: Howard, PA, USA
Registered: Jun 2017

posted 12-14-2018 11:23 AM

I recently bought a head/highhat with a label on it "F&B/CECO/SOS". I'm unfamiliar with the companies except for the idea that CECO might be the modern International Cinema Equipment Company, before they went international? In any case, the head has small servos attached to it with bent pins. Would anyone recognize this head or be able to tell me more about it/ the branding?

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Mark Ogden
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 943
From: Little Falls, N.J.
Registered: Jun 99

posted 12-14-2018 12:07 PM

F & B Ceco was a long-time camera equipment sales and rental company in New York City and Hollywood, they also operated sound stages for rent. Their stages on 10th Avenue and 55th Street in New York were very busy, it's where the interiors from The Exorcist were shot. They were taken over by Camera Mart and later by Sony, the first few years of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire were made there. They were torn down awhile back, there is a CVS drug store there now.

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Paul H. Rayton
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 210
From: Los Angeles, CA , USA
Registered: Aug 2003

posted 12-14-2018 05:10 PM

The SOS you see in the brand name was, in full, "SOS Photo-Cine-Optics", a New York City-based dealer of motion picture equipment, back in the 1950s and 1960s. (They may have started earlier, in the 1940s, but I don't have any solid info.) SOS, as it was called for short, sold all manner of cine equipment: cameras, printers, projectors, dubbing & editing equipment, projector lamp carbons, reels, etc. They were big enough to also open a Hollywood "branch".

I had indirect dealings with them in approx. 1961 - 1962, when they were chosen as the designated supplier for a new college auditorium in the northeast US. It was to be a multi-purpose room, i.e. also for lectures and concerts, but also including 35mm & 16mm film. My boss at the time had had some previous dealings with SOS, so they had the inside track for the job (and got it.) I was pretty young at the time and couldn't assess how good was their work, but the machines ran OK for the first year while I was there, so that was a good beginning.

The other acronym in that nameplate you showed in your photo, CECO, stands for "Camera Equipment Company". That was another supplier of cinema equipment, with offices in NY and L.A. (and maybe more?)

I've lost track of the chronology of these various companies, but they gradually got bought / sold / or merged together until all three were part of that one company whose name is on that hi-hat & head of your photo. Whether they were subsequently bought out by International Cinema Equipment in Florida, I can't tell you.

I did a brief web search of SOS Photo-Cine-Optics and was turning up mostly a hodgepodge of small bits of used equipment, replacement lamps, and other stuff, but no particular history of that company. More searching could be done. The same for CECO. There were various buyouts and bankruptcies over the years, and I suppose one might find more details by reading the pages of one of the trade journals like "Variety" from those years. I did see that International "merged with" Magna-Tech in 1998, so there's one predecessor company that's now part of International.

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