the accompanying feature. O'Hara would become an FBO mainstay, as would Alberta Vaughn, who specialized in shorts: most of her films were two-reelers, a measure of film length indicating a running time of fifteen to twenty-five minutes. (Many feature films of the era were no more than five reels.) H.C.S. Thomson of Graham's, already chairman of the board, became the business's managing director with the departure of Powers. Before leaving the board in 1924, Kennedy put together a major distribution and production deal between FBO and leading Western star Fred Thomson. B. P. Fineman became the studio's production chief that year; Evelyn Brent, his wife, moved over from Fox to become FBO's top dramatic star. In April 1925, FBO vice-president Joseph I. Schnitzer signed Thomson to a new contract paying him $6,000 a week—roughly $ in dollars. Behind only the enormously popular Tom Mix, Thomson was now the second-highest paid of all cowboy actors; his horse, Silver King, beloved by audiences, was covered by a $100,000 insurance policy. The deal also gave Thomson his own dedicated production unit at the studio. In December 1925, the Exhibitors Herald published its first annual list of the biggest box office films of the preceding year (ending November 15) based on a national survey of theater owners. FBO's top five attractions were led by A Girl of the Limberlost, an adaptation of a novel by bestselling author Gene Stratton-Porter, who had died the previous December; this was followed by Broken Laws, an issue-driven melodrama detailing the dire consequences of not spanking naughty children, and three Fred Thomson "oaters": The Bandit's Baby, The Wild Bull's Lair, and Thundering Hoofs. As a distributor, Film Booking Offices focused on marketing its films to small-town exhibitors and independent theater chains (that is, those not owned by one of the major Hollywood studios). As a production company, it concentrated on low-budget movies, with an emphasis on Westerns, action films, romantic melodramas, and comedy shorts. From its first productions in early 1920 through late 1928, just before it was dissolved in a merger, the company, as either Robertson-Cole Pictures or FBO Pictures, produced more than 400 features. The studio's top-of-the-line movies—"specials", in industry parlance—aimed at major exhibition venues beyond the reach of most FBO films, were sometimes marketed as FBO "Gold Bond" pictures. Between 1924 and 1926, seven of Evelyn Brent's star vehicles as well as two other high-end films