Advanced search
- TITLES
- NAMES
- COLLABORATIONS
Search filters
Enter full date
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
Only includes names with the selected topics
to
or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below
to
1-50 of 453
- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Robert Wiene was born on 24 April 1873 in Breslau, Silesia, Germany [now Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland]. He was a writer and director, known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Das wandernde Licht (1916) and The Knight of the Rose (1925). He died on 17 July 1938 in Paris, France.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Madame Sul-Te-Wan was born on 7 March 1873 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. She was an actress, known for Maid of Salem (1937), In Old Chicago (1938) and Safari (1940). She was married to Robert Reed Conley. She died on 1 February 1959 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Vera Lewis was born on 10 June 1873 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Roaring Twenties (1939), Betty in Search of a Thrill (1915) and Four Daughters (1938). She was married to Ralph Lewis. She died on 8 February 1956 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Director
- Producer
- Writer
The world's first female filmmaker, French-born Alice Guy entered the film business in 1896 as a secretary at Gaumont, a manufacturer of movie cameras and projectors who had purchased a "cinématographe" from its inventors, the Lumiere brothers. The next year Gaumont became the world's first motion picture production company when they switched to creating movies, and Guy became its first film director. She impressed the company so much with the output (she averaged two two-reelers a week) and quality of her productions that by 1905 she was made the company's production director, supervising its other directors. In 1907 she married Herbert Blaché, an Englishman who ran Gaumont's British and German offices. The pair went to the U.S. to set up the company's operations there. In 1910 Mme. Guy set up her own production company, Solax, in New York and with her husband built a studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. After a period of critical and financial success, the couple's fortunes declined when Thomas Alva Edison's trust hindered film production in the East coast, and they eventually shut down the studio in 1919. Although her husband secured work directing films for several major Hollywood studios, Guy was never able to secure any directorial jobs there, never made a film again, most of her films were lost, some were credited to other film directors, and she did no receive recognition for her pioneering work in France and the United States. She returned to France in 1922 after her divorce from Blaché, and in 1964 returned to the U.S. and lived in Mahwah, New Jersey - not far from where her original studios were - with her daughter, where she died in 1968.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
A prolific director--over 700 films, most of them short- or medium-length--Louis Feuillade began his career with Gaumont where, as well as directing his own features, he was appointed artistic director in charge of production in 1907. His work was largely comprised of film series; his first series, begun in 1910 and numbering 15 episodes, was 'Le Film Esthétique', a financially unsuccessful attempt at "high-brow" cinema. More popular was La vie telle qu'elle est (1911), which moved from the costume pageantry of his earlier work to a more realistic--if somewhat melodramatic--depiction of contemporary life. Feuillade also directed scores of short films featuring the characters Bébé and René Poyen. His most successful feature-length serials were Fantômas: In the Shadow of the Guillotine (1913), which chronicled the diabolical exploits of the "emperor of crime," and Les vampires (1915), which trailed a criminal gang led by Irma Vep (Musidora) and was noted for its imaginative use of locations and lyrical, almost surreal style.- Wilbur Mack was born on 29 July 1873 in Binghamton, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Redheads on Parade (1935), Gold and Grit (1925) and The Crimson Canyon (1928). He was married to Constance Purdy and Nella Walker. He died on 13 March 1964 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Director
- Actor
- Producer
Joseph Louis DeGrasse (May 4, 1873 - May 25, 1940) was born into a French Canadian family. He is the son of Lange DeGrasse and Ellen Comeaux of Bathurst, New Brunswick. Joseph is the older brother of actor Samuel DeGrasse. There were 11 siblings. Joe immigrated to the USA around 1880 as a young child. Joseph began his career as a journalist, but soon became enamored of the theater and took work as a stage actor. Joe DeGrasse met and married actress, Ida May Park (1879-1954). By 1910, he and Ida were acting in motion pictures in Burbank, California. Joe eventually appeared as an actor in 13 films, and wrote 2 screenplays, his real interest was in directing. Ida also became one of the few female directors working at the time. In 1915, Joe became a founding member of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a forerunner to the Director's Guild of America. During a career spanning from 1910 to 1935 he directed a total of 86 films, as well as writing and producing. Joseph DeGrasse died in Eagle Rock, California. Family lore contends that there is a link between the DeGrasse brothers and French Admiral and US Revolutionary War hero, François-Joseph Paul, marquis de Grasse Tilly, comte de Grasse, 13 September 1722.- Actor
- Director
- Casting Director
Extremely prolific actor/director of the silent screen, on Broadway from 1905. Hoyt joined the acting fraternity through the recommendations of an uncle, who worked as dramatic editor for a Cleveland tabloid. Signed by theatrical producer George C. Tyler (1868-1946), he began on stage (earning $10 per week), playing up to ten different parts. He made his Hollywood debut in 1916 with Universal. Short, balding and usually bespectacled, he managed to forge a 30-year career by playing a succession of 'little men', be they mild-mannered professors, henpecked husbands or easily intimidated minor officials. Looking perpetually befuddled was Hoyt's stock-in-trade. He was particularly effective as Professor Summerlee in The Lost World (1925) (directed by his younger brother Harry O. Hoyt), as the confused motel owner of It Happened One Night (1934) and as Mayor Tillinghast in The Great McGinty (1940). The better part of Hoyt's screen career, however, consisted of uncredited bits. For his last seven years in the business (1940-47), he was regularly employed as a member of Preston Sturges personal entourage of stock players at Paramount.- Additional Crew
- Director
- Writer
Max Reinhardt was from an Austrian merchant family (surname officially changed from the family name Goldmann to Reinhardt in 1904), and even as a boy, after his family moved to Vienna, he haunted the "Hofburg Theater" and tried to see every play. In 1890 he studied at the Sulkowsky Theater in Matzleinsdorf and started acting in Vienna and later at the "Stadtheater" in Salzburg with duties as an assistant director. But by 1894 he was invited to Berlin by Otto Brahm, director, critic, and theater manager. And that was an important juncture. Brahm had founded the "Free Stage" (1890), a theater company crusading for realism in German theater by providing a forum for so-called banned plays - the iconoclastic works, such as, those of Henrik Ibsen and Leo Tolstoy. The result was the opening of German state theater to the corpus of the modern stage by 1894. Brahm became director of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and there Reinhardt cut his teeth on the full theater experience, not simply acting alone, although he was much applauded for his convincing specialty of playing old men.
In 1901 Reinhardt co-founded his own - sort of avant garde - cabaret "Schall und Rauch" (Sound and Smoke) for experimental theater. It was renamed "Kleines Theater" (Small Theater) in 1902, a place for contemporary plays accented with the sort of spirit confined to cabaret entertainment. He then opened and managed his own theater "Neues Theater", now called the "Berliner Ensemble", from 1902 to 1905. These were all a part of his evolving philosophy of the harmony of stage design, costumes, language, music, and choreography as a whole unified artwork, Gesamtkunstwerk. He was influenced by several figures, August Strindberg for one, but most significantly by Richard Wagner and his operatic ideal that the director must pull together all aspects of art in his production. Reinhardt's infusion gave new dimensions to German theater. After producing more than fifty plays at Neues Theater, wherein he always found somebody to donate the money for productions, he was asked to take the helm of Deutsches Theater in Berlin for Brahm in 1905. At Deutsches Theater he embarked on big theater, employing the whole physical theater space for productions and often even spreading scenes into the audience as a means of fusing actors and audience in a total theater experience. Here was something different - making theater a democratic institution - after all the audience was the means of generating the money to do more. And Reinhardt was never avant garde enough to disdain making profit when it finally came knocking. He staged truly gargantuan productions of epic pageantry and lighting with stark colors for various dramatic effects. He staged one of his most famous early productions, his first rendition of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with a wooded forest revolving stage - turning to reveal progressive new scenes. He became famous for realistic direction of huge crowd and mob scenes.
He built the smaller Kammerspiele, a theater near Deutsches Theater in 1906. At this latter theater Reinhardt developed "Kammerspiel" theater, chamber dramas in a minimalist and naturalistic style. This followed from his expressionist influences which defied the realist dictum (though he would look to realism as well in the mix to appropriately stage some of his most ambitious efforts) and sought out more personal, expressive, and emphatic ways of coaxing the elements of theater from the conventional objective into palpable subjectivity. This all opened Reinhardt to even more experimental ideas in staging with sometimes nightmarish and vivid lighting techniques. He began introducing the expressionist plays to the German-speaking public. And he also opened a famous acting school which would function for decades turning out many of Germany's great actors and actresses. In addition there was a acting troupe that played in neutral areas of Europe during World War I. On the bill was always a cycle of Shakespeare plays. Reinhardt did everything in a big way and to accommodate a growing enthusiastic theater-going public he had expanded with a chain of theaters throughout Germany. He would manage thirty theaters and acting companies in all.
Reihardt fulfilled another of his ideals, and that was of finding the 'perfect playhouse' as a means of complementing the content and experience of a play. In 1919 he opened an enormous arena theater, the "Grosses Schauspielhaus", (Great Playhouse), but known as the "Theatre of the Five Thousand", which included a large revolving stage. Many of his biggest productions were done here, including Shakespeare and Greek plays. In the 1920s he built the two Boulevard Theaters on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. And yet, the privations of post-war Germany and the perennial anti-Semitic undercurrent caused a gradual loss of his big audiences. In 1920 Reinhardt went back to Salzburg and established the Salzburg Festival with composer Richard Strauss and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Annually he enjoyed staging the most apropos of morality plays, the medieval "Everyman", with the biggest set he could muster as a backdrop-the Austrian Alps in the open air before the Salzburg Cathedral. From 1924 he became director of the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna and renewed his Berlin popularity with a new theater called "Komoedie". His output was no less than astounding. Whereas a theater director today would not commit himself beyond two or three productions in a year, Reinhardt averaged twenty in his first twelve years. Between 1916 and 1917 he produced 48 - his highest output. Although he did few films, he was very interested in the potential of the medium. He directed four silent movies starting in 1910. One of these was the filming of one his favorite pantomime plays "The Miracle".
Reinhardt was a titan of influence and inspiration on a whole generation of theater and film directors in Germany-many who spread the word to the rest of the world. His disciples included: F.W. Murnau, Paul Leni, Ernst Lubitsch, William Dieterle , and Otto Preminger. His staging of crowds and use of lighting were frequently appropriated by the great silent filmmakers of the Weimar Republic, including 'Fritz Lang' and Murnau. And he profoundly influenced the expressionist movement in German film. He also influenced many actors with his techniques of developing expressive characterizations and movement-many would eventually come to New York and Hollywood. But by 1933 Hitler had come to power, and Reinhardt found himself falling victim to the same methods of attrition as other German Jews. So-called assimilative families of ethnic mixtures, whether high or low, were increasing placed in the same category as ethnic Jews. His theaters were `appropriated' one-by-one by the government and later his considerable properties confiscated. Later in 1933 he moved back to Austria to the "Theater in der Josefstadt" in Vienna (where Preminger had quickly become a director), hoping his native land could resist the Nazi machine. But the same pressures enveloped him there. He left for a last theater tour of Europe and arrived in America in 1934. "Midsummer" had a special significance for Reinhardt. The play was his continued inspiration of a world without ideologies - a utopia - as the theater itself was a haven from the harsh realities of the world and of the individual. The audience learned something, but they also could steep themselves without taxing imagination in the illusion of theater. "Midsummer" was always a work-in-progress for him - he had staged it twelve times up to 1934, and in fact had already brought it to Broadway in late 1927. And that was not his first trip to the US, having started presenting plays as producer, director, or writer since early 1912 there (he did ten productions in all to 1943).
He came to Hollywood in 1934 with his fame preceding him. His last tour through Europe had included lavish productions in Florence (1933) and a"Midsummer" at Oxford (1934). He offered to do the same in Hollywood at an ideal outdoor stage-the Hollywood Bowl. But the bowl had to go - it was removed to provide a view of a "forest" up the hillside - a "forest" that required tons of dirt hauled in especially for its planting, Reinhardt and his design staff erected a 250-foot wide, 100-foot deep stage. Also included was a pond and a suspension bridge or trestle constructed from the hills in back to the stage to be lined with torchbearers - with real flaming torches - for the wedding procession inserted between Acts IV and V. This lavish production included a ballet corps, children playing faeries, and hundreds of extras. The 18-year-old Olivia de Havilland was at Mills College in Oakland, participating in a school "Midsummer" production where in attendance was none other than Max Reinhardt himself. He was so impressed with her that he picked her for his extravaganza. Along with other Hollywood actors, was 14 year old veteran of the cinema 'Mickey Rooney', added to the cast as Puck. Another new arrival from Austria was classical opera composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, musical collaborator of Reinhardt's from Vienna. Reinhardt cabled his friend to come over and help him by doing the orchestrations of Felix Mendelssohn's famous 1843 music for the Hollywood Bowl production. It was a night to remember - even for Jack L. Warner - who was not always sure of what he was seeing. But it was enough to sign Reinhardt to direct a filmed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) which began shooting in December of 1934. De Havilland was back to start her film career-Rooney for another memorable part. Otherwise, it was new cast headed by Hollywood stars 'Dick Powell' and James Cagney and boasting the best actors from Warner's impressive stock company of players. Since Reinhardt did not know Hollywood filmmaking, Warner assigned a co-director, William Dieterle, Reinhardt's acting then directing protege, from the Deutsches Theater days in Berlin. Dieterle, the disciple, had directed in Germany since 1923 and then came to Hollywood to become one of the studio's most reliable new directors. It was the beginning of Korngold's screen career as a film composer when he was hired to do the film score, an arrangement based on Mendelssohn's music used at the Bowl. But he actually mixed in much more of a variety of the composer's music to fit the play. Warner's laid down 1.5 million dollars and had its top technical staff step up to the challenge. But all-most of all, Reinhardt - was on a bit of a learning curve. Reinhardt was allowed the liberty of long play-like rehearsals instead of rehearsing scene by scene. Reinhardt's early over-emphasized stage acting directions were recalled by Cagney, who noted the actors often stood around on the sidelines whispering to one another, "Somebody ought to tell him." It was the politic Dieterle who did - setting his old master straight as to the subtle wonders of the microphone and sound film techniques. Shakespeare's lines were cut for public consumption, but there was so much to see - who would notice. In Depression era America the movie theater had taken the place of Reinhardt's all encompassing theater as a haven - and that was certainly fine with him. And here was a feast for starving souls. Reinhardt's multi-faceted approach to theater shone in all its entertaining best-through Warner stage design efficiency. There was the realist extravagance in forested backdrops, but the wonderful ballet of the coming of night with dancer Nini Theilade was distilled expressionism. Other ballet sequences featuring the fairies-children and adults - were choreographed by 'Bronislava Nijinska' (the great Nijinsky's sister). Reinhardt conjured all his and the camera's magic to create the summation of a lifetime of stagecraft. His imaginative wizardry with lighting put the remarkable glow on the faces of Cagney and his motley peasant comrades as they rehearsed - on the dancing faeries in their sequins - on the enchanted sparkle of shimmering (painted and tensiled) woods and veiled atmosphere that awaited the gaiety of Titania and the black looks of King Oberon. Everything of British and German folklore was thrown in for good measure - from gossamer English faeries and magic animals to rather frightening, rubber-masked dwarfs dressed as Teutonic gnomes and goblins. Reinhardt fuzzed and gauzed the camera lens and even put scintillating borders and covers of various sorts on the camera cowling to frame some faerie scenes as if from a Victorian painting by English artists Richard Dadd and Joseph Noel Paton-obvious influences. The movie was not a box office success, but it was Hollywood history-salute to Shakespeare? - certainly - but more so, a great event of melting pot talent and modern film making that was Hollywood coupled with profound European stage traditions that began with Max Reinhardt. He - by the way - did no more films, perhaps deciding that the real challenge was still the stage. But this one record on sound film measures the genius of the man of theater and gives today a glimpse of his creative powers and something of what his stage productions were like. He was more interested in continuing working on-stage as a director and producer, but he did not forsake Hollywood. With his second wife actress 'Helene Thimig', from a famous Viennese acting family, he split his time between the coasts. He found a Hollywood-based theater workshop and an acting school in New York. All of Reinhardt's productions were tallied - just from 1905 to 1930 - and found to total 23,374 performances of 452 plays - and still a little short. His wide-eyed exuberance for spreading out a great show was indicative of the child in Max Reinhardt. He betrayed that very comparison unashamedly: "Theater is the happiest haven for those who have secretly put their childhood in their pockets, so that they can continue to play to the end of their days."- Additional Crew
- Producer
- Actor
Adolph Zukor was a poor Hungarian immigrant when he arrived in the United States in 1889. He tried his hand in the fur trade (starting as a sweeper for $2 a week pay) and proved his entrepreneurial acumen by steady advancement, eventually setting up successful businesses in New York and Chicago. By the time he reached thirty, he had already amassed a considerable personal fortune. As early as 1903, Zukor astutely forecast the prospective financial rewards to be made from the burgeoning celluloid medium. Within a decade, he became heavily involved in the independent production of 'flickers', setting up penny arcades with nickelodeons and shooting galleries. In partnership with Marcus Loew, Zukor soon operated a major chain of cinemas. In 1912, he acquired the American rights to a popular French four-reel feature film, Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912), starring Sarah Bernhardt. The picture premiered at New York's Lyceum Theatre and its inevitable box office success led Zukor to challenge the notion -- commonly held by thespians of the period -- that motion pictures were inferior to the stage and were 'beneath' stage actors. In short order, he succeeded in persuading important Broadway-based stars like Minnie Maddern Fiske and James K. Hackett to join his Famous Players Film Company (set up in partnership with Loew Enterprises and veteran impresario Daniel Frohman). Other big names soon followed: Marie Doro, Pauline Frederick, Henry Ainley, Florence Reed, to name but a few. The undisputed star on the Famous Players roster, however, was Mary Pickford -- signed for two years in August 1916.
Four days after Pickford signed her contract, Zukor inaugurated the forthcoming wave of Hollywood mergers by combining his interests with those of pioneer producer Jesse L. Lasky to create Famous Players-Lasky. Several other companies -- Morosco, Bosworth and Pallas -- were also acquired. The distribution chain Paramount Pictures Corporation, jointly created by Zukor and Lasky in 1914, served to ensure nationwide distribution (more than a hundred additional cinemas were purchased near the end of the decade, including prestige venues such as the Rialto and Rivoli on Broadway). By 1919, Zukor effectively dominated the film industry in America. At least half of the major stars in the business were on his payroll. Realart Pictures Corporation was added to the mix as an outlet for second features while the A-grade output was released through Artcraft. Two production facilities were in place, one in Hollywood, the other, Astoria Studios, in New York. A partnership between Zukor and newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst also resulted in the formation of Cosmopolitan Productions (as a vehicle for films starring Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies). In 1924, Zukor's theatres began to proliferate even in Europe with the opening of the Paris Paramount and the London Plaza. Zukor further cemented this preeminent position in the industry by promoting the practice of 'block-booking'. This was a way of coercing independent theatre owners who wished to exhibit the films of a bankable box office star to also take a package -- sight unseen -- which was bound to include much of the lesser Realart product.
Between 1920 and 1923, Paramount averaged an annual profit of $4.5 million. By 1930, that figure had risen to $18.4 million. Wile this was largely the result of clever marketing and effective distribution, Zukor's shrewd, multifarious financial machinations had also contributed greatly to that success. He was not particularly concerned with film making itself, other than the monetary aspects (a long-standing dispute between Zukor and Cecil B. DeMille over budgets and salary demands led to Paramount's premier director departing the company in 1925). The artistic impetus for Paramount's rise to preeminence in the 20's was provided by the likes of Lasky and the creative genius of B.P. Schulberg (an independent producer with a keen eye for talent, hired in 1926 to head the West Coast studios as vice president in charge of production). Zukor, conversely, rarely left New York (except for a brief visit West in 1936 to help restructure the company).
In 1932, Paramount went bankrupt and declared a $ 15.8 million deficit. Chiefly to blame for this decline was an over-expansion propelled by Zukor himself, in particular the acquisition of the Publix theatre chain which had been bought with Paramount stock -- stock rendered all but worthless after the Wall Street Crash. Heads rolled, including those of Schulberg, sales chief Sidney Kent, and, ultimately, Lasky. Zukor, the consummate survivor, remained in place as company president until 1936, thereafter holding the position of chairman of the board and chairman emeritus until his death at the extraordinary age of 103. He went on to preside over a revitalised and profitable organisation (though no longer the industry leader it had been the 1920's -- a mantle now held by MGM). During the 1940's, Paramount showed record profits ($39.2 million in 1946)), a trend which continued through the 50's.
Zukor was described as mild-mannered, lean and aquiline in appearance, a reserved man who did not make friends easily. He also had a reputation for ruthlessness, which people like Samuel Goldwyn and Lewis J. Selznick could certainly attest to. Above all, he was a shrewd financier, never more than a self-proclaimed merchant with a 'calculated vision' who 'looked ahead a little and gambled a lot'.- Theodore Lorch was born on 29 September 1873 in Springfield, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for The Last of the Mohicans (1920), Half-Wits Holiday (1947) and Ginsberg the Great (1927). He was married to Diana Christiansen, Jeanette ?, Cecil and Mary. He died on 12 November 1947 in Camarillo, California, USA.
- Alice Cooper was born on 10 September 1873 in Sheerness, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, England, UK. She was an actress, known for You Bet Your Life (1950). She was married to Charles Henry Cooper. She died on 6 October 1967 in Palm Desert, California, USA.
- Producer
- Additional Crew
David Horsley was born on March 11, 1873, in a small coal mine village called West Stanley, County of Durham, England. This village was owned and operated by the West Stanley Coal Co., which operated three coal mines with an average output of 1,500 tons of coal per day. The miners' houses comprising the village were all owned by the coal company. David's paternal grandfather William Horsley was general manager of the company while his father, Robert, was a master mechanic and chief blacksmith for the mines, which used ponies to bring the coal to the surface. His maternal grandfather, John Chaytor, was the company's saddler and harness maker. On January 18, 1884, while on an errand for his mother, young David was struck down by a coal train locomotive as he crossed the tracks and lost three fingers, severed by the train wheels. Ultimately, his arm was amputated two inches below the elbow so as to forestall the onset of gangrene.
His mother, realizing that there was no future in the town for her disabled son, decided the family should emigrate to America. On October 17, 1884, the Horsley family arrived in New York and moved to New Jersey, eventually settling in Bayonne. The young Horsely helped support the family by selling newspapers, later working as a Western Union messenger boy. When he was approximately 16 years old, J.T.R. Proctor, the owner of the Bayonne Times, became his benefactor, paying for David to attend night school, where he studied bookkeeping and shorthand. His education enabled him to be hired by the Tidewater Oil Works as a timekeeper.
When he was 19 Horsley opened up a bicycle shop, hand-making bicycles despite his handicap. In 1903 he bought a piece of land and built a pool hall in Bayonne. Unfortunately, his business was wiped out by the Panic (or recession) of 1907. He and one of his regular customers, Charles Gorman, decided to try their hand in the movie business. Gorman had been a scenic artist at the Biograph Motion Picture Co. in New York, but had lost his job during the recession. Gorman had the know-how about the movie industry, and Horsely had the land for a primitive studio and possessed the mechanical skills to build a movie camera from the parts of an old projector. The rear yard of the pool hall was covered with a wooden platform and muslin was hung overhead to diffuse the light. They decided to call their enterprise the Centaur Film Co., as it was a name that was half "horse" (from Horsely) and half "man" (from Gorman).
The Centaur Film Co. struggled during the first three years of its existence, subsisting on money borrowed from relatives. It faced a monumental crisis at the end of its first year of operation when the Patents Company was created in 1908 to pool motion picture equipment patents, including the Lanham loop that was necessary for film to be fed correctly into a movie camera. The Patents Co. refused to give Centaur a license to operate; it considered Centaur a fly-by-night operation and turned down Horsley's application for a license three times, figuring that denying the company a license would drive it out of business. The Patents Co., which became known as "The Trust," intended to completely control the manufacture, distribution and exhibition of films.
The Trust created the General Film Co. to deal with film exchanges and to rent films to the exhibitors. General collected a weekly licensing fee of $2 on every projector in the US for the use of the Lanham loop, a situation that was deeply resented by exhibitors. Exhibitors who refused to pay the $2 license fee were denied films, and thus were deprived of their livelihood. General Film opened its own film exchanges to rent films, and it cut off the supply of films to other film exchanges. Eastman Kodak Co. refused to sell Horsely raw film stock to make his one-reel pictures, as its contract with the Patents Co. and General Film had them boycott non-Trust filmmakers. Horsley thus had to import his raw film stock from the Austin Edwards Co. in England.
When film exchange executives converged on New York to challenge the monopoly implemented by the Trust, they were directed to meet David Horsley, whose Centaur Film was holding up under the challenge. In order to improve his ability to compete successfully against the Patents Co. and General Film, Horsely decided to help the film exchange people become producers of movies, as he knew he wouldn't be able to survive for long against The Trust without some help.
Carl Laemmle and R.H. Cochrane formed the Independent Motion Picture Co. and opened a studio in New York producing one-reel movies called IMPS, while Edwin S. Porter started up Rex Pictures and Edwin Thanhouser opened a studio at New Rochelle, New York, while Pat Powers created Powers Pictures. Other companies formed by film exchange personnel to ensure that they received product were Bison, Champion and Reliance. By 1910 there were as many independent film companies making pictures as there were companies that were part of The Trust. It was difficult for indies to obtain cameras and film, as domestically-made cameras and film stock were covered by the Patent Co.'s patents and thus would not be sold to filmmakers outside The Trust. Producers were forced to go abroad to get the English Prestwich or Williamson camera, or to France to get a camera from DeBrie, Gaumont, Pathe or Prevost. They could also follow the example of Horsely in the US or Léo-Ernest Ouimet in Canada and create their own equipment.
To fight The Trust legally, the indies banded together as the Sales Co., headquartered at 14th Street in New York City. The Sales Co. operated as a central exchange, with producers delivering their one-reel films to 14th St., from whence its product was shipped C.O.D. to buyers at the cost of $100 per reel. The Sales Co. remitted $95 per reel to the filmmaker and kept a $5-per-reel fee in order to finance the fight against The Trust. Horsely's Centaur Co. was making one western, one drama and one Mutt & Jeff comedy per week, all one-reelers, for an output of 120 prints per week. This meant it was remitting $600 per week to the Sales Co., which had an income of about $5,000 to $7,500 per week from all the independent production companies. With these funds the Sales Co. retained first-rate patent attorneys to sue the Patents Co. and put an end to its attempt at monopolizing the motion picture business. The indies eventually won, and even the $2-per-week royalty on each projector was terminated by the courts.
The Trust, which had concentrated on technology rather than on the quality of films, had failed to keep up with the development of the crowd-pleasing narrative film, continuing to churn out simple-minded pictorial essays that found little favor with the maturing movie-going audience. Eventually all the production companies that had dominated the industry before the rise of the indies went out of business, including Edison, Biograph and Essanay. The last remaining Trust member, Vitagraph, was acquired by Warner Bros.
Due to bad weather conditions in the summer and early fall of 1911, making motion pictures in the New York City area became difficult. In response, Horsely moved Centaur to California, opening the first motion picture studio in Hollywood at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street on October 27, 1911. The film was developed after dark and shipped to Centaur's Bayonne office to the laboratory for printing. Al Christie--a Canadian who went on to found his own film company, the Nestor Motion Picture Co.--managed the comedy operation of the studio in both Bayonne and Los Angeles. Westerns were produced by Milton J. Fahrney and dramas were produced by Tom Ricketts. All three producers were responsible for one one-reel picture per week.
On May 20, 1912, the Universal Film Manufacturing Co. was formed and absorbed many independent film companies in exchange for stock, including Horsely's Centaur. For the Hollywood studio, New Jersey laboratory and other assets, Horsely received $175,000 in preferred stock and $204,000 in common stock in Universal shares. He was such a respected member of the film community by that point that he was appointed Universal treasurer at the salary of $200 per week. Soon after the formation of the company, a battle for control of Universal started as Carl Laemmle and his faction took on Pat Powers of Powers Pictures for control. Horsely held the balance of power due to his stake, and in the summer of 1913 he sold his stock to Laemmle for a substantial sum, including a first payment of $197,000 and the balance paid off at a monthly rate of $5,000 in notes. Now rich beyond his dreams, Horsely took his family on a trip back to the United Kingdom, then toured Europe, eventually resigning as treasurer of Universal.
Horsely was in Europe when war broke out in August 1914. The Bostock Animal and Jungle Show was evicted from its London exhibition rooms due to military necessity. The manager of the Jungle Show sold it to Horsely for $40,000, approximately a tenth of his fortune from the sale of his Universal stock. Horsely transported the show's assets to the US by ship. From the docks of Brooklyn, Horsely shipped the menagerie, which included 58 lions and two elephants, to Los Angeles. Altogether it cost him a total of $15,000 to freight the animals from England to L.A. He spent a further $47,500 to create a new park for his show, including grandstands, arenas, cages, and a concrete fence on a property at Washington and Main that rented for $600 per month.
After he opened the show in 1915 he was facing a daily overhead of $225, though the most tickets the show ever sold in a day was $165, while on a bad day the show took in as little as $1.25. To make the show pay, Horsely built a film studio at the site that he called the Bostock Jungle Films Co., which included its own film processing lab. Horsely began turning out movies, many of which used the wild animals as background. His new studio made five-reel dramas with Crane Wilbur, "Stanley in Africa" pictures, and approximately 200 comedies with George Ovey. By the fall of 1918 his movie-making venture was through, and when he filed for bankruptcy in 1919, the once-rich Horsely was $38,000 in debt.
The loss of his company, his exotic animal show and his fortune broke David Horsely. He died on February 23, 1933, a forgotten man, barely remembered as one of the men who saved the film industry from The Trust and pioneered Hollywood as a filmmaking center. Horsely was interred in Hollywood Cemetery, now known as Hollywood Forever Cemetery, reduced to a footnote in American cinema history.- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Sergei Rachmaninoff (also spelled Rachmaninov) was a legendary Russian-American composer and pianist who fled Russia after the Communist revolution of 1917, and became one of the highest paid concert stars of his time, and one of the most influential pianists of the 20th century.
He was born Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov on April 2, 1873, on a large estate near Novgorod, Russia. He was the fourth of six children born to a noble family, and lived in a family estate, where he enjoyed a happy childhood. Rachmaninoff studied music with his mother from age 4; continued at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, and continued at the Moscow Conservatory with professors Arensky, Taneyev and Tchaikovsky. He graduated in 1892, winning the Great Gold Medal for his new opera "Aleko."
He was highly praised by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , who promoted Rachmaninov's opera to the Bolshoi Theater in 1893. But the disastrous premiere of his 1st Symphony, poorly conducted by A. Glazunov, coupled with his distress over the Russian Orthodox Church's pressure against his marriage, caused him to suffer from depression, which interrupted his career for three years until he sought medical help in 1900. He had a three-month treatment by hypnotherapist, Dr. Dahl, aimed at overcoming his writer's block. Upon his recovery, Rachmaninov composed his brilliant 2nd Piano Concerto, and made a comeback with successful concert performances. From 1904 to 1906 he was a conductor at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow. From 1906 to 1909, Rachmaninoff lived and worked in Dresden, Germany. There he composed his 2nd Symphony.
In 1909, Sergei Rachmaninoff made his first tour of the United States having composed the 3rd Piano Concerto as a calling card. He appeared as a soloist with Gustav Mahler conducting the New York Philharmonic. His further work on merging Russian music with English literature culminated in his adaptation of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe into choral symphony, "The Bells," which Rachmaninov considered to be among the best of his works. In 1915 he wrote the choral masterpiece: "All-Night Vigil" (also known as the Vespres), fifteen anthems expressing a plea for peace at a time of war. The terror of Russian Revolution and the destruction of his estate forced him to emigrate. On December 23, 1917, Rachmaninov left Russia on an open sledge carrying only a few books of sheet music.
As a pianist, Sergei Rachmaninov made over a hundred recordings and gave over one thousand concerts in America alone between 1918 and 1943. His concert performances were legendary, and he was highly regarded as a virtuoso pianist with unmatched power and expressiveness. Rachmaninoff's technical perfection was legendary. His large hands were able to span a twelfth, that is an octave and a half or, for example, a stretch from middle C to high G. Rachmaninoff was highly regarded for accuracy on the piano keyboard, which he achieved through arduous practice by repeating difficult passages many times in a very slow tempo. In many of his original compositions, Sergei Rachmaninoff used musical allusions ranging from folk songs to oriental music and jazz. Unusually wide chords and deeply romantic melody lines were characteristic of his compositions. Besides his own music, he often performed pieces by Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin , Franz Liszt and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
In 1931, Rachmaninov signed a letter condemning the Soviet regime, that was published in the New York Times. There was retaliation immediately, and his music was condemned by the Soviets as "representative of decadent art." However, the official censorship in the Soviet Union could not stop the popularity of Rachmaninov's music in the rest of the world. During the 1930s and 1940s, he remained one of the highest paid concert stars.
During the 1930s, Rachmaninoff shared his time between Europe and America, because he was booked for numerous live performances in major cultural centers on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1932, Rachmaninoff with his family moved to his newly built Villa 'Senar' on Lake Luzern. There he replicated the layout of his estate that was destroyed by Russian revolution of 1917. The villa became a new home for the family and a center of cultural life, as Rachmaninoff was visited by notable musicians, such as Horowitz, writers, such as Bunin, and even Maharaja with family from India. For his guests, Rachmaninoff often played his music on the new concert grand piano that was presented to him by Hamburg Steinway company. Using that piano, Rachmaninoff composed his famous Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini in 1934. In 1939, with the onset of World War 2, Rachmaninoff left Europe and moved to America for good.
At his home on Elm Drive in Beverly Hills, Rachmaninoff had two Steinway pianos which he played together with Vladimir Horowitz and other entertainers. His love of fast cars was second to music, and led him to occasional fines for exceeding the speed limit. Since he bought his first car in 1914, Rachmaninov acquired a taste for fast cars, buying himself a new car every year. His generosity was legendary. He gave away 5000 dollars to Igor Sikorsky to start an American helicopter industry. He paid for Vladimir Nabokov and his family relocation from Paris to New York. He sponsored Michael Chekhov and introduced him to Hollywood.
Sergei Rachmaninoff gave numerous charitable performances, and donated large sums of money to fighting against the Nazis during WWII. He became a US citizen in 1943, just a few weeks before his death. In his last recital, in February, 1943, Rachmaninov played Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, featuring the famous "Funeral march." The New York Times obituary of March 28, 1943, stated that Sergei V. Rachmaninoff, pianist, composer and conductor, who for fifty years had been a leader in the music world on two continents, died today at his Beverly Hills home of complications resulting from pneumonia and pleurisy, which twice had caused him to cancel recitals here this month.
Rachmaninoff was survived by his wife and two daughters who arranged for his burial in Kensico Cemetery, New York. Over the years, Soviet and Russian authorities made numerous claims to re-bury the composer in Moscow, Russia, but the Rachmaninoff family successfully opposed due to the fact that Sergei Rachmaninoff made his choice to be a citizen of the United States.- Slight, birdlike Jean Adair came to the screen after playing a succession of crotchety or maternal roles on the stage. She was born Violet McNaughton in Ontario, Canada, and absolved her acting studies in Chicago. After extensive touring with local stock companies and a few seasons on the vaudeville Orpheum Circuit performing in one-act plays, she landed a starring role on Broadway in the 1922 comedy hit "It's a Boy!". From then on, she was never out of work.
The screen, alas, saw very little of Jean Adair. She danced a waltz with Gene Kelly in a minor musical, Living in a Big Way (1947). Otherwise, we remember her from her one indelible performance, a role she created for the original stage version of the long-running black farce and subsequent film version, Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): as Martha Brewster, one of two goofy spinster aunts (the other was Josephine Hull), who dispatch lonely old geezers by poisoning their elderberry wine. - John St. Polis was born on 24 November 1873 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Three Weeks (1924), Why Be Good? (1929) and The Hero (1923). He was married to Angela M. Grimaldi and Rachel Amelia Ryan. He died on 8 October 1946 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Guy Standing was born on 1 September 1873 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Death Takes a Holiday (1934), The Eagle and the Hawk (1933) and I'd Give My Life (1936). He was married to Dorothy Hammond, Blanche Burton and Isabelle Urquhart. He died on 24 February 1937 in Hollywood Hills, California, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
Hardly remembered today, if at all, Fred Stone was once one of the most multi-faceted circus performers to hit turn-of-the century America. There seemed to be nothing he couldn't do--tightrope walking, acrobatics, clowning . . . you name it. This initial celebrity eventually led to his stellar headlining in vaudeville houses, stardom on the Broadway musical stage and character lead work in films.
He was born in a Valmont, Colorado, log cabin in the summer of 1873. Running away from home at the ripe old age of 11, he eventually joined a traveling circus show. By his teens he had taught himself the high-wire act and other athletic skills so well that he earned a name for himself under the big top. He met and teamed up with fellow circus performer David Craig Montgomery (1870-1917) in 1895. Billed as "Montgomery and Stone," they became a prominent song-and-dance duo in burlesque houses and minstrel shows. The toast of New York in the first decade of the 1900s, they appeared in a number of hit revues, including "The Red Mill" and "Chin Chin." One of their most famous pairings was in the 1903 Broadway musical version of L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" in which Fred portrayed the Scarecrow to Montgomery's Tin Man. The agile duo also shared billing on various other circuits, including "Wild West" shows, with the likes of close friends Will Rogers and Annie Oakley.
After Montgomery's unexpected death on April 20, 1917, following an unsuccessful operation, Fred continued solo, often appearing with wife Allene Crater (later billed as Allene Stone or Mrs. Fred Stone) in such musical shows as "Criss Cross" and "Ripples." Fred also extended his talents to the movies. Although he didn't become a steady fixture (he dropped out of films by the early 1920s), he had wrangled a few of his own comedy and western vehicles to make a dent, with The Goat (1918), Under the Top (1919), Johnny Get Your Gun (1919), The Duke of Chimney Butte (1921) and Billy Jim (1922) being his best. He made an auspicious return to the movies in the sound era as Katharine Hepburn's beleaguered father in the seriocomic classic Alice Adams (1935), and as a feuding clan member in the tumbleweed western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936). Given such a rousing reception, the 63-year-old was offered his own secondary feature, top-lining such comedy efforts as The Farmer in the Dell (1936), Grand Jury (1936), Quick Money (1937) and No Place to Go (1939), before ending his lucky streak with The Westerner (1940) starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. In 1950 Fred retired completely from show business. During the final years of his life he suffered from advancing blindness and heart trouble. He died at his Los Angeles home in March of 1959 at age 85. The patriarch of a show-biz family, his daughters Dorothy Stone, Paula Stone and Carol Stone were also actresses who appeared with their father at various times on Broadway (he was also the uncle of Milburn Stone, veteran character actor and Gunsmoke (1955)'s "Doc Adams"). A long-overdue biography of Fred Stone was published by Armond Fields in 2002.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
American actor-director-writer-producer of silent pictures, formerly a singer and vaudevillian. A native of San Francisco's Telegraph Hill, he was one of four sons born to Rocco Beban, a Dalmatian immigrant, and Johanna Dugan, from County Cork, Ireland.
He exhibited singing talent at an early age and was known in San Francisco theater circles as "The Boy Baritone." By age 8, according to a 1920 newspaper interview, "[his] first professional job was singing at $8 a week at the Vienna Garden on Stockton Street. Then came boy parts with the McGuire, Rial and Osborne stock company at the Grand Opera house and the McKee Rankin stock company at the old California, where I used the name of George Dinks."
After his father continued to block his career choice, getting him fired from every one of those jobs, he ran away from home at the age of 14. He appeared in light opera and on stage with vaudevillians Weber & Fields. He recalled in the same 1920 interview that, "Marie Cahill offered me my first chance on Broadway, when I was about 22, in her first starring vehicle, the musical comedy 'Nancy Brown,' at the Bijou."
He played in vaudeville and legit theater for a number of years, primarily doing caricatured Frenchmen, before making his film debut in 1915. In his play (later film) "Sign of the Rose," (A.K.A. "The Alien") and in Thomas Ince's "The Italian," he sought to change the stereotype of Italian immigrants as all being members of The Black Hand (mafioso).
He told the San Francisco Examiner in 1910 that he "learned how to imitate Italian speech and talk Italian dialect with a proper accent," from his childhood days spent teasing and stealing fruit from local Italian gardeners and grape growers. "Also that was where I first learned to appreciate Italian character, to recognize that honesty and industry and gentleness of spirit are its attributes."
He wrote and/or directed many of his later films, few of which survive.
He retired in late 1926 following the death of his wife, the stage actress Edith Ethel MacBride, and by midsummer, 1928, completed work on his dream home on a bluff overlooking the Pacific in Playa del Rey, California. His August 19 housewarming became international news when two guests, the Western star Tom Mix and the vaudevillian William Morrissey, duked it out over Morrissey's comment that Mix's horse, Tony, would have a career in the talkies, because at least he could snort, but what could Mix do?
Five weeks later, while vacationing at June Lodge Dude Ranch at Big Pine, California, Beban was thrown from a horse and seriously injured on September 29, 1928. He died in Los Angeles several days later, from the effects of the fall and from uremic poisoning. His remains were cremated.
He was survived by his 14-year-old son, George Beban Jr., who had appeared with his father (using the stage name Bob White) in a few films, and who would have a short career in the 1940's playing supporting roles.
George Beban, Sr. was the grandfather of the cinematographer Richard Beban, and great-granduncle of the screen and TV writer Richard W. Beban.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Enrico Caruso (b. Errico Caruso) was born on February 25, 1873, in Naples, Italy. He was the third of seven children to a poor alcoholic father. He received little primary education and briefly studied music with conductor Vicenzo Lombardini. His early income was from singing serenades.
Caruso made his operatic debut on March 15, 1895 at a back street theatre in Naples. After a two-year stint on the South Italian circuit he auditioned for Giacomo Puccini in the summer of 1897. Puccini was looking for a leading tenor for a performance of 'La Boheme' in Livorno. Puccini was so impressed with the range and tone of the young Caruso's voice, that he reportedly mumbled in awe, "Who sent you to me? God himself?" After an unfriendly reception of his performance in Naples, Caruso vowed to never sing in Naples again, and he never did.
His first major role creations were in operas 'Il Voto', composed by Umberto Giordano, on November 10, 1897, and 'L'Arlesiana' by Francesco Cilea on November 27, 1897, at the Teatro Lirico di Milano. Next season Caruso started with a role creation in 'Fedora', composed by Umberto Giordano, performed on the same stage on November 17, 1898. His first recording contract was signed in 1902, in London, with the Gramophone and Typewriter Company for ten arias at the rate of 10 pounds per take. In May, 1902, Caruso debuted at the Covent Garden Opera in 'Rigoletto' by Giuseppe Verdi. With the help of the banker Pasquale Simonelli, he went to New York. There Caruso made his Metropolitan Opera debut in November 1903. He performed for the Met the next eighteen seasons, making 607 appearances in 37 different operatic productions.
Caruso was the first recording star in history, who sold more than a million records with his 1902 recording of 'Vesti le gubba' from 'Pagliacci' (Clowns) by 'Leoncavallo'. His voice had a combination of the full baritone-like character with the smooth and brilliant tenor qualities. His range was broadened into baritone at the expense of the higher tenor notes, Caruso never sang the high C, and often transposed in order to avoid it. He was a master of interpretation, having a rare gift of portamento and legato, and a superior command of phrasing. His legendary 1904 Victor recording of 'Una furtiva lagrima', by Gaetano Donizetti is used in many film soundtracks.
He contracted pneumonia and developed a complication in the form of pleural inflammation (plerisy), followed by abscesses in his lungs. After a series of unsuccessful surgeries Enrico Caruso died on August 2, 1921, in Naples, Italy. He was laid to rest in Naples, Italy.- Tom Murray was born on 8 September 1873 in Stonefoot, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for The Gold Rush (1925), Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) and Into Her Kingdom (1926). He was married to Louise Carver. He died on 27 August 1935 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Colette was born on 28 January 1873 in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, France. She was a writer, known for Gigi (1958), Chéri (2009) and Matinee Theatre (1955). She was married to Maurice Goudeket, Henri de Jouvenel des Ursins and Willy. She died on 3 August 1954 in Paris, France.- Director
- Producer
Alfred Clark was a pioneering film director who was mostly known for directing several films for the Edison Manufacturing Company. Originally, Edison had begun his film company with making shorts of vaudeville acts; but Clark, who joined the company in 1895, was the first to introduce Edison to new ideas. His The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895), using the world's first film edit, is a basic example of his work. Clark also introduced Edison to films using trained actors and actual plots.
Educated at the Franklin School in Washington and the City College of New York, Clark took an early interest in electricity and joined the North American Phonograph Company at the age of sixteen. However, he was forced to leave the company in 1894 after it collapsed, and in search of a new job, began making short films with the Edison Manufacturing Company in Edison's Black Maria studio, using Edison's film camera, the Kinetograph, in 1895.
A year later, Clark quit the company and instead began work with Edison's Phonograph Company. He also worked at the Cooper Institute, with Emile Berliner and Eldridge Johnson, on a new device for recording sound, the Gramophone. The Gramophone was a success, and Clark traveled to France, founding the Compagnie de Gramophone Francaise. Then, in 1904, Clark sold his French holdings. In 1907, he helped establish the Musée de la Voix. A year later he moved to Britain and became the managing director of the Gramophone Company in Hayes. After the first World War, he developed companionship with Eldridge Johnson's Victor Talking Machine Company, which was merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company in 1931, which then formed the EMI. Clark was the chairman and at times the managing director while working with the company, and retired in 1946.
He then died for years later, in 1950.- Lilian Braithwaite was born on 9 March 1873 in Ramsgate, Kent, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Gay Lord Quex (1917), Because (1918) and The Woman Who Was Nothing (1917). She was married to Gerald Lawrence. She died on 17 September 1948 in London, England, UK.
- William Vedder was born on 9 September 1873 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for The Wild One (1953), The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947) and Matinee Theatre (1955). He died on 3 March 1961 in Hollywood, California, USA.