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| Industry | Motion pictures |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1896 |
| Founder | Siegmund Lubin |
| Defunct | 1916 |
| Headquarters | , |
Area served | United States, Europe |
Key people |
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| Products | Silent films |
The Lubin Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture production company that produced silent films from 1896 to 1916. Lubin films were distributed with a Liberty Bell trademark. [1]
The Lubin Manufacturing Company was formed in 1902 and incorporated in 1909 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Siegmund Lubin. The company was the offspring of Lubin's film equipment and film distribution and production business, which began in 1896.
Siegmund Lubin, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, was originally an optical and photography expert in Philadelphia but became intrigued with Thomas Edison's motion picture camera and saw the potential in selling similar equipment as well as in making films. Known as "Pop" Lubin, he constructed his own combined camera/projector he called a "Cineograph" and his lower price and marketing know-how brought reasonable success. In 1897 Lubin began making films for commercial release including Meet Me at the Fountain in 1904. Certain his business could prosper, the following year he rented low-cost space on the roof of a building in Philadelphia's business district. He exhibited his new equipment at the 1899 National Export Exposition in Philadelphia and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
The insatiable appetite of the American public for motion picture entertainment saw Lubin's film company undergo enormous growth. Aided by French-born writer and poet Hugh Antoine d'Arcy, who served as the studio's publicity manager, in 1910 Siegmund Lubin built a state of the art studio on the corner of Indiana Avenue and Twentieth Street in Philadelphia that became known as "Lubinville." At the time, it was one of the most modern studios in the world, complete with a huge artificially-lit stage, editing rooms, laboratories, and workshops. The facility allowed several film productions to be undertaken simultaneously. The Lubin Manufacturing Company expanded production beyond Philadelphia, with facilities at 750 Riverside Avenue in Jacksonville, Florida, Los Angeles, and then in Coronado, California.
In 1912, Lubin purchased a 350-acre (1.4 km2) estate in Betzwood, in what was then rural countryside in the northwest outskirts of Philadelphia and converted the property into a studio and film lot. That November Lubin Company field representative T. D. Cochrane visited Birmingham, Alabama as the guest of a local real estate executive and film exhibitor. After two days visiting sites he wired approval for a production team to immediately depart for Alabama to film cowboy movies at a rate of about six per month. [2] The company set up at the Bluff Park Hotel on the ridge of Shades Mountain south of the city, and constructed a stage. By the end of December, however, they had abandoned the project and the premises and stage were taken over by a troupe from the Kalem Company of New York led by director J. P. McGowan. [3]
That same year, director and actor Romaine Fielding traveled out to Prescott, Arizona with cast and crew and set up offices at 712 Western Avenue and an outdoor stage for shooting interiors behind Mercy Hospital (now the site of Prescott College). He filmed approximately a dozen movies there before moving to Tucson, Arizona, where he directed another 60 or so silent short films. William Duncan and Selig Polyscope Company took over the Prescott facility.
Some of the pioneer actors who worked for Lubin included Romaine Fielding, Ed Genung, Harry Myers, Florence Hackett, Alan Hale, Arthur V. Johnson, Lottie Briscoe, Florence Lawrence, Ethel Clayton, Gladys Brockwell, Edwin Carewe, Ormi Hawley, Rosemary Theby, Betty Brice, Alice Mann and Pearl White. Lubin films also marked the first film appearance of Oliver Hardy, [4] who started working at Lubin's Jacksonville, Florida studio in 1913. Hardy's first onscreen appearance was in the 1914 movie, Outwitting Dad where he was billed as O. N. Hardy. In many of his later films at Lubin, he was billed as "Babe Hardy." He was most often cast as "the heavy" or the villain and had roles in comedy shorts, appearing in some 50 short one-reeler films at Lubin by 1915.
The company's downfall came even faster than its meteoric rise. Lubin was not as adroit as its competitors in shifting to quality feature-length films. Also, a disastrous fire at its main studio in June 1914 damaged nearby buildings and destroyed the negatives for a number of unreleased new films, which severely hurt the business. When World War I broke out in Europe in September of that year, Lubin Studios, and other American filmmakers', lost a large source of income from these foreign sales.
For years the Lubin Manufacturing Company, like most of the other major film studios, had a running legal battle with Thomas Edison that saw repeated lawsuits brought against Lubin for patent infringement. Eventually, Lubin gave up the costly fight with Edison and became part of the Motion Picture Patents Company, a monopoly on production and distribution set up by Edison.
In 1915, the Lubin company entered into an agreement to form a film distribution partnership, with Vitagraph Studios, Selig Polyscope Company, and Essanay Studios, known as V-L-S-E, Incorporated. [5] [6] [7]
However, the decline of the Lubin operations continued and the United States Supreme Court rulings against the monopoly of the Motion Picture Patents Company spelled the end of Lubin's business. After making more than a thousand motion pictures the corporation was forced into bankruptcy and on September 1, 1916, the Lubin Manufacturing Company closed its doors for good.
The Motion Picture Patents Company, founded in December 1908 and effectively terminated in 1915 after it lost a federal antitrust suit, was a trust of all the major US film companies and local foreign-branches, the leading film distributor and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak. The MPPC ended the domination of foreign films on US screens, standardized the manner in which films were distributed and exhibited within the US, and improved the quality of US motion pictures by internal competition. It also discouraged its members' entry into feature film production, and the use of outside financing, both to its members' eventual detriment.
William Nicholas Selig was a vaudeville performer and pioneer of the American motion picture industry. His stage billing as Colonel Selig would be used for the rest of his career, even as he moved into film production.
The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company that was founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago, Illinois. The company produced hundreds of early, widely distributed commercial moving pictures, including the first films starring Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, Colleen Moore, and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Selig Polyscope also established Southern California's first permanent movie studio, in the historic Edendale district of Los Angeles.
Edison Studios was an American film production organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur, Thomas Edison. The studio made close to 1,200 films, as part of the Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and then Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 were feature length, and the remainder were shorts. All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.
Siegmund Lubin was an American motion picture pioneer who founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (1902–1917) of Philadelphia.
Romaine Fielding was an American actor, screenwriter, and silent film director known for his dramatic westerns. He was also known as Royal A. Blandin.
The Kalem Company was an early American film studio founded in New York City in 1907. It was one of the first companies to make films abroad and to set up winter production facilities, first in Florida and then in California. Kalem was sold to Vitagraph Studios in 1917.
Josephine M. Workman better known by her stage name, Princess Mona Darkfeather was an American actress who starred in Native American and Western dramas. During the silent era of motion pictures, from 1911 to 1917, she appeared in 102 movies. She is best known for her role as Prairie Flower in The Vanishing Tribe (1914).
Betzwood is the name of an area of West Norriton Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The area once housed the Lubin Studios, an early motion picture studio that operated here from 1912 to 1923.
Outwitting Dad is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company and featuring Billy Bowers, Raymond McKee, and Oliver Hardy in his first known screen appearance.
The Rise of the Johnsons is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, featuring John Edwards, Mattie Edwards, and Oliver Hardy.
He Wanted Work is a lost 1914 American silent comedy film produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Company, featuring John Edwards, Mattie Edwards, Billy Bowers, and Oliver Hardy.
The KCET Studios, located at 4401 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California is the longest continuously-producing studio in Hollywood. Since its establishment in 1912, the studios located at the site have been the home of motion picture producers, including Lubin, Essanay, Willis and Inglis, J.D. Hampton, Charles Ray, Ralph Like, Monogram Pictures, Allied Artists, and ColorVision. Since 1970, it has been the home of public television station KCET, but in April 2011, KCET announced that it had sold the facility to the Church of Scientology.
The Bold Bank Robbery is a 1904 short crime film produced and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The silent film depicts a group of burglars who plan and execute a successful bank heist. Company employee Jack Frawley was the film's director, also coming up with the story and serving as cinematographer; the cast's identities are unknown. The silent film was the first Lubin Manufacturing Company release to feature an original narrative.
Kansas Saloon Smashers is a 1901 comedy short film produced and distributed by Edison Studios. Directed by Edwin S. Porter, it is a satire of American activist Carrie Nation. The film portrays Nation and her followers entering and destroying a saloon. After the bartender retaliates by spraying Nation with water, policemen order them out; the identities of the actors are not known. Inspiration for the film was provided by an editorial cartoon which appeared in the New York Evening Journal.
The Valley of Lost Hope is a lost 1915 American silent Western drama film directed by and starring Romaine Fielding. Produced by Lubin Manufacturing Company and written by Shannon Fife, the film portrayed the rise and destruction of a gold-mining "boomtown" created by a phony real-estate business. Other cast members included Peter Lang, Mildred Gregory, and B. K. Roberts in principal roles. The production was filmed on location in Philipsburg in central Pennsylvania and at Lubin's backlot and studio facilities in Betzwood, located approximately 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
The Ringtailed Rhinoceros is a lost 1915 American silent comedy-drama film that depicted the ruinous effects of alcohol on a good-natured man and on the lives of the people around him. Like snakes and "pink elephants" that have been used in many societies to symbolize heavy drinking or been associated with the hallucinations of drunkards, the main character in this "'photophantasy'" blamed instead a "Ringtailed Rhinoceros" for his excessive use of wine and liquor.
Richard Morris (1862–1924) was an American opera singer, stage performer, and silent film actor. Morris was born on January 30, 1862, in Charlestown, Massachusetts. He was 62 when he died in Los Angeles, California on October 11, 1924. Between 1912 and 1924, Richard Morris acted in 59 films.
On the morning of June 13, 1914, a disastrous fire and a series of related explosions occurred in the main film vault of the Lubin Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Several possible causes for the blaze were cited at the time, one being "spontaneous combustion" of highly flammable nitrate film, which was the motion picture industry's standard medium for cameras throughout the silent era and for the first two decades of "talking pictures". Millions of feet of film were consumed in the flames, including most of the master negatives and initial prints of Lubin's pre-1914 catalog, several of the company's recently completed theatrical prints ready for release and distribution, a considerable number of films produced by other studios, inventories of raw and stock footage, hundreds of reels documenting historic events that occurred between 1897 and early 1914, as well as other films related to notable political and military figures, innovations in medical science, and professional athletic contests from that period. While this fire was not a decisive factor in Lubin's decline and bankruptcy by September 1916, costs associated with the disaster only added to the corporation's mounting debts, which led to the closure or sale of its remaining operations the following year.
Little Boy Blue is a 1912 silent one-reel film produced by Lubin Manufacturing Company and distributed by the General Film Company. The movie was released on May 6, 1912. The movie featured child actor Raymond Hackett assuming the role of Harold and Marie Wierman playing Elizabeth, Harold's older sister.
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