Company type | Production company |
---|---|
Industry | Film |
Headquarters | , |
The Film Company of Ireland was the first film production company established in Ireland. It operated from 1916 to 1922.
The Film Company of Ireland (FCOI) was founded in March 1916 by Ellen O'Mara Sullivan, James Mark Sullivan, [1] [2] and Henry Fitzgibbon, [3] the first such company to be established in Ireland. [4] The company was very active from 1916 to 1917. Nine of the films were produced by J. M. Kerrigan, who also acted in a number of them. Through Kerrigan, a number of Abbey Theatre actors featured in the FCOI's productions, including Fred O'Donovan, Kathleen Murphy, Nora Clancy, Brian Magowan, J. M. Carre, Irene Murphy, and Valentine Roberts. O'Donovan was also an actor-director in a number of 1917 FCOI productions. [5]
During the Easter Rising in 1916, the FCOI's offices on Sackville Street were destroyed, along with a large amount of the company's early material. The company moved to 34 Dame Street. [3] They filmed a large number of their films in County Kerry. [5] Sullivan attempted to sell the FCOI films in the United States from 1918, incorporating in Boston. A number of their films were screened at various locations there. [6] After the death of his wife and son, Sullivan sold off the FCOI to A.V. Feary. The company struggled to secure funding throughout 1921, with correspondence from the company stopping in 1922. [3]
Dame Alice Ellen Terry was a leading English actress of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Frank William George Lloyd was a Scottish-American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was its president from 1934 to 1935.
Joseph O'Mara was an Irish opera singer of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. After studying opera in Milan, Italy, he made his London stage debut in 1891 in the tenor title role of the opera Ivanhoe by Arthur Sullivan and soon appeared in other operas. In 1894 he first appeared at Covent Garden Theatre. For three years, he was the principal tenor at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, also appearing in the pantomime there and elsewhere. In 1896, he created the tenor lead, Mike Murphy, in Charles Villiers Stanford's opera Shamus O'Brien, also playing the role on tour and in America.
Paul Wegener was a German actor, writer, and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema.
Billy West was a silent film actor, producer, and director. Active during the silent film era, he is best known as the premier Charlie Chaplin impersonator. He was a star in his own right, appearing in more than 100 films for nine different companies. Beyond acting, he also directed short comedies in the 1910s and '20s, and produced films. West retired as an actor in 1935, but remained in the employ of Columbia Pictures into the 1950s.
Werner Johannes Krauss was a German stage and film actor. Krauss dominated the German stage of the early 20th century. However, his participation in the antisemitic propaganda film Jud Süß and his collaboration with the Nazis made him a controversial figure.
Anders Randolf was a Danish-American actor in American films from 1913 to 1930.
Mary Murillo was an English actress, screenwriter, and businesswoman active during Hollywood's silent era.
Anton Giulio Bragaglia was a pioneer in Italian Futurist photography and Futurist cinema. A versatile and intellectual artist with wide interests, he wrote about film, theatre, and dance.
James Mark Sullivan was a lawyer and the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Santo Domingo under Woodrow Wilson. He was arrested in Dublin in 1916 for aiding the Irish rebellion.
Stephen O'Mara was an Irish nationalist politician and businessman from Limerick.
Violet Hopson was an actress and producer who achieved fame on the British stage and in British silent films. She was born Elma Kate Victoria Karkeek in Port Augusta, South Australia on 16 December 1887. Violet Hopson was her stage name, while in childhood she was known as Kate or Kitty to her family.
The Ideal Film Company was a British film production and distribution company that operated between 1911 and 1934.
Paul Davidson was a German film producer.
Gordon Sackville was a film actor. Earlier in his career he appeared on stage. He was part of several Hobart Bosworth productions. He was in The Best Man Wins, one of the first Hollywood films.
Bluebird Photoplays was an American film production company that filmed at Universal Pictures studios in California and New Jersey, and distributed its films via Universal Pictures during the silent film era. It had a $500,000 studio in New Jersey.
"It was a subsidiary of Universal Pictures and employed Universal stars and used Universal’s facilities but the pictures were marketed independently from Carl Laemmle’s umbrella company."—Anke Brouwers
Dorcas Neville Matthews was an English actress in silent films in the U.S. She had numerous roles as a supporting actress and was well known.
Fred O’Donovan (1884–1952) was an Irish actor, early film maker, theatre manager and pioneer of television drama production. For many years he gave the definitive portrayal of the title character in J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, as well as other prominent roles at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. He was manager of the Abbey for a time, and appeared in and directed films, television, and on the stage in Britain and abroad before becoming a producer/director in the BBC’s fledgling television service both before and after World War II.
Ellen (Nell) O'Mara Sullivan was an Irish silent film screenwriter and film company director. The company her family funded and ran was said to be the most prolific Irish silent film company.
Willy Reilly and His Colleen Bawn is a 1920 Irish silent film adaptation of William Carleton's 1855 novel Willy Reilly and His Dear Colleen Bawn: A Tale Founded Upon Fact made by the Film Company of Ireland. Brian Magowan and Frances Alexander featured in the film. It is one of few films by the FCOI that remain in substantially complete form. John MacDonagh, the brother of Thomas MacDonagh, a signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in 1916, was the films director and played Tom the Fool under the pseudonym Richard Sheridan. The film concerns religious tolerance and the "triumph of love across the sectarian divide."