Industry | Motion picture |
---|---|
Founded | 1915[ citation needed ] |
Founder | B.A. Rolfe |
Defunct | 1920[ citation needed ] |
Key people | Maxwell Karger |
Rolfe Photoplays Inc., originally B. A. Rolfe Photoplays Company, was an American motion picture production company established by musical entertainer B.A. Rolfe. Its productions were primarily filmed on the East Coast, usually in and around Fort Lee, New Jersey, although the company also filmed in California. Its films were distributed through an agreement with Louis B. Mayer's Metro Pictures Corporation.
Between 1915 and 1918, B.A. Rolfe used Rolfe Photoplays Inc. to produce forty-nine silent films, several of which were collaborations with director/screenwriter Oscar A.C. Lund including the 1916 drama " Dorian's Divorce " starring Lionel Barrymore. As well, he used the corporate name "B.A. Rolfe Photoplayers Inc." and "B.A. Rolfe Productions" to produce another three films including the 1919 fifteen-part mystery serial The Master Mystery starring Harry Houdini. Maxwell Karger was an executive at the studio. [1] By 1920, the B.A. Rolfe production companies ceased operating.
Florence La Badie was an American-Canadian actress in the early days of the silent film era. She was a major star between 1911 and 1917. Her career was at its height when she died at age 29 from injuries sustained in an automobile accident.
Elsie Jane Wilson was a cinema actress, director, and writer during the early film era. She took part in the productions of the silent film era and starred in over thirty films. Between the years of 1916 and 1919, Wilson was credited for producing, writing two films, and directing eleven films. She was best known in the genres of dramas and comedy dramas.
Viola Dana was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent films. She appeared in over 100 films, but was unable to make the transition to sound films.
Metro Pictures Corporation was a motion picture production company founded in early 1915 in Jacksonville, Florida. It was a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company produced its films in New York, Los Angeles, and sometimes at leased facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was purchased in 1919.
Ruth Roland was an American stage and film actress and film producer.
Grace Cunard was an American actress, screenwriter and film director. During the silent era, she starred in over 100 films, wrote or co-wrote at least 44 of those productions, and directed no fewer than eight of them. In addition, she edited many of her films, including some of the shorts, serials, and features she developed in collaboration with Francis Ford. Her younger sister, Mina Cunard, was also a film actress.
Marion Fairfax was an American screenwriter, playwright, actress, and producer.
Marshall Ambrose "Mickey" Neilan was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, whose work in films began in the early silent era.
Benjamin Albert Rolfe was an American musician known as "The Boy Trumpet Wonder" who went on to be a bandleader, recording artist, radio personality, and film producer.
Frank Powell was a Canadian-born stage and silent film actor, director, producer, and screenwriter who worked predominantly in the United States. He is also credited with "discovering" Theda Bara and casting her in a starring role in the 1915 release A Fool There Was. Her performance in that production, under Powell's direction, quickly earned Bara widespread fame as the film industry's most popular evil seductress or on-screen "vamp".
Dorothy Dalton was an American silent film actress and stage personality who worked her way from a stock company to a movie career. Beginning in 1910, Dalton was a player in stock companies in Chicago; Terre Haute, Indiana; and Holyoke, Massachusetts. She joined the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation vaudeville circuits. By 1914 she was working in Hollywood.
Marguerite Snow was an American silent film and stage actress. In her early films she was billed as Margaret Snow.
Mignon Anderson was an American film and stage actress. Her career was at its peak in the 1910s.
Cleo Madison was a theatrical and silent film actress, screenwriter, producer, and director who was active in Hollywood during the silent era.
Clara Whipple(néeClara or Clarissa or Clarise Brimmer Whipple; November 7, 1887 – November 6, 1932) was an American actress who flourished in theatre from 1913 to 1915 and in silent film from 1915 to 1919. She was also a silent film scenario writer.
Agnes Vernon was an American film actress of the silent era. While still in her teens, she experienced a meteoric ascent from obscurity to box-office sensation. After turning twenty-three and a movie career fading away, she abandoned the silver screen forever. Vernon performed in over 90 films between 1913 and 1922. She completed most of her roles under contract with Universal Pictures.
|yearsactive = 1912–1925 }} Hedda Vernon was a German actress, screenwriter, and film producer. She was a prominent star of the early Weimar Republic, and had her own film production company.
Astra Film Corp was an American film production company that produced silent films. Louis J. Gasnier was the company's president. George B. Seitz co-founded it. It was making films by 1916. It became Louis J. Gasnier Productions after Seitz left.
The Dawson Film Find (DFF) was the accidental discovery in 1978 of 372 film titles preserved in 533 reels of silent-era nitrate films in the Klondike Gold Rush town of Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. The reels had been buried under an abandoned hockey rink in 1929 and included lost films of feature movies and newsreels. A construction excavation inadvertently uncovered the forgotten cache of discarded films, which were unintentionally preserved by the permafrost.
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