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The Motion Picture Patents Company, founded in December 1908 and terminated seven years later in 1915 after conflicts within the industry, 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. But it also discouraged its members' entry into feature film production, and the use of outside financing, both to its members' eventual detriment.
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound. Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of title cards.
The year 1900 in film involved some significant events.
Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros. in 1925.
James Stuart Blackton was a British-American film producer and director of the silent era. One of the pioneers of motion pictures, he founded Vitagraph Studios in 1897. He was one of the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation, is considered a father of American animation, and was the first to bring many classic plays and books to the screen. Blackton was also the commodore of the Motorboat Club of America and the Atlantic Yacht Club.
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.
A Murphy bed is a bed that is hinged at one end to store vertically against the wall, or inside a closet or cabinet. Since they often can be used as both a bed or a closet, Murphy beds may be considered multifunctional furniture.
The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films. During the height of silent film as a medium, Biograph was America's most prominent film studio and one of the most respected and influential studios worldwide, only rivaled by Germany's UFA, Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri and France's Pathé. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.
William Nicholas Selig was a pioneer of the American motion picture industry. In 1896 he created one of the first film production companies, Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago. Selig claimed to have made the first narrative film shot in Los Angeles, The Count of Monte Cristo, and, in 1909, what may have been the first permanent L.A. studio, in Edendale, Los Angeles. He also produced the first Wizard of Oz film in 1910, the first U.S. company to shoot a two-reel film, Damon and Pythias (1908), and the first true serial, The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913-1914).
The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company that was founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago. 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. Ending film production in 1918, the business, based on its film production animals, became an animal and prop supplier to other studios and a zoo and amusement park attraction in East Los Angeles until the Great Depression in the 1930s.
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 1925.
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.
Arthur Housman was an American actor in films during both the silent film era and the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Marcus McDermott was an Australian actor who starred on Broadway and in over 180 American films from 1909 until his death.
Herbert Yost was an American actor who in a career that spanned nearly half a century performed predominantly on stage in stock companies and in numerous Broadway productions. Yost also acted in motion pictures, mostly in one-reel silent shorts released by the Biograph Company and Edison Studios between November 1908 and July 1915. By the time he began working in the film industry, Yost already had more than a decade of stage experience in hundreds of dramatic and comedic roles and was widely regarded in the theatre community "as one of the country's finest stock actors". Reportedly, to reduce the risk of tarnishing his reputation as a professional actor by being identified as a screen performer, Yost often billed himself as "Barry O'Moore" while working in films. He was ultimately cast in scores of motion pictures in the early silent era, although with the exceptions of appearing in three more films in the sound era, Yost spent the remaining decades of his career acting in major theatre productions, almost exclusively on Broadway.
George Kleine was an American film producer and cinema pioneer.
How Brown Saw the Baseball Game is an American short silent comedy film produced in 1907 and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The film follows a baseball fan named Mr. Brown who drinks large quantities of alcohol before a baseball game and becomes so intoxicated that the game appears to him in reverse motion. During production, trick photography was used to achieve this effect.
The Monster of Frankenstein was a 1920 Italian silent horror film, produced by Luciano Albertini, directed by Eugenio Testa, starring Luciano Albertini, Aldo Mezzanotte and Umberto Guarracino, and is an adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. It was one of a very few Italian horror films produced in the silent era since after Benito Mussolini seized control of the country, horror films were strictly forbidden. The Mary Shelley novel had been filmed twice before during the silent era, as Thomas Edison's Frankenstein (1910) and as Life Without Soul (1915).
Gladiola is a three-reel American silent drama produced by the Edison Company. The script, by Mary Rider, was written specifically as a vehicle for Viola Dana.
Ned Van Buren was an early American cinematographer who worked in Hollywood during the silent era. He was a member of the American Society of Cinematographers, having been elected in 1923.
References
- The Man Who Could Not Sleep (lost silent Edison Studios film; 1915
- "The Man Who Could Not Sleep". Motography . Vol. 13, no. 1–26. June 5, 1915. p. 939.
- "The Man Who Could Not Sleep". The Edison Kinetogram . Vol. 11. 1914. p. 15.
