William Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright known especially for The Woman in White (1859), a mystery novel and early sensation novel, and for The Moonstone (1868), which established many of the ground rules of the modern detective novel and is also perhaps the earliest clear example of the police procedural genre.
1913 was a particularly fruitful year for film as an art form, and is often cited one of the years in the decade which contributed to the medium the most, along with 1917. The year was one where filmmakers of several countries made great artistic advancements, producing notable pioneering masterpieces such as The Student of Prague, Suspense, Atlantis, Raja Harischandra, Juve contre Fantomas, Quo Vadis?, Ingeborg Holm, The Mothering Heart, Ma l’amor mio non muore!, L’enfant de Paris and Twilight of a Woman's Soul.
The year 1909 in film involved some significant events.
The Moonstone: A Romance by Wilkie Collins is an 1868 British epistolary novel. It is an early example of the modern detective novel, and established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. Its publication was started on 4 January 1868 and was completed on 8 August 1868. The story was serialised in Charles Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round. Collins adapted The Moonstone for the stage in 1877.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker is an American television series that aired on ABC during the 1974–1975 season. The series followed wire service reporter Carl Kolchak who investigates mysterious crimes with unlikely causes, particularly those involving the supernatural or science fiction, including fantastic creatures. The series was preceded by the two television movies, The Night Stalker (1972) and The Night Strangler (1973). Although the series lasted only a single season, it rapidly achieved cult status and has remained very popular in syndication.
Moonstone Books is an American comic book, graphic novel, and prose fiction publisher based in Chicago focused on pulp fiction comic books and prose anthologies as well as horror and western tales.
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.
Honey West is a fictional character created by the husband and wife writing team Gloria and Forest Fickling under the pseudonym "G.G. Fickling", and appearing in eleven mystery novels by the duo.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1910 American silent fantasy film and the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, made by the Selig Polyscope Company without Baum's direct input. It was created to fulfill a contractual obligation associated with Baum's personal bankruptcy caused by The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, from which it was once thought to have been derived. It was partly based on the 1902 stage musical The Wizard of Oz, though much of the film deals with the Wicked Witch of the West, who does not appear in the musical.
Roosevelt in Africa is a film by Cherry Kearton, released in 1910. It is a documentary about the Smithsonian–Roosevelt African Expedition, featuring Theodore Roosevelt in Africa. It is shot in silent black and white.
The Garden of Allah is a 1927 American silent romantic drama film directed by Rex Ingram, his final film for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film stars Ingram’s wife, actress Alice Terry and Iván Petrovich. Due to the public's apathy towards silent films, a sound version was prepared and released in 1928. While the sound version has no audible dialog, it features a synchronized musical score with sound effects. The film was released in both sound-on-disc and sound-on-film formats.
The Moonstone is a 1934 American mystery film directed by Reginald Barker and starring David Manners, Phyllis Barry, Gustav von Seyffertitz and Jameson Thomas. It is an adaptation of the 1868 novel The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. The film retains the book's British location, but uses a contemporary 1930s setting rather than the Victorian era of the original. It is one of three film versions of the novel, which include silent versions in 1915 and 1909, although a number of television and radio adaptations have been made.
The Moonstone is a 1915 silent film directed by Frank Hall Crane. The film stars Eugene O'Brien as Franklin Blake, Elaine Hammerstein as Rachel Verinder, Ruth Findlay as Rosanna Spearman, among others.
The Crisis is a 1916 American silent historical drama film produced by William N. Selig and directed by Colin Campbell. The film is based on the American Civil War novel The Crisis by American novelist Winston Churchill. The novel was adapted into a play and produced on Broadway in 1902.
The Carpet from Bagdad is a 1915 American silent adventure film directed by Colin Campbell and based on Harold MacGrath's 1911 eponymous novel. In the story, Horace Wadsworth, one of a gang of criminals also planning a bank robbery in New York, steals the titular prayer rug from its Baghdad mosque. He sells the carpet to antique dealer George Jones to fund the robbery scheme. But the theft places both men and Fortune Chedsoye, the innocent daughter of another conspirator, in danger from the carpet's guardian.
The Moonstone is a daytime drama series produced by King Bert Productions for BBC One. It is an adaptation of the Wilkie Collins 1868 novel of the same name described by T.S. Eliot as the first and greatest of English detective novels. It stars Josh Silver and John Thomson.
The Sea Wolf is a lost 1913 American silent adventure film directed by and starring Hobart Bosworth and co-starring Herbert Rawlinson. Based on the 1904 Jack London novel The Sea-Wolf, the production's master negatives were destroyed in the disastrous 1914 vault fire at the Lubin Manufacturing Company, the Philadelphia-based film company that Bosworth contracted to produce theatrical prints of his screen adaptation.
The Count of Monte Cristo is a lost 1912 unauthorised silent film short directed by Colin Campbell and starring Hobart Bosworth. The film is a remake of the same story Selig had filmed in 1908. When this film was made Adolph Zukor had secured the rights to the 1844 novel and was about to release his 1913 version with James O'Neill who had made the role famous on stage. Zukor's attorneys ordered this film destroyed and all prints were withdrawn.
