The World Film Company or World Film Corporation was an American film production and distribution company, organized in 1914 in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Short-lived but significant in American film history, World Film was created by financier and filmmaker Lewis J. Selznick in Fort Lee, where many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in the early part of the 20th century. [1] [2] [3]
World Film was to be the distribution arm for three main production companies: Selznick's own production company called Equitable Pictures, Jules Brulatour's Peerless Pictures, and the Shubert Pictures production company founded by the strong-willed promoter and entrepreneur William Aloysius Brady.
Under this arrangement, World Film was the distributor for some 380 short films and features from 1914 through 1921. It also became a production company, with filming centered at Brulatour's Peerless Studio facilities, and run by Brady. The Schuberts intended to use their own chain of vaudeville and legitimate theaters as film venues. [4] In the period between 1912 and 1915, all five of the most important film production companies in the U.S. had similar ties to theatrical entrepreneurs, hoping to leverage their theater chains: Famous Players Film Company, Klaw & Erlanger's "Protective Amusement Company", the Jesse L. Lasky Company, the Triangle Film Corporation, and World Film. [5]
By 1916, Selznick was ousted from World Film by its board. Chicago investor Arthur Spiegel was put in charge as president. Production remained at Fort Lee until 1919, when the company was re-purchased by Selznick and absorbed into his Lewis J. Selznick Productions, based on the west coast of the United States.
World Film was distinguished by its concentration of talent. It acquired film production company Equitable Motion Pictures Corporation. [6]
The destruction by fire of the French-based Eclair's New Jersey studio on March 10, 1914, and the outbreak of World War I the following August drove a re-organization of foreign film-industry assets in Fort Lee, including the employees. Within World Film a number of French directors and cinematographers, many of whom had been brought over to work at American Eclair, organized themselves in a separate French-speaking unit, with its own sensibility. For about three years Maurice Tourneur, Léonce Perret, George Archainbaud, Emile Chautard, Albert Capellani and Lucien Andriot, among others, worked together on films such as 1914's The Wishing Ring: An Idyll of Old England , the 1915 versions of Camille and Alias Jimmy Valentine , the 1916 La Bohème . and taught a young apprentice film cutter at the World studio: Josef von Sternberg. [7]
Others were also hired into World Film: actress Clara Kimball Young (the second wife of director James Young, married and divorced) hired away from Vitagraph, Sidney Olcott hired away from Kalem Studios, screenwriter Frances Marion, actress Elaine Hammerstein, and vaudeville star Lew Fields, and Clara Whipple (third wife of director James Young, married and divorced).
The Fox Film Corporation was an American independent film production studio formed by William Fox (1879–1952) in 1915, by combining his earlier Greater New York Film Rental Company and Box Office Attraction Company.
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Owen Moore was an Irish-born American actor, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937.
Maurice Félix Thomas, known as Maurice Tourneur, was a French film director and screenwriter.
Lewis J. Selznick was an American producer in the early years of the film industry. After initial involvement with World Film at Fort Lee, New Jersey, he established Selznick Pictures in California.
Clara Kimball Young was an American film actress who was popular in the early silent film era.
Arthur Edeson, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. Born in New York City, his career ran from the formative years of the film industry in New York, through the silent era in Hollywood, and the sound era there in the 1930s and 1940s. His work included many landmarks in film history, including The Thief of Bagdad (1924), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Frankenstein (1931), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Casablanca (1942).
Fred J. Balshofer was a pioneering silent film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer in the United States.
Pierre Ernest Jules Brulatour was a pioneering executive figure in American silent cinema. Beginning as American distribution representative for Lumiere Brothers raw film stock in 1907, he joined producer Carl Laemmle in forming the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company in 1909, effectively weakening the stronghold of the Motion Picture Patents Company, headed by Thomas Edison, a large trust company that was then monopolizing the American film industry through contracts with hand-picked, established studios. By 1911 Brulatour was president of the Sales Company. He was a founder of the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, later known as Universal Pictures.
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Eclair, formerly Laboratoires Eclair, was a film production, film laboratory, and movie camera manufacturing company established in Épinay-sur-Seine, France by Charles Jourjon in 1907. What remains of the business is a unit of Ymagis Group offering creative and distribution services for the motion pictures industries across Europe and North America such as editing, color grading, restoration, digital and theatrical delivery, versioning.
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.
Herbert Blaché, born Herbert Reginald Gaston Blaché-Bolton was a British-born American film director, producer and screenwriter, born of a French father. He directed more than 50 films between 1912 and 1929.
Arthur Henry Spiegel I was a Chicago mail-order businessman and early American film studio executive.
Lucien Andriot ASC was a French and American cinematographer. He shot more than 200 films and television programs over the course of his career.
Charles O. Baumann was an American film producer, film studio executive, and pioneer in the motion picture industry.
Selznick Pictures was an American film production company active between 1916 and 1923 during the silent era.
Peerless Pictures, originally Peerless Features, was an early film studio in the United States. Jules Brulatour was a co-founder. The Peerless studio was built in 1914 on Linwood Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey, when the town was the center of America's first motion picture industry. The company was merged along with a couple of other early studios into World Pictures.
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.
Agnes Egan Cobb was an American businesswoman based in New York City. Working with and running several companies in the 1910s and 1920s, she bought and distributed silent films to theaters across the United States, and supplied exhibitors with promotional materials such as posters.
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