Biograph Company

Biograph Company
Industry Film industry
Founded December 7, 1855 (1855-12-07), New York, United States
Headquarters New York, United States
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 William Kennedy Dickson
Products cinema, TV-film, TV series
Production output
 Film, TV program

The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928. 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 three thousand short films and twelve feature films.[1][2] 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 distinguished with pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.


Founding

William Kennedy Dickson in 1891

The company was started by William Kennedy Dickson, an inventor at Thomas Edison's laboratory who helped pioneer the technology of capturing moving images on film. Dickson left Edison in April 1895, joining with inventors Herman Casler, Henry Marvin and businessman Elias Koopman to incorporate the American Mutoscope Company in New Jersey in December 1895. The firm manufactured the Mutoscope, and made flip-card movies for it, as a rival to Edison’s Kinetoscope for individual “peep shows”, making the company Edison’s chief competitor in the nickelodeon market. In the summer of 1896 the Biograph projector was released, offering superior image quality to Edison’s Vitascope projector. The company soon became a leader in the film industry, with distribution and production subsidiaries around the world including the British Mutoscope Company. In 1899 it changed its name to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, and in 1909 to simply the Biograph Company.[3]

To avoid violating Edison’s motion picture patents, Biograph cameras from 1895 to 1902 used a large-format film measuring 2-23/32 inches (68 mm) wide, with an image area of 2 × 2½ inches, four times that of Edison’s 35 mm format. The camera used friction feed, instead of Edison’s sprocket feed, to guide the film to the aperture. The camera itself punched a sprocket hole on each side of the frame as the film was exposed at 30 frames per second.[4][5] A patent case victory in March 1902 allowed Biograph and other producers and distributors to use the less expensive 35 mm format without an Edison license, although Biograph did not completely phase out 68 mm production until autumn of 1903.[6] Biograph offered prints in both formats to exhibitors until 1905, when it discontinued the larger format.[7][8]

Biograph films before 1903 were mostly "actualities", documentary film footage of actual persons, places and events, each film usually less than two minutes long, such as the one of the Empire State Express, which premiered on October 12, 1896 in New York City.[9] The occasional narrative film, usually a comedy, was typically shot in one scene, with no editing. Spurred on by competition from Edison and British and European producers, Biograph production from 1903 onward was increasingly dominated by narratives. As the stories became more complex, the films became longer, with multiple scenes to tell the story, although an individual scene was still usually presented in one shot without editing. Biograph's production of actualities ended by 1908 in favor of the narrative film.


Studio

Main article: Biograph Studios
Biograph's first studio was similar to Edison's Black Maria, pictured here, only located...
...on the roof of 841 Broadway in Manhattan

The company's first studio was located on the roof of 841 Broadway at 13th Street in Manhattan, known then as the Hackett Carhart Building and today as the Roosevelt Building. The set-up was similar to Thomas Edison's "Black Maria" in West Orange, New Jersey, with the studio itself being mounted on circular tracks to be able to get the best possible sunlight. As of 1988, the foundations of this machinery were still extant. The company moved in 1906 to a converted brownstone mansion at 11 East 14th Street near Union Square, a building that was razed in the 1960s.[10] This was Biograph's first indoor studio, and the first movie studio in the world to rely exclusively on artificial light. Biograph moved again in 1913, as it entered feature film production, to a new, state-of-the-art studio on 175th Street in the Bronx.

There was the problem of the underground "duping" business, where people would illegally duplicate a copyrighted movie and then remove the title screen with the company and copyright notice and then sell it to theaters. In order to make the theater audience aware that they were watching an American Biograph movie (regardless of whether it was illegally "duped" or not) the AB logo would be prominently placed in random parts of the movie.[11]

D.W. Griffith

Silent film The Wanderer (1913) by Griffith for Biograph. Running time: 06:24. A wandering flute player has a beneficent influence on a number of characters through the pure tones of his music as he passes by. Collection EYE Film Institute Netherlands.

Director D.W. Griffith joined Biograph in 1908 as a writer and actor, but within months became their principal director. In 1908, the company's head director Wallace McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Wallace McCutcheon Jr. took his place, but was not able to make a successful film for the company.[12] As a result of these failed productions, studio head Henry Marvin gave the position of head director to Griffith, whose first film was The Adventures of Dollie.[12] He helped establish many of the conventions of narrative film, including cross-cutting to show events occurring simultaneously in different places, the flashback, the fade-in/fade-out, the interposition of closeups within a scene, and a moderated acting style more suitable for film. Although Griffith did not invent these techniques, he made them a regular part of the film vocabulary. Griffith’s prolific output, often one new film a week, and willingness to experiment in many different genres helped the company become a major commercial success. Many early movie stars were Biograph performers, including Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Robert Harron, Florence Auer, Robert G. Vignola, Alan Hale, Sr., Blanche Sweet, Harry Carey, Mabel Normand, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, and Dorothy Davenport. Mack Sennett honed his craft as an actor and director of comedies at Biograph. After debuting at Biograph, Mary Pickford also became a top star at the studio and would soon be known to audiences as "The Biograph Girl".[13]

A still from the 1900 Biograph film The Temptation of St. Anthony

In January 1910, D.W. Griffith, and Lee Dougherty with the rest of the Biograph acting company, traveled to Los Angeles. While the purpose of the trip was to shoot the film Ramona in authentic locations, it was also to determine the suitability of the West Coast as a place for a permanent studio. The group set up a small facility at Washington Street and Grand Avenue (where the Los Angeles Convention Center now stands). After this, Griffith and his players decided to go a little further north to a small village they had heard about that was friendly, and had beautiful floral scenery. They decided to travel there, and fell in love with this little place called Hollywood. Biograph then made the first film ever in Hollywood called In Old California, a Latino melodrama about the early days of Mexico-owned California.[14] Griffith and the Biograph troupe then filmed other short movies at various locations, then travelled back to New York. After the east coast film community heard about Hollywood, other film companies began to migrate there. Biograph’s little film launched Hollywood as the future movie capital of the world. Biograph opened a studio at Pico and Georgia streets in downtown Los Angeles in 1911, and sent a film crew to work there each year until 1916.

Griffith left Biograph in October 1913, after finishing Judith of Bethulia, unhappy with their resistance to larger budgets, feature film production, or giving onscreen credit to him and the cast. With him went many of the Biograph actors, his cameraman Billy Bitzer, and his production crew. As a final slight to Griffith, Biograph delayed release of Judith of Bethulia until March 1914, to avoid a profit-sharing arrangement the company had with him.[15]

Decline

In December 1908, Biograph joined Edison in forming the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers.[16] The "Edison Trust,” as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay Studios, Kalem Company, George Kleine Productions, Lubin Studios, Georges Méliès, Pathé, Selig Studios, and Vitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution through the General Film Company. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915, and dissolved.[17]

Shielded by the Trust, Biograph had been slow to enter feature film production. Biograph contracted with the theatrical firm of Klaw & Erlanger in 1913 to produce movie versions of the latter’s plays. Their first released feature, Classmates, came out in February 1914, after sixty-nine other American features had been released in 1912–1913.[18] Distribution was hampered by Biograph using a special perforation pattern on the Klaw & Erlanger features which was incompatible with standard projectors, forcing exhibitors to lease specialized equipment from Biograph in order to show the films. With the exodus of the studio’s best actors with Griffith, Biograph was unable develop a marketable star system as the independent companies were doing, and after the Trust’s fall, Biograph found itself behind the times. The Biograph Co. released its last new feature-length films in 1915, and its last new short films in 1916.[19] Biograph spent the remainder of the silent era reissuing its old films, and leasing its Bronx studio to other producers.

A still from the 1903 Biograph film Sherlock Holmes Baffled

When the company fell on financial hard times, the studio facilities were acquired by one of Biograph Company's creditors, the Empire Trust Company, although Biograph Company continued to manage the studio. Herbert Yates acquired the Biograph Company studios and film laboratory facilities in 1928. Biograph Studios in the Bronx was made a subsidiary of his Consolidated Film Industries in 1928.[20][21] The studio and laboratory facilities burned down in 1980.[22]

In 1939, Iris Barry, founder of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art, acquired 900 cans of film from Biograph, which was closing its film vault and planning to destroy all the film. One uncompleted film Lime Kiln Field Day (1913), with an all African American cast, was found among the many cans of film, and shown at MOMA in November 2014.

In 1954–1957, Sterling Television Company distributed a package of 100 quarter-hour television shows titled Movie Museum, featuring Biograph, Edison, and other early films from the vaults of the Museum of Modern Art and the George Eastman House.[23][24][25][26]

Filmography

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Elias Savada (Editor) (1995). The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Film Beginnings, 1893–1910 — A Work in Progress: v. A. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3021-3.
  2. ↑ Lauritzen, Einar; Lundquist, Gunnar (1976). American Film-Index 1908–1915: Motion Pictures, July 1908 – December 1915. distributed by Akademiebokhandeln, University of Stockholm. Stockholm: Film-Index. ISBN 91-7410-001-7.
  3. ↑ Slide, Anthony (1998). The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3426-X.
  4. ↑ Billy Bitzer. "The Biograph Camera". The Operating Cameraman (Society of Camera Operators) (Spring 1995). Archived from the original (– Scholar search) on November 1, 2004. Retrieved 2004-11-30.
  5. ↑ Musser, Charles (1994). The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. pp. 303–313. ISBN 0-520-08533-7.
  6. ↑ "Continued Legal Battles". A Guide to Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and Distributors. Rutgers University.
  7. ↑ Gunning, Tom (December 12, 1993). D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph. University of Illinois Press. p. 88. ISBN 0-252-06366-X. Accessed via Google Print.
  8. ↑ Vaidhyanathan, Siva (April 1, 2003). Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York University Press. p. 88. ISBN 0-8147-8807-6. Accessed via Google Print.
  9. ↑ SilentEra entry
  10. ↑ Alleman, Richard. The Movie Lover's Guide to New York. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. ISBN 0060960809, p.147-48
  11. ↑ Griffith, Richard; Arthur Mayer and Eileen Bowser, The Movies, Simon & Schuster (1981 edition)
  12. 1 2 D.W. Griffith Biography
  13. ↑ © Mary Pickford, Silent Movie Star – goldensilents.com
  14. ↑ Robertson, Patrick (2001). Film Facts. New York: Billboard Books. p. 21. ISBN 0-8230-7943-0. Although In Old California was the first movie shot specifically in Hollywood, Biograph had already filmed A Daring Hold-Up in Southern California in Los Angeles in 1906. Niver, Kemp R. (1971). Biograph Bulletins, 1896–1908. Los Angeles: Locare Research Group. p. 262. The Selig Polyscope Company made pictures in the Los Angeles area in 1908 and 1909, and began construction of a movie studio in Edendale, just east of Hollywood, in 1909.
  15. ↑ Bowser, Eileen (1990). The Transformation of Cinema 1907–1915. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 253. ISBN 0-520-08534-5.
  16. ↑ "Motion Picture Patents Company". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Archived from the original on 27 April 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  17. ↑ "Company Records Series – Motion Picture Patents Company". The Thomas A. Edison Papers. Archived from the original on 25 May 2007. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  18. ↑ Hanson, Patricia King (ed.) (1989). The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures: Feature Films, 1911–1920. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-06301-5.
  19. ↑ Lauritzen, Einar; Gunnar Lundquist (1984). American Film-Index, 1916–1920: Motion Pictures, January 1916 – December 1920. Distributed by Tonnheims (Huddinge, Sweden). Stockholm, Sweden: Film-Index. ISBN 91-86568-01-9.
  20. ↑ Tuska, Jon (1999). The Vanishing Legion: A History of Mascot Pictures, 1927–1935. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p. 42. ISBN 0-7864-0749-2. The last trade of Biograph stock was reported by The New York Times on December 27, 1928, p. 39. The Biograph trademarks were legally abandoned by 1942. 15 USC 1127. The last of the Biograph film copyrights expired in 1945, without any of them having been renewed for a second term. Hurst, Walter E. (1992–1994). Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain. Hollywood, California: Hollywood Film Archive. ISBN 0-911370-73-0.
  21. ↑ "Screen News Here and in Hollywood". The New York Times. September 27, 1939. p. 29. Empire Trust Company, one of Biograph's creditors, had acquired the Bronx studio, but retained Biograph to manage it. Empire Trust later reassigned management to one of its own subsidiaries, The Actinograph Corp., which held it until 1948. R. H. Hammer, Biograph's general manager going back to its Griffith days, donated what remained of Biograph's film collection to the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, around the time Biograph's Bronx studio was closed. Iris Barry, "Why Wait for Posterity?" Hollywood Quarterly, January 1946, pp. 131–137. Reprinted in Hollywood Quarterly: Film Culture in Postwar America, 1945–1957.
  22. ↑ "Bronx Blaze Damages Old Biograph Studios," The New York Times, July 9, 1980, p. B4.
  23. ↑ "Sterling Gets Rights to Biograph One-Reelers", Billboard, October 24, 1953, p. 6.
  24. ↑ "Sterling Earns Killiam Costs", Billboard, January 23, 1954, p. 4.
  25. ↑ "Movie Museum Racks Big Sales", Billboard, November 13, 1954, p. 7.
  26. ↑ "Masterpieces of the Early Screen" (advertisement), Billboard, March 26, 1955, p. 10.

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