14
Production as the Nickelodeon Era Begins: 1905–1907

The proliferation of nickelodeon theaters created a huge demand for films and film equipment. Projector sales boomed for the chief hardware manufacturers: Edison (projecting kinetoscope), Lubin (cineograph), Selig (polyscope), Nicholas Power (cameragraph), the Enterprise Optical Company (optigraph), and Charles Dressier (American projectograph). Vitagraph meanwhile ceased manufacturing its projector and concentrated on film production, and the Urban bioscope, imported from England, no longer held an important share of the market. A number of small concerns also entered the field in 1906-1907, including the Viascope Manufacturing Company (viascope) and Eberhard Schneider with his Miror-Vitae projector. By mid 1906, Nicholas Power had forty employees and was turning out approximately two machines a day, or seven hundred a year. By September 1907, Lubin had eighty-six employees whose time was devoted solely to the manufacture of projectors.¹

The skyrocketing demand for these machines is suggested by figures available for the Edison Manufacturing Company. Edison projectors, generally selling for $135, generated $182,134.52 in sales during the 1906 business year, an increase of 131 percent over 1905, and then jumped another 130 percent in 1907 to $418,893.33. Accounting for discounts to agents, Edison probably sold more than 1,500 projectors in 1906 and more than 3,500 in 1907. With the cameragraph and projecting kinetoscope enjoying the best reputations, Edison may have commanded 30 percent of the market. Although some projectors went into vaudeville houses and others replaced damaged or worn-out machines, a large majority were purchased to open nickelodeons at a time when virtually every theater relied on a single projector.

Film supply likewise responded to the intense demand. New subjects coming on the market in January and February 1906 totaled approximately 7,000 feet a month.² If one ignores the substantial backlog of subjects available to newly opened nickelodeons and assumes a theater was showing 1,000 feet of film and changing its program twice a week, the rate of film production was insufficient to avoid repeaters. If several theaters were located close together, the lack of variety inevitably created serious problems. Demand was far greater than supply. Moving Picture World subsequently estimated that the following amounts of new subjects were available to the nickelodeons:³

These figures suggest that the increasing rate of program change, from two to three times a week in November 1906 and from three times to six times a week in the spring of 1907, became practical only when output had reached sufficient levels. Production practices undoubtedly acted as an impediment to the rapid transformation of exhibition. Correspondingly, this new form of exhibition created pressures on film producers that forced and encouraged them to change.

The big March increase resulted from the greater availability of foreign films, primarily through George Kleine, and not from a sudden expansion in domestic production (which only rose dramatically much later in the year). While foreign manufacturers moved successfully into this new market, American producers had difficulty increasing their supply. Some even had periods when their production dipped or suffered temporary disruption. Of the established American producers, Vitagraph and Lubin took most effective advantage of the new opportunities created by the nickelodeon era. Biograph, Edison, and Selig, however, encountered difficulties or failed to expand their film output rapidly.

Various factors kept American production in disarray. Ironically, one was the vigor of the nickelodeon expansion and the immense profitability of picture theaters and rental exchanges. Opening nickelodeons and exchanges could be done more quickly and involved much lower cost than establishing production facilities. The expertise needed to operate a profitable picture house was simpler and took less time to acquire than the skills needed for successful film production. Industry entrepreneurs therefore focused initially on expansion in exhibition and distribution rather than production. Even so, new opportunities in production created short-term disruptions as experienced personnel left long-standing companies like Biograph and Selig to form their own enterprises such as Kalem and Essanay. Output at the affected concerns was curtailed as new personnel established themselves. The building of new studios, while essential for long-term expansion, took energy away from immediate production. In some instances, notably at Edison, the strong demand for films actually reinforced the status quo, since larger print sales per picture meant that facilities for positive-print production ran at full capacity and the company could boast much higher profitability. Finally, established methods of film production and representation were not amenable to a rapid increase in the output of new negatives. While the transformation of these practices was necessary if expansion was to occur efficiently, many production personnel either resisted or failed to recognize the underlying pressure for change and the direction it would take.

The status of Edison's patents was another factor that deterred a rapid increase of domestic production capabilities. Edison, as detailed earlier, had once again sued all the leading American producers and foreign importers between late 1902 and 1905. On 26 March 1906, Judge George W. Ray handed down a decision that narrowly interpreted Edison's camera patent and would have allowed film producers to operate without fear of infringement. Yet, Edison's lawyers promptly appealed the case to a higher court, and intense uncertainty still reigned within the industry. There was little incentive for substantial investment in a studio and plant that might easily prove worthless. On 5 March 1907 the court of appeals rendered a new decision that reversed part of the lower court's ruling. The case, in fact, involved two types of cameras: the Warwick camera, a standard 35-mm camera made by the Warwick Trading Company in England and used by many producers, and the old Biograph camera with its unusual method of moving the film forward and punching holes in the film just before each exposure. According to the judges, Alfred C. Coxe, E. Henry Lacombe, and William J. Wallace, the device that moved the film through the Warwick camera was "the fair equivalent" of the mechanism patented by Edison and so infringed on Edison's invention. They declared, however, that the Biograph camera was not an infringement since it operated on a different principle. This decision allowed Biograph to function without further legal interference as long as the company used 35-mm equivalents of its old 70-mm cameras. But while freeing Biograph, the opinion offered strong support for Edison's legal position in his many other suits. Both parties were, therefore, sufficiently content that neither appealed the case to the Supreme Court. Legal developments became even more ominous as Edison's lawyers reactivated the inventor's infringement case against William Selig. Thus, the climate for investment in American film production grew steadily worse as the nickelodeon era began.⁴

The shortage of domestic films was also due to specific shortcomings at Biograph and Edison. Neither company effectively exploited the opportunities presented by the nickelodeon boom, even though they alone were spared the many legal uncertainties facing their American competitors. One might expect that they would increase their supply of new pictures to meet the increased demand, but this did not happen. In fact, for extended periods of time, each company actually decreased its rate of production, albeit for opposing reasons. Biograph became less and less profitable and, incredibly, was on the verge of being closed by mid 1907.

Biograph Fails to Expand Production

Francis J. Marion had chief responsibility for Biograph films from the second half of 1905 until his departure at the end of 1906. During this period, the rate of production remained at two major releases per month. For The Cruise of the "Gladys" (No. 3217, August 1906) and lesser productions, Marion directed. For more ambitious efforts Marion usually hired a stage director: The Paymaster (No. 3203, June 1906), for example, was directed by a Mr. Harrington. Marion often felt more comfortable working within a modified collaborative framework.⁵

From The Firebug (No. 3055, August 1905) to 3268, Trial Marriages (No. 3268, December 1906), comedies and melodramas were the core of Biograph's output, with the former outnumbering the latter by a 3:2 ratio. In addition, there were a smattering of comedy-dramas (A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed, No. 3138, January 1906) and novelty subjects. Among the latter, "Looking for John Smith" (No. 3212, July 1906) utilized the cartoon tradition as "the characters are made to speak their lines by means of words that appear to flow mysteriously from their mouths."⁶ Actualities continued to be made, including a few news films (Departure of Peary for the North Pole, No. 3062) and human-interest subjects (Society Ballooning, Pittsfield, Mass., No. 3159). A group of Hale's Tours pictures were also produced in the spring to meet demand for this type of film (In the Haunts of Rip Van Winkle, No. 3152, April 1906). Through the end of 1906, Biograph also continued to sell films made by Gaumont of London and Paris, including The Olympian Games, Rescued in Midair, The Dog Detective, and The Life of Christ. From Biograph's advertising, it is evident that the company's energies were focused on fiction films.

Many Biograph comedies reworked ideas underlying the company's earlier hits. The Summer Boarders (No. 3068), in which a city family goes to the country for a week of vacation, bears a marked resemblance to The Suburbanite. Wanted: A Nurse (No. 3230, September 1906) and Married for Millions (No. 3260) are indebted to Personal. Other films retained strong ties to American culture. Everybody Works but Father (Nos. 3100-3101, October 1905), acted straight and in blackface, was meant to be accompanied by the singing of Lew Dockstader's hit song of the same name. Mr. Butt-in (No. 3139) was based on the well-known cartoon strip of that name then appearing in the New York World. It has an episodic, comic-strip structure as the character interferes in a variety of situations, each time with disastrous results. Dr. Dippy of Dr. Dippy's Sanitarium (No. 3237) was also "made famous by the comic supplements." Dream of the Race-Track Fiend (No. 3091, September 1905) evoked Winsor McCay's famed cartoon strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend in its structure and use of dream.

The newspaper, the dominant form of mass communication, continued to provide spectators with a central frame of reference for many Biograph films. Trial Marriages (No. 3268, December 1906) evokes a scandal that was widely publicized in the Hearst press when Mrs. Elsie Clews Parsons, wife of Congressman Herbert Parsons, published a book in which she advocated temporary or "trial" marriages. "Mrs. Parson Recommends Marriages 'On Trial'" was a front-page headline in the New York American, and it was followed by additional coverage on the subject. The Biograph film cites the initial article as a frame of reference when its opening medium shot of a man reading the newspaper is followed by a close-up of the New York American headline. The impressionable young man then tries a series of "trial marriages" with "the crying girl," "the jealous girl," etc. Each situation proves unappealing, and he finally gives up on the idea of marriage altogether.⁷ The Subpoena Server (No. 3160, April 1906) was a chase film in which "the hero" tries to serve a millionaire with a subpoena. It followed "the recent experience of the Standard Oil magnate," John D. Rockefeller, which had received wide coverage in the newspapers.

Biograph also combined theatrical and newspaper antecedents to generate stories and provide a context for publicity and audience appreciation. Dalan Ale, the main character in The Critic (No. 3140), witnesses several horrendous vaudeville acts, criticizes them in the press, and is later assaulted by those he roasted—a burlesque of the fate of Alan Dale, a caustic theater critic for the New York American. In The Barnstormers (No. 3109, November 1905), a fourth-rate Uncle Tom's Cabin theatrical troupe arrives in Rahway, New Jersey, and performs its specialty. The staging burlesques the most famous scenes from the play. With a solitary puppy standing in for a pack of bloodhounds and three white squares representing the ice floe, the actors are bombarded with food and forced to make their escape. The manager absconds with the funds and the film ends with the company walking the tracks back to New York. Assuming audience knowledge of the play, the Biograph Bulletin described the film's story with a news report clipped from the Rahway Times.

The crime genre and melodrama were virtually synonymous during Marion's reign. Although A Kentucky Feud (No. 3106) took its title and some plot elements from a popular melodrama that had earlier inspired Biograph's The Moonshiner, it depicted the well-publicized feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.⁹ The feud finally destroys the love between Sally McCoy and Jim Hatfield as Sally witnesses a knife fight between her brother and her lover. Paralyzed by indecision, she watches them kill each other. Once again the primitive, violent nature of country life was emphasized. Lengthy intertitles were necessary to assist the audience in following the story line and identifying characters, but much of the film's commercial value and audience enjoyment came from their prior knowledge of the feud.

Most crime films, at Biograph and elsewhere, show family and society confronted with a group of evil outlaws. The River Pirates (No. 3071), shot by Bitzer in September 1905, was loosely based on the robbing of Paul Bonner's summer residence in Sound Beach, Connecticut, near Frank Marion's home, the month before.¹⁰ Marion retained key elements, such as the removal of the safe by boat, but superimposed a melodramatic plot. The robbers murder the wealthy landowner after their leader has been jilted by his daughter. Eventually, they are caught and the ringleader is killed. Even though the real thieves escaped undetected, the filmmakers added a "crime-doesn't-pay" ending. Supposedly based on another unsolved crime in which a strongbox of jewelry mysteriously disappeared in transit, The Great Jewel Mystery (No. 3093) was more indebted to the play The Great Diamond Mystery. Two other 1906 Biograph films were also said to be based on recent events in the New York underworld: The Silver Wedding (No. 3148) and The Black Hand (No. 3150). All four crime pictures end with the capture and/or death of the evildoers, but what is most convincingly detailed is the execution of their plans, while their seizure appears arbitrary and often unbelievable. The lack of credible moral endings and the emphasis on criminal violence were not unusual. In the face of a rapidly growing audience for these cheap amusements, many influential Americans greeted the tawdry nature of such melodramas with mounting concern.¹¹

During 1906 Marion produced three pictures set in the workplace, an unusual locale for American films of this era. The Paymaster (No. 3203, June), shot at a factory in Mianus (near Greenwich), Connecticut, opens with a scene of a mill girl (Gene Gauntier in her first screen role) working at a power loom—one of the first filmed interiors to rely exclusively on natural light. The paymaster is the girl's lover, but the superintendent uses his power to force his unwelcome attentions on her. Killing two birds with one stone, the superintendent steals the payroll and frames the paymaster for the deed. When a dog finds the hidden money and the superintendent is confronted by the mill girl, the villain throws her into the pond, thus revealing his true perfidious nature.

Both The Tunnel Workers (No. 3251, October) and Skyscrapers (No. 3258, November) involve similarly melodramatic confrontations between men from different levels of management, and both were shot on locations that received significant news coverage. In The Tunnel Workers, the superintendent's secret relationship with the foreman's wife is discovered as the film begins.¹² This studio scene is followed by a series of actuality shots showing the building of the tunnel between Manhattan and Long Island, according to one title, "the greatest engineering feat the world has ever known." Next, in the bowels of the earth, the two men enter an air lock and fight over the woman. As the foreman is about to brain the superintendent, there is an explosion. After this fortuitous (or divine) intervention, the foreman comes to his senses and rescues his rival. A tentative reconciliation occurs at the end as the superintendent visits his rescuer's bedside and asks forgiveness. A film rich with interpretive possibilities, The Tunnel Workers explores the tensions between the all-male workplace and the domestic life of the family.

Skyscrapers was filmed at a construction site for the tallest office building in New York City. A worker, "Dago Pete," robs the contractor but pins the blame on the foreman. In a fight on the unfinished skyscraper, the foreman throws the contractor off the platform, but the loser luckily grabs hold of a girder and stops his fall. At the foreman's trial, however, Dago Pete is exposed by the foreman's daughter and the two levels of management—contractor and foreman—are reconciled. The plot is inconsistent and sometimes illogical, but the titles preserve a minimal coherence. The film itself reveals an anti-immigrant (particularly anti-Italian) prejudice, with ethnic background providing the sole motivation for reprehensible actions and the immigrant himself fostering misunderstandings between native-born whites. All three workplace films present the lower-level manager (often with a working-class background) as a character who is falsely accused or otherwise betrayed and struggles to redeem himself. On one hand, the focus is on someone with whom many male nickelodeon spectators could comfortably identify, someone a notch or two above them in social or economic standing. On the other hand, the last film was insensitive to the heavily immigrant composition of the new audiences. Italian moviegoers, living only a few blocks from the Biograph studio, were likely to be offended.

The system of representation used for these films, moreover, changed little from Biograph efforts of the previous two years. Narratives were generally made understandable through intertitles used in a title/scene/title/scene format. With A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed, the story of a man and his faithful dog (performed by Mannie) is virtually told through titles, with the images carrying little of the narrative burden. By contrast, the intertitles of The Lone Highwayman (No. 3223) are brief, if frequent, naming a scene rather than explaining the story (continuing a convention of theatrical melodrama). Generally, title cards were a way to provide spectators with necessary "special knowledge" just before they saw the relevant scene. This was essential because, for the most part, the narratives were neither clearly nor effectively depicted within the scenes. In this respect, Biograph films regressed in McCutcheon's absence.

The depiction of temporality had not changed either. In The Tunnel Workers, for example, there is still overlapping action as the rivals move back and forth between tunnel and air lock. Editing structures were generally simpler compared to previous efforts involving McCutcheon. There were few close-ups. While Biograph continued to use three-dimensional sets (as it had done consistently since 1904-1905), this realistic touch was easily accommodated by a more general syncretic framework. Thus, Skyscrapers juxtaposes actuality material with scenes displaying a wide range of presentational elements (conventionalized acting gestures, melodramatically contrived plots) with the result that an informal, spontaneous, catch-as-catch-can style of filming suddenly shifts to old-style theatrical conventions as quotidian space is transformed turned into a stage. While individual elements of a later proto-Hollywood system may be present, they are structured within the system of early cinema.

In May 1906, Biograph opened a Los Angeles office under G. E. Van Guysling, who had previously increased the standing and profitability of its mutoscope business. This Pacific Coast branch briefly served as a second production center as Otis M. Gove shot A Daring Hold-up in Southern California (No. 3209), which depicted the robbery of a trolley car and the ensuing pursuit and capture of the bandits. Other films were taken of such well-known local sites as the mammoth ostrich farm in Pasadena. By October the branch had moved to a larger office at 116 North Broadway, where films were sold and mutoscope reels rented.¹³

Biograph suffered another upheaval at the beginning of 1907 as Marion left to form a new production company, Kalem, with fellow Biograph employee Samuel Long, manager of the Hoboken factory where prints and mutoscope reels were made. Trial Marriages and Mr. Hurry-up (No. 3262) were among Marion's last productions; these were already perfunctorily executed and suffered in comparison to those made by rival producers. After seeing Mr. Hurry-up at Pastor's vaudeville house, Sime Silverman, founder of Variety, complained, "Other than being considerably too long, this picture contains little fun, and that only at long intervals." Even the parts that were suppose to be funny had "no humorous effect to speak of."¹⁴

Van Guysling replaced Marion as vice-president and general manager in early 1907.¹⁵ Although attempts were made to continue releasing subjects at the same pace, the company lacked experienced production personnel. Indeed, the search for a new creative head did not fully end until Griffith assumed the role of director in 1908. For The Fencing Master (No. 3279, February 1907), Biograph enlisted the assistance of two Frenchman to tell a story of love and remorse that was supposedly set in Paris. In addition to his camera responsibilities, Billy Bitzer may have been given the chief creative role in such productions as If You Had a Wife Like This (No. 3278), a comedy farce about a Mr. Peck who is henpecked by his wife. If so, the surviving pictures explain why he was not made producer-director on a more permanent basis.

At least from April (Hypnotist's Revenge, No. 3300) through June (Terrible Ted, No. 3320), Joseph A. Golden, an experienced stage director and stock-company manager, wrote and mounted many of the company's productions.¹⁶ Among them were several clever comedies, including Terrible Ted, which gives an unusual twist to the bad-boy genre. A boy reads a dime Western, Terrible Ted, and imagines that he is an invincible gunslinger who sends cops running through the streets, shoots a band of outlaws, and saves an Indian girl from a bear that he kills with a knife. He also eliminates a tribe of Indian warriors and subsequently displays their scalps to the camera and audience. His reveries end, however, when his mother enters and gives him a sharp slap. The evil influence that popular culture was said to have on young minds is spoofed, but the filmmakers displace its supposed immorality from the movies onto cheap literature.

Golden's production team employed extensive object animation—something already popularized by Vitagraph—for three Biograph films: Dolls in Dreamland (No. 3294), Crayono (No. 3295), and The Tired Tailor's Dream (No. 3313). In the last of these, the technique was used for a dream sequence where a tailor, obliged to finish a suit in one hour, falls asleep and dreams that his almost impossible task is accomplished without any human labor. When the customer returns, the new clothes

dress him without his assistance, again through object animation. This reverie of production without anxiety or labor may have had considerable appeal for workingclass audiences, whose experience of the workplace was radically different. The film itself must have been very time-consuming to photograph, although Biograph's studio lighting made the task much easier than if sunlight had been used. The results, while impressive, are also quite lengthy and slow-moving.

By mid 1907 Biograph had fallen into a state of profound crisis. After Marions departure, its operations were disorganized: films ceased to be copyrighted, and old subjects had to be dusted off for release. When the corporation's board of directors met on 17 July, Jeremiah J. Kennedy was elected company president. According to Terry Ramsaye, he was assigned the task of liquidating the company, since interest payments on its $200,000 loan/investment from the New York Security and Trust Company were long overdue. Instead, Kennedy decided to restructure the company and began by firing Van Guysling, who departed in a state of nervous prostration. Golden left at the same time. By October, Wallace McCutcheon had rejoined Biograph and was making Wife Wanted (No. 3377), another variation on the Personal idea. His return was not an immediate cure-all, however: the financial panic of October 1907 resulted in the laying off of many Biograph employees.¹⁷ Biograph thus struggled to survive at the very moment that the industry was booming.

Production at Edison Declines

While the Edison Manufacturing Company prospered, its rate of negative production (of new subjects) was significantly lower from the end of 1905 through the first seven months of 1907 than it had been over the course of the previous year. During this twenty-month period, Porter produced only fifteen fiction "features " for sale and distribution by the Edison organization.¹⁸ Sales on a per-film basis, however, increased dramatically with Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (February 1906), which sold 192 copies during its first year of release, twice the number sold by the most popular Edison subject of the previous year. Even at the low end, Waiting at the Church (July 1906) managed to sell fifty-two prints. While sales per film roughly doubled from 1905 to 1906, fewer new subjects meant that total sales increased only 64 percent from one business year to the next. Yet increased sales allowed for more time to be spent on individual subjects. With the Edison factory working at full capacity in an effort to fill its print orders, the production team led by Porter and McCutcheon was under no pressure to increase output. Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, while only 470 feet, took almost two months to make.

The production of actualities continued at Edison through the first months of 1907. News films were seldom made and rarely for general release; rather, most were travel scenes taken by Robert K. Bonine. These sold far fewer copies than the acted films, and some failed to sell at all. Bonine, who felt that the Edison Company was only interested in fiction subjects, left in May and was not replaced. Thereafter, virtually all attention was focused on satisfying the nickelodeons' voracious appetite for story films.

Porter's involvement in all phases of Edison film activities also made it difficult for negative production to increase. The filmmaker not only spent time refining the projecting kinetoscope but helped to supervise the building of Edison's new Bronx

film studio. Construction began in early 1906 and cost $39,556.97 (not including the purchase of land). Even after the studio officially opened on 11 July 1907, putting the facility in working order required large amounts of Porter's energy. Despite such time-consuming responsibilities, Porter never assigned Wallace McCutcheon to his own film projects—an option that could have increased the output of new subjects. At Edison, McCutcheon worked collaboratively with Porter, much as he had worked with Marion during his previous stint at Biograph. In making a film, Porter not only produced but worked on scripts, served as cameraman, did lab work on the exposed negative, and "trimmed" the negative (apparently without making a positive print). McCutcheon worked on scripts and was responsible for the actors. It was perhaps because of tensions around their collaboration that McCutcheon left in May 1907 (and as we have seen, he returned to Biograph). In any case, his role was filled by James Searle Dawley, a dramatist and stage manager who had been working for the Brooklyn-based Spooner Stock Company. It took Porter and Dawley time to evolve a smooth working relationship and put the studio in full operation. Only in August did Edison begin to turn out two story films a month. By then the nickelodeon era had been under way for roughly two years.

Of the twenty films Porter made for Edison distribution between December 1905 (The Night Before Christmas) and September 1907 (Jack the Kisser), several, such as Life of a Cowboy, were 1,000 feet (sixteen minutes), while the great majority were between 755 feet and 975 feet, with shooting ratios still varying between 1.2:1 and 2.1:1. Half were comedies, a fourth melodramas, and the remainder fell into miscellaneous categories. These Edison films had much in common with their Biograph counterparts (the ratio of comedies to melodramas, for example, was quite similar); but while the companies operated within the same system of representation, their products had distinctive styles. Edison pictures were not as closely tied to the newspaper nor were its melodramas in the contemporary-crime genre. Although the heroine is kidnapped in Kathleen Mavourneen (May 1906), the action is set in Ireland during an earlier era. Based on an immensely popular play of the same name, the results were promoted as a "new style of film" and helped lead to the adaptation of theatrical material that became common in later years.¹⁹ Daniel Boone; or, Pioneer Days in America (December 1906) was also based on a well-known historical drama and thus set in a previous century. The violence in Life of a Cowboy occurred on the distant frontier, where civilization had yet to penetrate fully.²⁰ Perhaps for this reason, in comparison with the pictures of other producers, Edison films were rarely considered "off-color."²¹

As with Biograph's output, almost every Edison film focused on some well-known story or incident in American popular culture. Edison comedies included Waiting at the Church (July 1906), which played off the song of the same title. The Rivals (August 1907) was based on a T. E. Powers comic strip, often called Chollie and George, that ran intermittently in the New York American; here, the title characters compete for the affections of a young woman until she finally leaves both for a third. The Terrible Kids (April 1906) was part of the popular bad-boy genre. After disrupting a community with their pranks, the boys are finally captured by the police; at the end, however, they escape punishment with the aid of their faithful dog (played by Mannie). The Nine Lives of a Cat (July 1907) was inspired by the well-known saying in the title: a man repeatedly tries to kill a cat, but each time it survives. In these last three examples, the films are constructed out of "linked

vignettes." Built around a single premise, these variations on a gag do not portray a complicated story. In all Edison films, the main title performs a key naming function and provides a framework for audience response.

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend was a trick film that took its title from Winsor McCay's comic strip, Dream of the Rarebit Fiend; nonetheless, it was a close imitation of Pathé's popular RÈve À la lune(1905). The Night Before Christmas was a special holiday subject that closely followed Clement Clarke Moore's well-known story and introduced scenes with lines of the poem, appealing both to children and

to adult nostalgia. The "Teddy" Bears (February 1907) was based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears but also referred to Teddy Roosevelt's killing of a mother bear and his capture of her cub, said to be at the origin of the teddy bear craze then at its height. The penultimate scene reworks the 1902 political cartoon that made this incident famous: instead of nobly refusing to shoot the bear cub as in the cartoon, Roosevelt is deterred from his carnage only by the pleadings of Goldilocks. These adult references are crucial for a full appreciation of the picture, although one critic of the time chose to ignore them and thus viewed the picture as a macabre children's

film.²² Three American Beauties was a one-minute subject intended to close an evening performance with its hand-tinted images of a rose, a young woman, and the American flag. Expanding upon a well-established genre (shots of the American flag often brought an exhibition to a close), the picture was so popular that the negative wore out and the film had to be remade.

The 1906-1907 Edison films continued to operate within the representational framework that Porter and his associates had already established. Relying on wellknown stories, songs, and anecdotes, they avoided intertitles almost completely. The audience's special knowledge, however, sometimes proved inadequate, and films such as Daniel Boone, with its complicated narrative, were considered best suited for a lecture. Sets routinely combining pasteboard props with three-dimensional elements retained a strong syncretic approach, and temporal repetitions were common. Although studio head Edwin S. Porter would later resist any move away from early cinema's system of representation, such resistance was not yet a problem, and Edison films remained popular. Their timely and often ambitious narratives, the cleverness with which the ideas were executed, and the care often taken in the actual production all served to distinguish them from their Biograph counterparts and at least partially account for the increasing profitability of the Edison Manufacturing Company.

Continued dependence on the specifics of American culture—key to Edison films and, to a lesser degree, those made by Biograph—meant that transatlantic sales, particularly on the Continent, were necessarily limited. Waiting at the Church must have seemed bizarre to people unfamiliar with the song; likewise, Kathleen Mavourneen was hardly an attractive purchase in a country where the play was unknown, and Trial Marriages obviously lost some of its effectiveness when audiences did not know the humorous context within which it was made. Edison had European offices for its phonograph business, and these did make some motion-picture

sales, but attempts to turn Europe into an important market did not succeed during this period. Biograph found that "the humorous and tragic scenes of American life are probably what they want and appreciate best," and Marions contemporary crime films must have enjoyed some popularity overseas.²³ Yet Biograph's foreign sales declined as the quality of its films deteriorated, and its reciprocal agreement with Gaumont ended in early 1907. The domestic market was the principal one for both Edison and Biograph.

Vitagraph Becomes the Leading American Producer

By the end of the period covered in this volume, Vitagraph had emerged as the leading American producer with a repertoire of films conveying a dynamism that was closely associated with urban life. In The 100 to One Shot; or, A Run of Luck (July 1906), a farmer facing foreclosure on his home goes to the city, where he pawns his remaining possessions and looks for last-minute salvation. Deciding to risk everything at the horse races, he plays a hot tip and wins. With some of his new wealth, he hires an automobile and races home to prevent the landlord from expelling his aged parents. The city provides new opportunities, just as it had for Blackton and Smith, who had found a hot tip in moving pictures, bet on their future, and won. In this film, the "evil" of gambling serves a positive function, violating the moralistic messages of conservative religious groups. In The Jail Bird and How He Flew (June 1906), an escaped prisoner outwits the prison wardens by assuming different disguises. Finally they catch an innocent bystander (a man in a white suit who sits down on a newly painted park bench) as the escapee waves at the departing guards. Once again, cleverness, luck, and the unexpected are valued more than conventional morality.

Vitagraph's fast-paced, energetic style drew the attention of a Brooklyn Eagle reporter who visited the company's offices in the summer of 1906 and wrote that the scenario writer (probably J. Stuart Blackton) "must have something happening every minute, allowing for no padding with word-painting, following climax with climax, and developing all kinds of intricate situations so that the interest of the onlookers will never sag from the picture on the canvas."²⁵ The Automobile Thieves (September 1906), in preparation at the time the article was published, is exemplary of this approach. During the course of the 985-foot, twenty-three-shot drama, the

thieves—an attractive young couple—commit a string of holdups and robberies. They are indifferent to the fate of their victims, who are often beaten or shot. They manage to escape a police trap, largely because of the fearless intervention of the woman, but the ensuing chase ends in a shootout and the death of the couple. At the conclusion, the dying man staggers to his beloved, kisses her, and dies. (In fact, his actions throughout appear based on sexual obsession, and his periodic sense of guilt is assuaged by alcohol.) Romance, traditionally the domain of the hero and heroine (The Train Wreckers, etc.), is shifted to those outside the law. The thieves become the protagonists and the police the antagonists in this explosive mix of sex and violence.

Vitagraph comedies contained important slapstick elements and often lampooned authority. Oh! That Limburger: The Story of a Piece of Cheese (April 1906) is a bad-boy comedy in which mischievous youngsters hide some smelly cheese in their father's suit pocket. Putting on his coat and going to work, the father alienates all acquaintances and receives various beatings in a series of linked vignettes. The jokesters are ultimately discovered and receive a thrashing in kind. In Please Help the Blind; or, A Game of Graft (May 1906), a cop emulates undersocialized boys and a tramp by using a "Please Help the Blind" sign to beg from passersby. Soon this figure of authority must flee from a squad of fellow policemen seeking his arrest. He ultimately escapes by hanging the sign (and the responsibility) on an unsuspecting housepainter. In The Snapshot Fiend; or, Willie's New Camera (July 1906), the boy uses his new camera to take portraits. This activity serves as an excuse for a variety of facial-expression shots, including one of a preacher in the arms of an old maid.

Most scenes for these 1906 films were filmed outdoors in Brooklyn or Manhattan. The few interiors were shot on the open-air stage above Vitagraph's New York office. The schematic sets were photographed in ways that generally reproduced the frontality and framing of theatrical space. In Automobile Thieves, the opening scene includes a fake-looking bookcase constructed of pasteboard, an actual writing table (which is reused in a later, unrelated scene), and a convincing safe. Police headquarters is an almost barren stage with handcuffs and nightsticks painted on the back wall running perpendicular to the camera. Spatial and temporal relations between shots are frequent though inconsistently handled, with overlaps in some instances and a strong linearity across cuts in others.

The company's new Brooklyn studio, started in 1905, was designed to provide facilities for increased, more efficient filmmaking and to improve production values, thus silencing the criticism that was sometimes directed at the slapdash quality of Vitagraph releases.²⁶ Completed in November of the following year, the studio cost approximately twenty-five thousand dollars:

The building which is made of concrete blocks is supplied with a 100 horse-power engine which will operate dynamo to furnish electric light, heat and power for the machine shop and dark room. There will be a complete outfit of Cooper-Hewitt lights in the studio.

Special apparatus and stage have been made for taking novel pictures with special scenic effects. The entire roof and upper part of the building is covered with a specially designed prismatic glass. This construction of glass diffuses and intensifies the rays of light so that shadows are not perceptible (Film Index, 25 August 1906, p. 6).

Vitagraph thus opened the first American studio of the nickelodeon era, beating Edison, Selig, and Lubin by almost a year.²⁷ As Jon Gartenberg has noted, the studio allowed for a big jump in production quality. The studio sets were so large that in a film like Foul Play (December 1906), the camera panned across one room and (relying on an absent fourth wall) followed the characters into the next. In other scenes, the framing became closer and more intimate, reducing the sense of stagelike compositions. The combination of artificial and diffused natural light resulted in superior images and a heavier reliance on sets.

During late 1906 and early 1907 Vitagraph frequently produced accomplished dramas and comedies. Foul Play, for example, is an effectively told tale of a bank clerk who steals money and frames a fellow employee for the crime. The victim's wife subsequently tracks the clerk, drugs his drink, steals incriminating evidence, and soon has the real crook exposed and arrested. Justice triumphs though the victory is achieved by underhanded means. And the Villain Still Pursued Her; or, The Author's Dream (November 1906) and On the Stage; or, Melodrama from the Bowery (April 1907) burlesque the conventions of melodramatic theater and cheap literature. In the first, an impoverished playwright works in a garret where the signatures of William Shakespeare and melodramatist Charles E. Blaney—presumably two of his role models—comically coexist on the back wall. He falls asleep and dreams of a story in which a dastardly villain pursues a beautiful young

woman. The dream ends with the author—who casts himself as the hero to the rescue—leaping from a cliff and crashing into his own bed. He then wakes up and begins to write. A Mid-Winter Night's Dream; or, Little Joe's Luck (December 1906) was a Christmas story in which a street urchin falls asleep and dreams of being taken in by a wealthy family. Although his dream proves a mirage, he is befriended by a kind policeman who rescues him from the snowy cold.

Vitagraph became a pioneer in various animation techniques. Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (April 1906) elaborated on earlier films of Blackton executing "lightning sketches" on an easel. Through the use of object-animation techniques and various stop-motion substitutions, Blackton extended the form while keeping many presentational elements intact from his days as a vaudeville performer. Lightning Sketches (July 1907) further elaborated on many of these achievements: the execution of still more complicated animation techniques was aided by the new studio with its electric lights. Object animation using toy animals was introduced in A Mid-Winter Night's Dream. Similar techniques were employed for other Vita-graph subjects during 1907, including The Haunted Hotel (February 1907) and possibly The Disintegrated Convict (September 1907). These films were closely related to trick subjects such as the immensely popular Liquid Electricity; or, The Inventor's Galvanic Fluid (September 1907), where an old professor sprays

people with galvanizing fluid and, through accelerated action (i.e., undercranking the camera), unleashes hidden reservoirs of energy.

Although Vitagraph pictures were closely bound to American popular culture, they rarely focused or depended upon specific antecedents. Typically, the producers worked within a wide range of previously established genres, from the fire rescue (Man with the Ladder and the Hose, February 1906) to the Western ("The Bad Man"—A Tale of the West, January 1907). More than Biograph and Edison, they managed to steer a middle course between very simple, minimal stories and those so complex that they were difficult to follow without special assistance. In fact, surviving Vitagraph films from 1906-1907 consistently avoided intertitles until Francesca di Rimini; or, The Two Brothers (September 1907), which used titles to clarify otherwise elusive narratives. Only thereafter does it seem to have become a regular practice.

These Vitagraph films incorporated a rich array of well-executed representational techniques. The filmmakers used a panning camera for both interior and exteriors. Cutting in to closer views or cutting back to establishing shots was quite common (particularly in A Mid-Winter Night's Dream). The company's production increasingly adopted a linear time line. In The Boy, the Bust, and the Bath (August 1907), for example, there is a whole series of match-cuts as the characters move between the hallway and bathroom. Yet later conventions of screen direction involving exits and entrances are not employed between the opening two shots. Some scenes also rely on frontal compositions, and a presentational approach remains evident as the male characters communicate extensively with the camera/spectator. Nonetheless, the unsuspecting female housekeeper (played by Florence Lawrence) is unaware of the camera's presence, a mixed convention that was continued in the comedies of the 1910s. Its genre (the omnipresent bad-boy genre) and many narrative elements (the infantile sexuality and voyeurism of the male boarders) are squarely within the parameters of early cinema, but the elaboration of a single prank over the course of the film points toward a later era.

Vitagraph subjects were so popular that the company found itself sixty days behind on print orders even though its developing rooms operated night and day. This strong demand was due not only to domestic consumption but to the company's international activities. At first, Charles Urban sold Vitagraph films in Europe (just as Vitagraph sold Urban films in the United States). But by February 1907 the company had opened its own sales offices in London and Paris. The Vitagraph partners, all of European birth, paid particular attention to these markets and soon were the one American company with large foreign sales. By the end of March, Vitagraph was expanding its Flatbush facilities, adding a new and much larger building.²⁸ In May, the company began to release one new fiction film a week (often more when short [ca, 250 feet] subjects were involved). By August the company was selling at least two new pictures each week, though most were half reels of approximately 500 feet.

Vitagraph's methods of production underwent a profound reorganization during this period. Between October 1906 and early 1907, there were three production units, headed by cameramen J. Stuart Blackton, Albert E. Smith, and their senior and most trusted employee, James Bernard French (Vitagraph's first-hired projectionist). Working with each was an "artist and general assistant" who was responsible for the "posing and arranging of scenes." These included G. M. Anderson (until spring 1906), William Ranous, and George E. Stevens (between October 1906 and March 1907). Clearly it would be inaccurate to consider these stage directors/stage managers to be "film directors" in the somewhat later sense of the word. They worked collaboratively with the cameramen, who were, in two of the three cases, the producers and company owners. Each unit was largely autonomous, functioning independently under the protection of a key figure. At the same time, almost everyone had multiple responsibilities. French was also in charge of the production department, which hired operators. Stevens was occasionally responsible for camerawork on exterior scenes. Out-of-work operators often served as extras.²⁹ Lack of specialization and broad expertise thus characterized production at Vitagraph, the most successful American producer, into early 1907.

Things began to change when Albert Smith left for Europe to establish Vitagraph's European branch offices at the beginning of 1907. With his departure, French assumed responsibility for managing the increasingly large studio, and Blackton remained as producer to oversee all three units, each headed by a director. While Blackton and even Smith remained actively involved in production, less experienced cameramen, among them perhaps operators who took local views for Vitagraph's now-disbanded traveling exhibition units, were hired to work under these directors.³⁰ The cameramen, however, reported not only to the new directors but also to the producer and the studio manager. Nevertheless, a new hierarchical organization of production, fundamentally different from the previous horizontal one, was emerging.

The increasing level of production likewise encouraged Vitagraph to establish a stock company of actors, and by 1907, many leading players and stars of later films were working for the studio in some capacity. Leo Delaney appeared Foul Play (1906) and The Wrong Flat (June 1907). William J. Shea, who later appeared with John Bunny in such comedies as Davy Jones in the South Seas (January 1910), had a role in Amateur Night; or, Get Out the Hook (April 1907). Florence Turner teamed up with Florence Lawrence in Athletic American Girls (July 1907) and Bargain Fiend; or, Shopping À la Mode (July 1907). Elements of the studio system were beginning to emerge in the second half of 1907.

Paley's Fortunes Fade as Selig Enjoys Good Luck

William Paley was forced out of business as an independent producer and renter sometime in late 1906 or early 1907. The merging of the Proctor and Keith circuits in June 1906 led Proctor to switch his film rental account from Paley's Kalatechnoscope Exchange to the Edison-affiliated Kinetograph Company. The veteran producer and cameraman felt betrayed and particularly bitter, for he, more than any other figure in the industry, had been willing to acknowledge Edison's patents. This loss of the Proctor account undermined the basis of Paley's business, and he soon found himself looking for work as a free-lance cameraman.³¹

The Selig Polyscope Company was on the edge of bankruptcy by late 1905. Changes in film practice and legal expenses from fighting Edison's patent suit had undermined Selig's business, and his advertisements ceased to appear in trade journals. Then in February 1906 Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was published and caused a furor with its revelations of conditions in the meat-packing industry. According to Terry Ramsaye, Armour & Company turned to Selig, whose films of its stockyards and slaughterhouses, made with an eye toward promotion, presented the company's activities in a more favorable light. Armour not only arranged for these to be exhibited but provided Selig with legal support and a badly needed infusion of capital.³²

Armour's support enabled Selig to return to production after a long hiatus, and he resumed with The Tomboys, a 535-foot comedy released in the middle of August. At about this time, Selig hired the actor/director G. M. Anderson, who had previously worked for Edison, Vitagraph, and Harry Davis (discussed later in this chapter). Anderson was not given the partnership he wanted but worked on a commission basis. After the completion of Trapped by Pinkertons (October 1906) and a half-dozen other fiction films, Selig sent Anderson to Colorado, where his Western agent, H. H. Buckwalter, helped the director make several Westerns, including The Girl from Montana (March 1907), The Bandit King, and Western Justice (released June 1907).³³ Returning to Chicago from Colorado, Anderson continued to direct for Selig and was soon recognized by Show World as "one of the most prominent moving-picture producers in the country."³⁴ During July, the company released four story films, including The Matinee Idol, another takeoff on the Personal idea, in which a theater star is pursued by a bevy of overly enthusiastic female fans. Sometime during that month, Anderson left Selig to start up his own motion-picture company.

Selig's output was lower for August and September, not only because of Anderson's departure but because his company was deeply involved in the construction of a new Chicago studio that was in full operation by the end of the year. Until then, Selig relied heavily on exterior locations: the rare interior scenes, in All's Well That Ends Well (August 1907), for example, reveal lighting by harsh direct sun. The new studio would make more diffuse lighting possible, as seen in films like What a Pipe Did (November 1907).³⁵ Selig quickly found replacements for Anderson, among them Otis Turner, Francis Boggs, and John M. Bradlet, and began an ambitious process of expansion.³⁶ By November he was releasing a new film every week. While suffering serious difficulties at the outset of the nickelodeon era, the Selig Polyscope Company regrouped and finally expanded with the boom.

Although fiction filmmaking was paramount, Selig continued to make some actualities: the 600-foot World Series Baseball Game of the 1906 White Sox-Cubs championship, a series of scenes of the G.A.R. encampment in Minneapolis, and a November flood in Seattle. In 1907 William Selig himself took views of tarpon fishing off Padre Island in South Texas.³⁷ As at Edison, actuality production had become quite separate from production of story films.

None of Selig's 1906-1907 films survive except for a few brief paper fragments submitted for copyright purposes. This is particularly unfortunate because catalog descriptions and reviews suggest that they displayed noteworthy vitality. With The Grafters, Variety reported, the filmmakers had "managed to extract a considerable amount of active fun out of the subject based upon nature's desire to secure 'something' for nothing," and it was "exhibited to large, interested audiences in a number

of Chicago theaters." Some Selig subjects employed advanced editorial constructions. In When We Were Boys (January 1907), two old men are shown conversing about their childhoods and the many pranks they pulled. The film cuts back and forth between the old men and scenes of their youth. In an elaborate flashback construction that predated regular use of alternating scenes, the film makes explicit the nostalgic nature of this pre-nickelodeon genre that was then coming under attack.³⁸ Wooing and Wedding a Coon (November 1907) and The Masher (June 1907) indicate that the depiction of African Americans at Selig had not changed from the owner's minstrel-show days.

A number of Selig pictures show women assuming active roles often associated with masculine behavior. In The Tomboys, young girls act like their bad-boy counterparts by skipping school and playing pranks on adults. The protagonist of The Female Highwayman (November 1906) is a clever thief who executes her crimes with daring and nerve. The catalog description suggests that her detection and final capture was an unconvincing, obligatory ending. Likewise the heroine in The Girl from Montana (March 1907), played by Pansy Perry, saves her lover from death and several times keeps angry mobs at bay with her revolver.³⁹ In many respects, the Western with its cowboys supplanted the bad-boy genre. The personal nostalgia of the male filmmakers and spectators was replaced by a more mythic conception of the recent but still-fading past. In these Westerns, codes of civilized conduct were not yet fully asserted, so men and women alike were freer to assume nontraditional roles and responsibilities. It thus provided a place where women might forge new, more active identities.

Lubin Is Involved in All Phases of the Industry

Lubin's business expanded with alacrity as the nickelodeon boom gathered speed. During the first half of 1906, however, he barely produced one new subject a month, and some of these, such as Impersonation of Nelson-McGovern Fight (March 1906) and The San Francisco Disaster (May 1906), were still fight reenactments or news films. Others were remakes of rivals' popular hits, continuing the policy discussed in chapter 12. The Wreckers of the Limited Express (January 1906, 800 feet) closely followed Edison's The Train Wreckers; Rescued by Carlo (April 1906) mimicked Cecil Hepworth's Rescued by Rover; A Night Off (July 1906, 800 feet) was heavily indebted to Edison's Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (February 1906); and even Good Night (November 1906, 65 feet) was similar to Edison's Three American Beauties. With A Night Off Lubin used a somewhat different commercial strategy. While immensely popular, Dream of a Rarebit Fiend was only 470 feet long and very compact in its use of cinematic tricks. Lubin's trick comedy followed the same story and often used similar sets and tricks but added several flourishes, notably a chase that almost doubled the length.

As the pace of Lubin production increased by mid 1906, new personnel were hired and films of greater originality were produced. The Secret of Death Valley (September 1906) was a story of murder and revenge. The picture's power derives from a series of visions attributed to the principal characters. In the final scene, the wife, whose vision reveals how her husband was killed, avenges his death by killing the murderer, who has himself just guiltily recalled his dastardly act.

Although The Bank Defaulter (November 1906, 1,000 feet) had an obvious antecedent in Edison's The Kleptomaniac, it was a free and extremely interesting reworking. In the Edison drama, the wealthy kleptomaniac is called Mrs. Banker, indirectly linking her thievery with the banking activities of her husband. (Such identification, however, appears only in the catalog description—for use in the exhibitor's lecture—and not in the film itself.) This implied allusion became the new film's focal point, with the banker serving as the film's central character. In the opening scenes, he attends church and dotes on his family, evincing all the outward trappings of social responsibility. A second line of action is then established as working-class congregation members deposit their savings at his bank. Subsequently, the banker's double life is revealed by a visit to his mistress, the theft of a large sum of money, and eventual flight. The film returns to the second line of action with one of the depositors, an older woman, working at a scrub tub presumably after losing all her savings. It cuts to the banker being arrested and then shifts to a courtroom where the old woman is convicted of stealing bread. The banker is brought before the judge as well but is acquitted of his crime. An allegorical apotheosis of "Justice Ashamed" concludes the subject. The stories of the banker and the depositors are interwoven throughout the course of the film, whereas the Porter-Edison film presents Mrs. Banker and the poor, desperate mother in separate stories that are not united until the final scene. The Lubin film's explicitly subversive view of society is intensified by this alternation between different lines of action.

The sensationalism of The Bank Defaulter, with its revelation that the rich were unprincipled and had secret lives, may have suggested the making of the most controversial American film produced prior to the establishment of the Board of Censorship in 1909: The Unwritten Law: A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy (March 1907). Still well known today, the "tragedy" was a front-page news item for many months. On 25 June 1906, millionaire Harry K. Thaw shot and killed famed architect Stanford White at the Madison Square Roof Garden. Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbitt, had been White's mistress prior to (and perhaps even after) her marriage. Thaw went on trial for murder and was ultimately judged insane. The trial, however, was still under way when Lubin's film appeared, taking a pro-Thaw position with the argument that the killing was condoned by "unwritten law." To make its point, the film shows Evelyn's visit to White's "room with the velvet swing," his drugging of her wine, and her rape/seduction. The film's integration of sex and violence, its revelation of decadence and corruption among the rich, fascinated many and scandalized others. It was banned in Houston, Texas, and many other locales, but in others it was the biggest hit of the year. Six months later Lubin scathingly burlesqued oil king John D. Rockefeller with John D. —— and the Reporter (September 1907), in which the president of Rancid Oil tries to escape the reach of the law, but an ambitious reporter finally serves him with a summons. In the last scene the tycoon pays a $29 million fine, "which is squeezed out of the poor consumers' pockets and poor John D. is happy again."⁴⁰

While many of these Lubin films articulate a viewpoint that resonated with working-class audiences, they were frequently misogynist and, as we have already seen, relied on demeaning racial stereotypes. In Too Much Mother-in-Law (May 1907), newlyweds find it impossible to escape the wife's mother. In despair, the husband commits suicide, and in like manner, the bride follows her husband to Hades. The mother-in-law won't give up, however, and kills herself so she can join

them there. In When Women Vote (June 1907, 700 feet), Mr. O'Brien takes care of the baby while Mrs. O'Brien prepares and delivers her campaign speech. During the election, women vote but men are arrested when they approach the polls. After Mrs. O'Brien wins a judgeship, she sends one man to prison for twenty years when he tries to kiss his wife. Her own husband is stuck with the housework and wants a divorce, but, according to Lubin's promotional material, "such cannot be obtained when women vote."⁴¹ While the film creates an absurd exaggeration to articulate its anti-suffrage position, it unintentionally exposes the excesses of patriarchy in ways that provide a double-edged message. In this respect, it recalls Lubin's earlier Fun on the Farm.

Those films which were clearly aimed at female spectators placed them in a passive position and indulged their most masochistic fantasies. In Mother's Dream (June 1907), for example, the mother puts her children to bed, and then falls asleep on the couch. Dreaming of her own death and the difficulties facing her orphaned children, she finally awakens in a state of joyful disbelief. The narrative's ideological implications obviously differed from the Anderson-Selig films, with their dynamic, selfassured female protagonists.

Lubin enjoyed a booming business during 1907, releasing one film a week by May and producing three a week by September. As fall began, he was about to open a new indoor studio at 926 Market Street, complete with electric lights, Billboard reported,

"so that the pictures may be taken in any kind of weather." Meanwhile, the Philadelphia entrepreneur was expanding his involvement in other phases of the picture business as well. He not only had a successful film rental exchange but had moved into exhibition. According to Lubin, he became a theater operator when a local theatorium closed and assumption of ownership was the only way to gain payment. Appreciating the nickelodeon's profitability, he began to build a chain of picture houses in Philadelphia and elsewhere. His thousand-seat Bon Ton Theater was operating in Philadelphia by late 1906. He opened a multi-unit vaudeville/motion-picture theater in Baltimore on 1 April 1907, with local scenes taken especially for the occasion. Vaudeville was upstairs for ten cents admission (five cents in the balcony), while the basement was devoted exclusively to motion pictures and illustrated songs. The first floor of his new five-story headquarters at 926 Market Street was opened as a motion-picture theater on 4 July. By September he had another Philadelphia theater at 217 North Eighth Street, three more about to open in the same city, and other picture houses in Wilmington, Delaware, and Reading, Pennsylvania.⁴² Lubin was thus the only established producer in the motion-picture business to be building a vertically integrated business.

New Production Companies

The demand for films also encouraged the formation of new production companies. Capital acquired from other areas of the industry usually provided the means as successful entrepreneurs in distribution and exhibition moved into production. Early in 1906, the Miles brothers became seriously committed to making story films and constructed an elaborate studio in San Francisco. They might have become major producers if the earthquake and fire had not destroyed their facilities. Although the financial setback stymied their attempts, they continued to make actualities (Shriners' Conclave at Los Angeles, Cal., May 1907), and they established a reputation for filming important boxing matches. When The Gans-Nelson Contest, Goldfield, Nevada, September 3, 1906 was shot in Nevada, it was announced during the preliminaries that President Roosevelt's son (Theodore, Jr.) was at ring-side; according to a press account, as the fans cheered, "Some one stood up in the crowd and yelled: 'Show yourself and turn your face toward the moving pictures.'" On 26 November 1906 the Miles brothers shot The O'Brien-Burns Contest, Los Angeles, Cal., Nov. 26th, 1906 under Cooper-Hewitt lights, which turned blood to a sickening green. By mid 1907, they had engaged Fred A. (George) Dobson, a former Biograph cameraman, to take actualities in the New York City area.⁴³

Harry Davis moved into film production on 22 May 1906, when his new Pittsburgh-based company shot a local Knights Templar parade.⁴⁴ A Decoration Day baseball game between Pittsburgh and the Cincinnati Reds was next shot, and both films were shown at Davis' Grand Opera House in early June. Company offices were located above the Dreamland penny arcade and across the street from the Grand Opera House. Davis employed James Blair Smith, formerly in the Edison Company, as a cameraman and technical expert. G. M. Anderson came from Vitagraph to write and stage pictures for forty dollars a week. Only a few films were made, including one chase comedy, before Anderson moved on to Selig. By the following year Davis had withdrawn from the production field.⁴⁵ The exchanges did not purchase his films in

large quantities, and playing these original subjects as "specials" in his various theaters may not have markedly increased box-office receipts, at least once the initial novelty had passed. The costs and effort of production proved too high, causing Davis to shift his expansionary energies into setting up film exchanges to service nickelodeons, particularly his own.

It was not until 1907 that businessmen in the motion-picture field moved into production in substantial numbers. The Kalem Company began operations on 12 April and was incorporated on 2 May. Fifty shares of stock were issued: twenty-nine went to Frank Marion, ten to Samuel Long, and ten to George Kleine (with a single share going to employee Walter Hatt). Kalem (the company's appellation was an acronym derived from the initials of these owners' last names) had offices at 131 West Twenty-fourth Street in New York City and production facilities at Marion's home in Sound Beach (near Greenwich), Connecticut. Its first picture was The Runaway Sleighbelle.⁴⁶ When the company started actively selling films in June, it already had a half-dozen completed subjects to offer. With stock company and repertory theaters closed for the summer, an array of experienced players joined the enterprise, including Gene Gauntier (whose real name was Genevieve Liggett), Joseph and Fred Santley, Ed Boulden, Joe Sullivan, and Gus Carney. As Gauntier later recalled,

Mr. Marion had been compelled to give up directing because of increasing duties in the business end. It was a lucky contingency and made the difference between success and failure for the infant project. Mr. Olcott accepted the position of director for the summer at the munificent remuneration often dollars a picture. He gathered about him a score of actors who were personal friends and threw himself whole heartedly into the work ("Blazing the Trail," unpublished MS, n.d.).

Sidney Olcott (actually John Sidney Allcott) became the company's regular director and was soon producing almost one new subject a week, with Gauntier writing many of the film scripts. The films, most of which were comedies, were noted for their elaborate intertitles, which included cartoons as well as text (and continued the emphasis on intertitles evident in earlier Biograph films made under Marion's supervision). In the fall, however, Gauntier left to assume the title role in the stage play Texas.⁴⁷ A firmly established stock company of actors had yet to be introduced.

Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, which began its existence as the Peerless Film Manufacturing Company, was formed in Chicago by Gilbert Maxwell Anderson and George K. Spoor, who filed incorporation papers in late April. Anderson, who continued working for Selig even after their plans were well advanced, had finally accomplished his goal: ownership in a film company. Spoor, however, retained the controlling interest, owning fifty-one of one hundred shares of stock, with forty-eight going to Anderson and one to a third board member. Gilbert P. Hamilton, who began his motion-picture career as a projectionist for the Eidoloscope Company and eventually worked for Spoor's Kinodrome firm as an operator, was promoted to cameraman and worked closely with Anderson. By the end of July, their developing and printing facilities were set up and Essanay advertised its first film, An Awful Skate, a 612-foot comedy that took advantage of the roller-skating craze to show a tramp on rollers. Anderson's experience enabled Essanay to turn out popular films, and according to Billboard, "Its first productions were grabbed up so quickly that the factory was run night and day."⁴⁸

By August the Filmograph Company had completed and was selling several comedies working within well-established genres, including Young Americans, about mischievous boys playing pranks on a variety of adults, and Work for Your Grub, a tramp comedy. This new Philadelphia concern hired Fred Balshofer, a former Lubin cameraman, to photograph the films. The firm was short-lived, however, and when Balshofer visited New York, he found a job with the Actograph Company, which had been recently formed by Norman Mosher, Edward M. Harrington, and Fred L. Beck (who was later bought out by A. C. Hayman). By late August, Balshofer was taking films from the front end of a train going through Sacandaga Park, a summer amusement center with a Hales Tour car that subsequently showed the local view. The Actograph Company's first official release, Sports of the Adirondacks, appeared in early September. By 1 December they were preparing to make fiction films starring Mosher's dog, Mannie, who had appeared in many Edison and Biograph films.⁴⁹

In Detroit, William H. Goodfellow, owner of the successful Detroit Film Exchange, started the Goodfellow Manufacturing Company, which was turning out long story films by September 1907. The month before, the St. Louis-based O. T. Crawford organization, which owned many theaters and several exchanges, had announced

its intentions of going into production. Its first film was taken at the International Balloon Races in St. Louis on 21 October; Crawford, however, was constructing a studio and planned to make "clean comedy and thrilling dramatic subjects" under the name American Films.⁵⁰ By fall 1907, a rapidly increasing number of industry personnel were starting their own production companies, and threatening the dominance of established producers, particularly Edison and Biograph.

Foreign Productions Flood the American Market

The shortage of American pictures in 1906 and early 1907 opened up tremendous opportunities for foreign producers. Lawrence Karr has found that only one-third of the films released in the United States during 1907 were American-made. The other two-thirds were European. Of this group, Pathé Frères was easily the most important, being responsible for over a third of the films shown on American screens. Its films enjoyed a certain mystique: as one Coney Island exhibitor remarked in May 1906, "We rather prefer the foreign films ourselves, especially the Pathé. They're fine." Pathé was known for a wide variety of subjects: elaborately hand-colored scenes, outrageous chase comedies like The Policeman's Little Run (January 1907), violent stories of crime like The Female Spy (December 1906), historical dramas like Venetian Tragedy (December 1906), and some social dramas and actualities. (With a few exceptions, these films were between 200 feet and 600 feet long with 400 feet being typical.)⁵¹

Pathé was operating on a much larger scale than any contemporary American concern, and the level of organization and planning was commensurate. Thus the Coney Island showman justified his admiration for Pathé films by explaining:

That company you know is big. They have a capacity of 2,500,000 francs. Over in France they have no less than four theatres to pose their shows for filmmaking, and a huge open-air amphitheatre besides. They keep permanently a regular company of professionals to rehearse the shows they get up (Film Index, 19 May 1906, p. 6).

Thus by mid 1906 the French company had already introduced such key aspects of the studio system as a stock company of actors and multiple production units, both of which did not become common in the United States for at least another two years. Pathé had offices in London, Berlin, Vienna, Milan, Moscow, Barcelona, and Shanghai, as well as New York. By October 1906 it was exporting as many as twelve pictures a week and seventy-five copies of each film to the United States. By year's end it released at least one new film each day. Pathé's position as a foreign company with international markets made it less dependent upon the outcome of litigation in the United States. Nonetheless, this country was a crucial outlet for its goods. As Charles Pathé recalled, "The American market by itself amortised the costs, however modest, of our negatives. We sold at least as many in the rest of our offices. There were then fourteen. The columns of American receipts represented a net profit or nearly so."⁵²

Méliès retained its American offices but, in contrast to Pathé, faced increasing difficulties. Problems with anachronistic subject matter were augmented by the theft of many original negatives, including Joan of Arc and A Trip to the Moon, from his New York office on 19 May 1907.⁵³

George Kleine emerged as the leading American agent for European producers. After severing ties with Biograph at the end of 1906, Gaumont immediately associated itself with Kleine, and when the Vitagraph-Urban alliance broke down in early 1907, he began representing both the Charles Urban Trading Company and Urban-Eclipse. Representing Théo Pathé as well, Kleine could list 117 new subjects, totaling more than 45,000 feet, for the first four months of 1907. After enjoying successful European buying trips, the Miles brothers opened London and Paris offices in the spring of 1907 "to handle the exclusive American trade—for leading Foreign Makers." Herbert Miles, meanwhile, claimed to have secured the agencies for roughly eighteen foreign companies, among them the Danish firm Nordisk; their representation of these firms, however, was of short duration. Lubin, Charles Dressier & Company, and Williams, Brown & Earle likewise became American agents for one or more European concerns, but with the exception of Kleine's ties to Gaumont and Urban, the match of American agents with European producers usually proved unsatisfactory for one or both parties, and alliances shifted frequently.⁵⁴

European producers were generally much more dependent on international markets than their American counterparts—not just the United States but Europe and to a lesser extent South America and the Far East. Since cinema enjoyed increasing popularity in Europe but lacked the dynamic expansion and the reorganization of exhibition practices that characterized the American nickelodeon boom, production may have offered European entrepreneurs more desirable opportunities for expansion than in the United States. Because of this dependence on foreign markets, however, European producers had to take a more cautious approach toward the ephemera of their local national culture than did most of their American counterparts. Imports generally avoided titles or reduced them to a bare minimum. Pathé films occasionally had intertitles, which the French concern was equipped to provide in most European languages. Like Vitagraph in the United States, the Europeans looked toward creating a more international, nonspecific popular culture that relied on genres much more than on particular antecedents.

During the first two years of the nickelodeon boom, several well-established American producers found it difficult to exploit the intense demand for new pictures by significantly expanding their output. Taking advantage of this failure, their European counterparts found the United States to be a ready market for foreign films. Nevertheless, American filmmakers, working within the framework of a firmly developed representational system, turned out an impressive array of pictures. Vitagraph's Automobile Thieves, Edison's The "Teddy" Bears, Biograph's Terrible Ted, and Lubin's The Secret of Death Valley make us regret the loss of so many films from this period all the more.