American Mutoscope and Biograph Company

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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]

A new company with the same name was incorporated in California in 1991.[3]

Contents

[edit] Founding

The company was started by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, an inventor at Thomas Edison's laboratory who helped pioneer the technology of capturing moving images on film. Dickson left Edison and joined with inventors Herman Casler, Henry Marvin and businessman Elias Koopman to form the American Mutoscope Company 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.[4]

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 by 2-1/2 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, double Edison’s speed.[5] [6] 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.[7] Biograph offered prints in both formats to exhibitors until 1905, when it discontinued the larger format.[8] [9]

Biograph films before 1903 were mostly “actualities”: documentary footage of actual persons, places and events, each film usually less than two minutes long. 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, and 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.

With the increased reliance on narrative films, Biograph moved in 1903 from its rooftop studio on Broadway to a converted brownstone mansion on East 14th Street in Manhattan, its 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.

[edit] D.W. Griffith

Director D.W. Griffith joined Biograph in 1908 as a writer and actor, but within months became their principal director, and 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, Carol Dempster, Alan Hale, Sr., Blanche Sweet, Harry Carey, Mabel Normand, Henry B. Walthall and Dorothy Davenport. Mack Sennett honed his craft as an actor and director of comedies at Biograph.

In January of 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.[10] 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.[11]

[edit] 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.[12] “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.[13]

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.[14] 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.[15] Biograph spent the remainder of the silent era reissuing its old films, and leasing its Bronx studio to other producers. When the Biograph Company fell on financial hard times, the studio facilites 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.[16] [17] The studio and laboratory facilities burned down in 1980.[18]

[edit] New Company

In 1987 producer Thomas R. Bond II and his father, the late Tommy Bond (1926-2005), who played “Butch” in Our Gang (also known as “The Little Rascals”), started a new business using the old company's name. The company was incorporated in California in 1991.[19] but does not hold title to Biograph's historic film library or its trademarks, which either fell into the public domain or lapsed decades ago (moreover, by 2006, whatever assets remained from the original Biograph would have been owned by Technicolor).[citation needed]

President and CEO Thomas Bond said the small office would serve as the headquarters for the company, which is also looking to develop a 10,000- to 40,000-square-foot production facility Downtown.[20]

In 2003, Biograph announced that it had acquired title to 1,777 acres on the Moon for use as a filming location, and Thomas R. Bond II stated that he planned to start filming there by 2008.[21]

Biograph has released one DVD, The Rascals, hosted by Tommy Bond.[22] The company also says that it will "soon" offer both new and historical "Mutoscope" short films for wireless and mobile devices.[23] [24]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Elias Savada (Editor). 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. ^ [1]
  4. ^ Slide, Anthony (1998). The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-3426-X.
  5. ^ Billy Bitzer. "The Biograph Camera". The Operating Cameraman (Spring 1995). Retrieved on [[2004-11-30]].
  6. ^ Musser, Charles (1994). The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. Berkeley, Cal.: Univesrity of California Press, 303-313. ISBN 0-520-08533-7.
  7. ^ Continued Legal Battles. A Guide to Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and Distributors. Rutgers University.
  8. ^ Gunning, Tom (Dec 12 1993). D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06366-X. Accessed via Google Print.
  9. ^ Vaidhyanathan, Siva (April 1 2003). Copyrights and copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. NYU Press, 88. ISBN 0-8147-8807-6. Accessed via Google Print.
  10. ^ Robertson, Patrick (2001). Film Facts. New York: Billboard Books, 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, 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.
  11. ^ Bowser, Eileen (1990). The Transformation of Cinema 1907-1915. Berkeley: University of California Press, 253. ISBN 0-520-08534-5.
  12. ^ [2]
  13. ^ [3]
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ Einar Lauritzen and Gunnar Lundquist, American Film-Index, 1916-1920: Motion Pictures, January 1916-December 1920. Stockholm, Sweden: Film-Index; Huddinge, Sweden: Distributed by Tonnheims, 1984. ISBN 91-86568-01-9
  16. ^ Tuska, Jon (1999). The Vanishing Legion: A History of Mascot Pictures, 1927-1935. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 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 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, Cal.: Hollywood Film Archive.
  17. ^ "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.
  18. ^ "Bronx Blaze Damages Old Biograph Studios," The New York Times, July 9, 1980, p. B4.
  19. ^ [4]
  20. ^ Old Downtowner Returns. LA Downtown News Online (2006-03-20). Retrieved on 2006-08-07.
  21. ^ "Biograph Studios establishes first movie lot on the Moon" (press release), July 2, 2003.
  22. ^ [5]
  23. ^ [6]
  24. ^ [7]

[edit] External links

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