Charles Urban

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Charles Urban (April 15, 1867 - August 29, 1942) was an Anglo-American film producer and distributor, and one of the most significant figures in UK cinema before the First World War. He was a pioneer of the documentary, educational, propaganda and scientific film, as well as being the producer of the world's first successful motion picture colour system.

[edit] History

Urban first entered the film industry in 1895 when he exhibited the Kinetoscope in Detroit in 1895. He moved to Britain in 1897, and became managing director of the Warwick Trading Company, where he specialised in actuality film, including newsfilm of the Anglo-Boer War. In 1903 he formed his own company, the Charles Urban Trading Company, moving to London's Wardour Street in 1908, the first film business to be located in what became the home of the British film industry.

In 1906, his associate George Albert Smith (1864-1959) developed a two-colour (red-green) additive motion picture system, which Urban launched in 1908. From 1909 it was known as Kinemacolor. This enjoyed great success worldwide until 1914. Urban's most celebrated Kinemacolor film was a two and a half hour epic With Our King and Queen Through India (1912), also known as The Durbar in Delhi, depicting the December 1911 Delhi Durbar which celebrated the coronation of George V.

During the First World War, Urban worked for British propaganda outfits, producing the documentary feature Britain Prepared (1915) and editing the classic documentary The Battle of the Somme (1916). He then promoted British war films in America. After the war, he relocated to America and tried to re-establish himself as a producer of educational films, such as The Four Seasons (1921) but his business interests collapsed in 1924.