James Sibley Watson

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James Sibley Watson, Jr. (August 10, 1894 - March 31, 1982)

Born in New York, Watson was a Rochester, NY philanthropist, publisher, and early experimenter in motion pictures.

One of the heirs to the Western Union telegraph fortune created by Hiram Sibley and Don Alonzo Watson, Sibley Watson attended Harvard College, where he became friends with (and a lifelong supporter of) poet E. E. Cummings.

Watson went on to earn a medical degree, but became directly involved in the literary movements of the post-World War I era through another Harvard friend, poet Scofield Thayer, who had purchased $600 worth of stock in the influential literary magazine, The Dial, in 1918. In 1919, Thayer persuaded Sibley to purchase ownership The Dial from the financially strapped Martyn Johnson, with Sibley serving as the magazine's new president and Thayer becoming the editor. Their joint venture produced its first issue in January 1920 and featured works by friends of Thayer and Sibley such as E. E. Cummings, Carl Sandburg, and Gaston Lachaise.

In the late 1920s, Watson became interested in the relatively new art form of motion pictures. He produced, directed, and served as cinematographer and art director for two films: The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) (credited as J.S. Watson Jr.) and Lot in Sodom (1933). Parts of his films are featured in lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer's 1992 documentary Nitrate Kisses, which combines archival footage with contemporary scenes of the lives of four homosexual couples.