Triangle Film Corporation

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Triangle Film Corporation a.k.a. Triangle Motion Picture Company, was a major American motion-picture studio, founded in the summer of 1915 in Culver City, California, and envisioned as a prestige studio based on the producing abilities of filmmakers D. W. Griffith, Thomas Ince, and Mack Sennett. It was founded by Harry and Roy Aitken, two brothers from the Wisconsin farmlands who pioneered the studio system of Hollywood's Golden Age. Combining production, distribution, and theater operations under their Triangle Film Corporation, the young upstarts created the most dynamic studio in Hollywood. They attracted the greatest directors and stars of the day, including Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and produced some of the most enduring films of the silent era, from the Keystone Kops to the defining cinematic epic Birth of a Nation. Eventually the studio suffered from bloat, and in 1917 lost all three of its principal producers. Triangle gradually dwindled, and in 1918 the studios went up for sale, swallowed up by the emerging Hollywood studios; film producer Samuel Goldwyn bought the studios for the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios were formed in 1924.

On November 23, 1915, the Triangle Film Corporation opened a state-of-the-art motion picture theater in Massillon, Ohio. The Lincoln Theater is still an operational movie theater owned and operated by the Massillon Lion's Club. The theater has been lovingly restored to its original glory and is a monument to the memory of movies' golden era. A film festival dedicated to the films of Dorothy and Lillian Gish is held every year in the Lincoln Theater. The Gish Sisters lived in Massillon as young girls.