Biograph Studios

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Biograph Studios was a studio facility and film laboratory complex built in 1912 by the Biograph Company, formerly American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, at 807 E. 175th Street., in the Bronx, New York. The Biograph Company moved its facilities from its location at 11 East 14th Street in Manhattan to the new facilities in the Bronx in 1913. The studio property was also leased out to other production companies after Biograph ceased producing new films in 1916.

When the Biograph Company fell on financial hard times, the studio facilities were acquired by one of Biograph Company's creditors, the Empire Trust Company, although Biograph Company continued to manage the studio.^{[1] [2]} Herbert Yates acquired the Biograph Studios properties and Film laboratory facilities in 1928. Biograph Studios facilities in the Bronx was made a subsidiary of his Consolidated Film Industries.^{[3] [4]}

Some advertising films and a few feature pictures were made at the studio in the 1930s, including Midnight (1934), Woman in the Dark (1934), The Crime of Dr. Crespi (1935), Manhattan Merry-Go-Round (1937), the Yiddish-language folk drama Tevye (1939) and the Oscar Micheaux production The Notorious Elinor Lee (1940). But the studio's principal activity in that decade was the production of shorts for Universal, Columbia, and RKO, mostly involving New York-based actors and entertainers. The studio suspended operations in 1939, due partly to curtailment of the activities of independent producers because of World War II and partly to a decline in the commercial film market, according to its general manager. At this time, the Biograph film collection was offered for sale as part of its liquidation (Mary Pickford bought the camera negatives of about 75 of her short films),^[5] and the remainder was donated to the film department of the Museum of Modern Art.^[6]

Empire Trust later assigned management of the property to one of its own subsidiaries, The Actinograph Corp., which held it until 1948.^[7]

Martin Poll (who later became New York's Commissioner of Motion Picture Arts) restored Biograph Studios and reopened it in 1956 as the Gold Medal Studios, the largest film studio in America outside the Los Angeles area.^{[8] [9]} Poll sold the property in 1961,^[10] when it was incorporated into a newer company, Biograph Studios, Inc. in 1961, unrelated to the original Biograph Company corporation.^[11]

The television series The Naked City, Car 54, Where Are You?, and East Side/West Side, and movies like A Face in the Crowd, Odds Against Tomorrow, The Fugitive Kind, The Goddess, Pretty Boy Floyd, BUtterfield 8, The Incident, and John and Mary were filmed there. Biograph Studios went dormant again in the 1970s before the studio facilities burned down in 1980.^[12]

[edit] References