Spooktober 28: The Terror (1928)

 

Warner Brother's The Terror is without a doubt the world's very first "all talking" horror feature film; released in 1928 when most theaters were in no way equipped for sound (even synchronized sound from disc as was the case here). As a result, this widely distributed crime thriller based on an Edgar Wallace play was also, and primarily, released as a silent film. Warners gave the film two separate release/premiere dates, with the sound version premiering a month and a half before the silent version. Directed by Roy Del Ruth, it starred May McAvoy and Edward Everett Horton, with the sound version utilizing the clunky Vitaphone on disc sound system, and the discs are the only portion of the film known to survive, despite it's wide distribution. UCLA's Film and Television Archive houses the only known copies of said discs that are thought to be in relatively good condition, though they do not seem to have been restored and released (UCLA is also rumored to have a copy of the print in some condition...though the condition of the print, if it exists at all, is not known). There are plenty of stills and lobby cards that do still exist and give a general idea of the creepy nature of the film. Basically an "old dark house" affair (of which Wallace excelled), the film was quite similar in story to other crime horrors of the 1920's such as The Bat and The Cat and the Canary, with the notable exception of the inclusion of a creepy old organ--making it the source of the old haunted house film trope of adding organ music adding to the scary ambience of the whole. 

 

Born Today January 5: Lucien Bull

1876-1972

To call Lucien Bull a photographic genius would be an understatement!  The man not only helped pioneer Chronophotography, he single-handedly perfected it.  Though born in Dublin, Ireland to a British father and a French mother, he is most closely associated with his mother's country than any other (despite that he was also awarded an OBE). Bull, however, grew up in Dublin, but made frequent trips to France to stay with relatives there thoughout his childhood. In 1895 he moved to Paris permanently and secured a position with the French scientist/doctor/inventor Étienne-Jules Marey.  After Marey's death in 1904, Bull took over as head of the Marey Institute, founded and named for his inventor boss. He also perfected a number of Marey's camera inventions; this included a further development of Marey's famous "gun camera." From this invention, Bull invented his own "spark drum camera" that was a strange type of "motion" picture contraption.  

The Spark Drum Camera. One can see Bull in action with the camera in the opening photo of this post--what he is filming there is his famous bullet/soap bubble experiment.

His greatest contribution to the field of film and photography was his perfection of ultra high-speed photographic images for sequence motion. He is famous for his chronophotograph high speed ultra short motion picture Bullet Piercing A Soap Bubble (Balle traversant une bulle de savon) dating from 1904. Though Marey did contribute to the experiment before his sudden death that same year, 85% of the project was Bull's alone. His considerable contribution to the world of motion pictures is a behind-the-scenes kind of affair. If you look, for example, at his page listing on IMDb, he has just the one title linked above (he should have more credits to his name there, as he actually served a "cinematographer" on several of Marey's works dating from the 1890's).  Still, recognizing his cinema contributions is important, after all there is no way a minor figure would ever had been made president of France's Institution of Scientific Cinematography, as Bull was in 1948.  Some of his important photographic contributions include government work during the first World War that included work in high speed photography, in addition to using an innovative "sound ranging device" to locate gun batteries. His older brother was famed British illustrator René Bull, whose work was no doubt an influence on Monty Python's cartoonist (turned filmmaker) Terry Gilliam. 

Still of bullet peircing, but not bursting a soap bubble. 

Bull lived a very long life after his retirement. Though he was a life long bachelor with no companion(s) or children, he a had a large circle of friends who describe him right up to the time of his death as a man who loved to have friends for tea, always a man of lively  conversation about science and subjects dealing the telescopes that were in development. Lucien Bull died on the 25th of August in 1972--he was 95 years of age. He died in France, but I can find no burial information in any location there, the United Kingdom or Ireland for him.

Wikipedia

 

 

[Source: National Library of Medicine]

 

Born Today September 28: Stanner E. V. Taylor

1877-1948

Stanner Edward Varley Taylor may be better remembered as the husband of silent Biograph starlet Marion Leonard, but he was a director and screenwriter in his own right.  Taylor was born on this date in St. Louis in 1877.  Taylor started out as a newspaper man, writing news stories and editing copy. He apparently worked on shifts for the morning edition publication and therefore had time to write his own material in the afternoons.  In this capacity, he began as a playwright until he went to work at American Mutoscope and Biograph as a screen or scenario writer. He would become, basically, their head writer in time.  His first scenario gig with them consisted of adapting a play for the screen: he worked out the adaptation of a western play--The Kentuckian--written by Augustus Marvin, for a short form film directed by the elder Wallace McCutcheon in 1908 (the film, incidentally, sported an appearance the younger McCutcheon Jr., who would go on to make rather a big fool of himself at the company as a "director"). Without a doubt, his most famous enduring work from the time period is the screenplay for The Adventures of Dollie, today famous for it's (co)direction by D. W. Griffith released in July of 1908.  Taylor also made his directorial debut that same year on the short Biograph melodrama Over the Hill to the Poorhouse, which was interestingly based on a poem by Will Carleton and not his own original work.  He would not direct again until 1911 (with The Left Hook), and that was the only film he directed that year.  It was not until 1912 that this part of his career really took off, when he and Leonard went to work for Rex Motion Picture Co/Universal.  Throughout the rest of his career, both in writing and direction, he is seen as a western specialist; and despite directing his wife in many non-westerns like Carmen in 1913, it for westerns that he is best remembered today.  Many of the his earliest "frontier" scenarios were worked up in partnership with Griffith and he in fact has the writing credit on In Old California in 1910, which was the very first film ever made in Hollywood (the film was thought lost, but was discovered--at least in par--in the early part of this century). Despite being associated with westerns/Native American scenarios, Taylor directed a large number of melodramas in the years 1912 and 1913--and he in fact continued to write for Griffith at Biograph during this time (see, for example, The Yaqui Cur--1913). Marion Leonard was a very big movie star in the teens (her engagement to Taylor was big news in 1911), and she was able to found--with Taylor--her very own production house, which bore her name. The two worked in this capacity until she decided to retire from film acting in 1915.  While the company was in operation, Taylor wrote and directed exclusively for the house; and many of their films featured respected stage actor Henry B. Walthall. [It was during this period of his career that he is credited as Stanley E. V. Taylor or S. E. V. Taylor.]  Their last production together under the auspices of the studio appears to be The Vow, released in the spring of 1915.  His very next film was for Balboa, with whom he worked for a very short time; his 1915 Balboa directed film was the Noah Beery drama The Purple Night.  The film that he wrote while with the company--The Dragon's Claw--was also his wife's last acting job in the business. After her exit from film acting, he would stay in the business both as a director and writer for a further 13 years. His first production after his career collaboration with his wife ended was Her Great Hour starring the Scottish born Molly McIntyre. He next directed Clara Kimball Young in the Hal Young produced melodrama The Rise of Susan, released in December 1916; that film also featured Warner Oland.  It was at this time that his directing career slowed and he saw a resurgence of his writing career. He wound up writing under a pen-name for Griffith again in 1918, when Griffith was directing for Paramount (that would be the war drama The Great Love under the name Captain Victor Marier--which by the way, Griffith, who co-wrote the film with Taylor, also used). From this time forward he penned 15 screenplays, and directed four features. Of those, only The Mohican's Daughter  and The Lone Wolf  has him adapting short stories and directing as well.  His last time in the director's chair was on the self produced project The Miracle of Life in 1926.  He wrote four more films after this--all produced in 1928 and 1929--all of which were westerns or adventure scenarios of some sort. The last of these was the Robert Vignola film The Red Sword, a fully silent picture released on the 17th of February of 1929.  He then joined his wife in retirement from the business, but not much is recorded about their life after this, except they stayed in the Los Angeles area. He passed away on the 23rd of February there at the age of 71. There is NO information on his interment, but when Marion joined him in death some eight years later, she was cremated at the Chapel of the Pines and her ashes interred at the Memory Hall there. 

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Born Today August 18: Emperor Franz Joseph

 

1830-1916 

[apologies...again, this time not for my mistakes (which I make a lot of 😀), but for Google blogger issues with spelling. I did not mean a misspelling of curious to be "translated" as copious and so on]

Emperor Franz Joseph of the Habsburgs (Hapsburg) was born Franz Joseph Karl von Habsbug-Lothringen (of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine) in Vienna, of the Austrian Empire. There is little point of going into any sort of history here (and as always, I have provided links below, and in the body of this post, for curious reading for the curious), but suffice to say that Franz Joseph was the next to the last Emperor of Austria and was the longest serving ruler of Austria/Hungary (he ranks among the longest reigning monarchs--at 68 years--in history). He was the grandson of the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II.  During his life a number of deaths of his family members were brought about as a result as political unrest and the desire for independence both in eastern Europe and in the New World. These deaths included, his wife Empress Elisabeth who was stabbed to death by a disgruntled Italian assassin, anarchist Luigi Lucheni, looking for a different royal altogether; and the execution of the his brother Maximilian  in Mexico by that country's first indigenous president Benito Juárez.  And, of course, the most famous of them all, the death of his nephew and heir-presumtive Archduke Franz Ferdinand at the hands of a Bosnian Serb assassin Gavrilo Princip in June of 1914, the event that caused the alliance cascade that would bring on World War I (not to mention the suicide of his son and heir in what is known as The Mayerling incident).  Franz Joseph outlived them all.  During his lifetime, and as an old man,  he appeared in 10 short films and/or newsreels from 1896 through 1914.  The first of these was the short film produced in Hungary entitled Emperor Franz Joseph Opening the Millenial Exhibition in 1896; the film was shot by Arnold Sziklay, who is considered to by the very first filmmaker in Hungary.  The first film of the Emperor made in Germany came two years later with the meeting of three monarchs, Franz Joseph, Kaiser Wilhelm II and King Albert of Saxony -- the little film was produced Messters Projektion. Three films were made of him at various activities in 1902, two of them by the American company Edison Manufacturing; the other was a production of the German arm of The Mutoscope & Biograph company.  All of the other films were produced as actual newsreels by Páthe Frères as part of their Páthe Weekly reels--he appeared (in a least two with soon to be murdered nephew) in reels No. 29, 30 and 35 in 1913 and reel No. 48 in 1914, which was the last time that he would be filmed during his lifetime. The Emperor died at the age of 86 on the 21st of November after contracting pneumonia a week prior. He was interred at the Imperial Crypt [Kaisergruft], famously located at the Capuchin Church in Vienna, laid to rest in a elevated tomb between to his murdered wife and tragic son.  He was succeeded to the throne by his grandnephew Charles (Karl) who only reigned until 1918.   

[Source: David Conway (Find A Grave)]

(Source: Frantisek Zboray (Find A Grave)]

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Encyclopedia Britannica   

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House of Habsburg

Born Today July 6: Annabelle Moore (Whitford)

1878-1961

Subject of several famous Edison dance shorts Annabelle Whitford, who used the name "Annabelle Moore" when performing (it was reportedly her stepfather's surname), was born on this day in Chicago [Note that through the years since her debut in film in the 1890's, she has been credited with both surnames]. She was famous not just for her appearance in early film, she was a sensation long before; which is, of course, how she came to be in motion pictures. She is historically important as a participant in a number firsts. She was the original "Gibson Girl", and was one of the original performers in Ziegfeld Follies in 1907; she was the first actor/performer featured in the very first Kinetoscope installed for viewing in London, England, and she has been credited as introducing eroticism to film--just to name but a few.  An excellent case can be made that she was the very first movie star.  In terms of how she came to be the subject of films, she was trained as a dancer in her youth and made her formal dance debut at the 1893 Columbian Exchange.  It is not a coincidence that she performed "butterfly dances" and similar "dress" or "skirt dances," and that she was from Chicago. The originator of the "skirt dance" was Loie Fuller, who started as a very talented improve or free dancer; she was already a famous burlesque dancer who both choreographed and lit her own dances--the most famous of which was the Serpentine Dance--and she was also from Chicago.  When Annabelle traveled to New York the following year, at the age of 16, she became one of the earliest actual performers for the Edison Manufacturing co. when she appeared in the Annabelle Sun Dance (1894) directed by William K. L. Dickson himself, and one of the films shot in the Black Maria, the world's very first film studio (note that the "poster" in the Internet Movie Database for this film depicts a different film, in fact the very next film she appeared in). In all, she made three "skirt dance" films for Edison--including the Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894) & Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895)--before moving on to American Mutoscope with another rendition of the Butterfly Dance in 1896. In another historical first, Annabelle Serpentine Dance represents one of the very first color motion pictures, hand tinted, and is most likely the very first distributed color film. In all she appeared 10 "dance" films with both companies combined. At American Mutoscope, she added her Tambourine Dance and a Flag Dance to the world of earliest cinema. Her later dance films in 1897 were all made back at the Edison facility.  She has just one other film to her name, a "trick film" made by the German Mutoscope & Biograph company, combining skirt dancing with footage shot at the German aquarium--edited in such a way as to make the dancer appear to be dancing underwater.  It was released as A Mermaid Dance in 1902. In the early 20th century, she spent time exclusively in stage revues of various sorts, and even did a little stage acting before retiring for good in 1912. She had married in 1910 and her and her husband moved back to Chicago. He died there in 1958, she followed on the 1st of December in 1961 at the age of 83.  In a "not much has changed" note: her and her husband, a Dr., donated in 1957 to a charity to benefit under privileged children in Chicago, when she earned-all on her own-a one time payment for writing an article about her witnessing the horrible fire at the Iroquois Theater in 1903, when the Federal Government learned of the donation, they kicked both of them off of their pensions....classy uh?? Interestingly, in the weeks following that blaze, which killed over 600 people, Annabelle herself was counted among the dead. About her actual death almost 6 decades later, there are conflicting reports as to whether she was buried at Chicago's famed Graceland Cemetery or cremated there and her ashes scattered. Three interesting documentaries have included footage and biographical materials on her, each in their own area of focus: from early color to early erotica. They are listed below:

Glorious Technicolor (1998)

Sex at 24 Frames Per Second (2003)

The Quiet Room: A Story of Cinema (2013 short) 

Gibson Girl

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Born Today January 4: George Albert Smith

1864-1959

George Albert Smith, giant of early cinema, was born on this day in the Cripplegate area of London, England. Early on during his lifetime, Smith was largely a stage performer of various sorts, including hypnotism performances and public psychic readings. He first got into early pre-cinematic exhibitions through lecturing on magic lanterns.  Smith was born into a family that had artistic endeavors in it's background--his father, who died when was relatively young, was both a writer and visual artist. Smith was a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and also was, rather controversially, a member of the Society of Physical Research (it is controversial because the grounds on which he was granted admittance were based on a stage act that was later proven to be a performance sham).  Still, Smith's contribution to early cinema is extremely important!  Amongst his many achievements is one of the earliest successful colour film processes to be used commercially (Kinemacolor was the very first successful colour film process to be invented--though others, not widely used, predate it).  Like his extremely well known counterparts in France, Georges Méliès and Alice Guy, he also advanced the notion of narrative film-making at it's earliest dates.  In 1892, after departing the Society of Physical Research, he next moved on the public exhibitions of various sorts, after having secured a lease on St. Ann's Well Gardens in Hove. He turned the gardens into what can only be called an amusement park, not only staging exhibitions of hot air ballooning and parachute jumping, but also mocking up all sorts of weird amusements, including what he tried to pass off as a hermit living in a cave located on the property. It was at this time that he started giving public screenings of magic lanterns. This led to him furthering his career in the field of projections, by his being allowed to lecture on and demonstrate magic lanterns at the Brighton Aquarium; his success in at this gave him an intimate background for his later skills in film editing. And, it wasn't long before he discovered motion pictures. In 1896 he saw his first program of Lumière films and caught the film making bug. He and a business partner not only acquired their own film making apparatus, but they also went into the repair side of film making, becoming one of the first outfits to set up shop repairing film manufacturing equipments.  By 1897, he was shooting his own films. As near as anyone can tell, the ultra short documentary Yachting was his first film, though The Miller and Chimney Sweep is often cited as such (and it may actually be his first--historical records of the exact dates of his earliest films are not intact as far as my research thus far indicates). Despite that many of his earliest motion picture efforts can be counted as "documentary" in nature; many more--from the very start--involved narratives or stories--most of them comedic in nature.  That is certainly the case with The Miller and Chimney Sweep (other examples are The Maid in the Garden, Weary Willie and Comic Shaving).  In this regard, many have credited Smith's wife, Laura Bayley, who was a seasoned actress in burlesque and pantomimes--AND who very likely directed some of the films that Smith is given credit for.  Owed to his love of the French cinema pioneers in general and of Méliès in particular, Smith unintentionally contributed to the earliest films that can be categorized as "horror." The most famous of these are: The X-Ray Fiend (1897)-which features his wife Laura, The Haunted Castle (1897) and Photographing a Ghost (1898). Of just this short list, two things are remarkable; the first is that The X-Ray Fiend was thought completely lost at one point--having a film from the 19th century found in condition as to allow it to be restored is astonishing!  The second, is that The Haunted Castle is in fact a remake of an 1896 Méliès film, that makes it the very first "horror remake" in film history--and,it is quite possible that it is the very first film remake period.  In all, Smith is credited with directing over 300 short film titles between the years of 1897 and 1912 (as mentioned above, some of these may have actually been directed by his wife). They are FAR too numerous to give a detailed run down of them in this short birthday bio; please follow the links given below to explore more! 👇 Aside from the shear number of films that Smith actually made, along with his inventing so many firsts in the realm of shooting and editing film, and his contribution to the rise of narratives within film, by far the most important contribution that he made within his own career was that of the invention of...or rather the perfection of...Kinemacolor.  Most of the successful implementation of the invention had actually been the work of very important, but relatively unknown, inventor and cinematographer Edward Raymond Turner. The process--first dubbed the "Lee-Turner Process"--was already well under development when Smith was brought on board to finish it by influential American ex-pat film producer and distributor Charles Urban.  The main perfection of the process came when Smith decided to leave off Turner's 3-color approach in favor of a 2-color formula based on red and green. The result was the world's very first stable and usable motion picture color process. The very first film shot and later publicly screened using Kinemacolor was A Visit To The Seaside--shot in 1908 and first projected in 1909 (Smith shot at least two earlier films as test products before Seaside--the first of which was Tartans of Scottish Clans dating from 1906) [A portion of A Visit can be seen below--the original film was some 8 minutes in length.]  The process was became the industry standard and was pretty widely used for some six years.  Ironically, it was his decision to go with a two-color filter system in the color process that ended his career. At the time that Kinemacolor was perfected around 1905, there were a number of other inventors in England that were working on a colour film precess. One of them, William Friese-Green, had a credible claim to an earlier process that was almost identical--he filed a patent lawsuit against Smith and his studios in England, which he won. This put Smith and both his studios, one in Hove and one in Nice, France, out of business. Smith did not attempt to return to the film business after this, though he lived for another 45 years.  He resided most of that time in obscurity, until British film enthusiasts rediscovered his work after World War II.  In 1955, he was made a Fellow of the British Film Institute.  Smith died at the age of 95 (!) on the 17th of May in Brighton.  As of this writing, I can find no information on his burial.

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Born Today January 7: Virginia Tyler Hudson (Virginia Hudson Brightman) [In Honor of The Golden Globes Time's Up Tonight!]

1886-????

Early female screenwriter Virginia Tyler Hudson, who was later credited under her married name Virginia Hudson Brightman, was born on this day in Kentucky (probably Millersburg) to family that included her well known reverend father, Daniel Hudson, her mother and two sisters. Early in her life she showed a natural talent for music, and it was more or less taken for granted that she would make a career in the field.  Hudson was well educated for a woman of her time, attending college in both her native Kentucky and Macon, Georgia.  She then went to work as journalist, her talent in writing and reporting soon outstripped her job and she was moved/promoted to Chicago.  While working as a reporter, she was employed in various press capacities, she wrote everything from periodical composition to higher level political press reporting.  As she wrote longer and longer pieces for newspaper weeklies, she began to write her own short stories and plays; this eventually lead to scenario writing and screenplays written directly with film in mind.  Somehow she wound up working at Thanhouser and penned the scenario for what is generally regarded at the first non-pornographic film in the U.S. to feature nudity: Inspiration (1915) (this is leaving off the series photography that Muybridge produced of both nude men and women in art and athletic setting).  All prints of the film are thought lost. If it were not for this film, and later an lawsuit that she filed against World Film, her life might have been relegated to complete obscurity altogether.   She worked through a two year contract with Thanhouser in 1915 and 1916.  All of her films that are known date from her time at the company, though she has more credits at World that are much more obscure.  The first film that she penned under contact to World was The Burglar in 1917; an adaptation of am Augustus Thomas play, and directed by Harley Knoles.  Her contract with World was for two years starting from the beginning of  1917, which they terminated nearly 5 months early; for this she sued them for breach.  World claimed that it was in her contract that the agreement could be broken, she sued for lose of monies that would have been hers had she stayed.  The whole affair wound up going to the Supreme Court, not once, but three times in 1919.  Hudson, who was by then married, eventually prevailed; with World ordered to pay her $1,600--$300 dollars less than her contract stipulated.  The whole affair was heavily reported on in the press, in part due to her background in the news industry, but also because of her sex...she was a woman daring to take on some the most powerful men in the industry, and she won! Her last World scenario was the adapted A Woman Of Redemption (1918), starring pseudo-vamp actress June Elvidge and directed by Travers Vale.  She has one additional credit, under her married name of Brightman in 1924, when a novel that she wrote along with Clinton Stagg, was adapted into an adventure vehicle for western actor Tom Mix by Fox.  Teeth was adapted by David W. Lee and directed by John G. Blystone, who is probably best known for his directing Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality the year before.  At some point, she met her husband, Grant L. Brightman, who also worked in the film industry (it was probably at World Film).  They are known to have married in October of 1918 and remained married until his death in 1931.  As for Virginia herself, there are no death records: so the date, place and cause of her death are not known at this time.  

Born Today May 26: Arthur Marvin

1859-1911

Silent cinematographer Arthur Weed Marvin was born on this day in Warners, New York (for some reason the year of his birth is erroneously cited as being 1861 in a minority of sources). He was a camera operator at Biograph and he was the brother of Harry Marvin, the inventor of the Biograph camera and one of the founders of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.  The very first film that he operated that camera on was A Bowery Cafe' in 1897; it was a short narrative film--which was the vision that the founders of the company had for their films.  Despite the narrative focus, very many of the films that Arthur shot were newsreel documentaries, possibly to field test the camera itself.   The first of these was The Christian Herald's Relief Station, Havana in 1898.  During 1899, he spent considerable time making a series of shorts featuring heavy weight boxing champion James Jeffries.  Also in 1899, he tested the camera in series of on-location shoots in the St. Clair Tunnel located in Michigan.  He would make his directorial debut in 1900 with the first known film adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes Baffled.  Toward the end of his life, he would go on to shoot a few very early D. W. Griffith films, when Griffith was hired by Biograph.  Probably the best known of these is The Adventures Of Dollie, which happened to be Griffith's directorial debut.  The last film that he shot was Priscilla's Engagement Ring, a 1911 film featuring Mack Sennett. Marvin died on the 18th of January 1911 at the age of 51.  He died in Los Angeles, making him one of the earliest cinematographers to make the "film migration" out to the west coast.   He body was shipped back to New York, where he is buried in the Calvary Cemetery in Queens.  The next year, his nephew (Harry's son) lost his life aboard the Titanic, a tragic event that he thankfully didn't live to witness.  

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Born Today May 13: J. Searle Dawley

1877-1949

The man who considered himself the very first real motion picture director, who the world came to know as J. Searle Dawley, was born James Searle Dawley on this date in Del Norte, Colorado.  I would say that it's more accurate to say that he could be considered the very first director of purely narrative films; but the honor of very first director really should go to the man who hired Dawley at the Edison Co., and that would be Edwin S. Porter.  Dawley at first wanted to break into the acting circuit, securing a position in the acting house run by Louis Morrison; however the tour that he was hired to work on was canceled and his was obliged to return home to Colorado.  This was in 1895 and came just after his high school graduation.  He rejoined the group in 1897, and worked both as a actor and a stage manager for 3 years.  He then left for the vaudeville circuit, with ambitions to become a writer.  He worked there both as a writer and actor, before joining the Spooner company, where he plied all of his talent accrued to date: acting, writing and stage managing.  Having gained attention of the Edison Co. and of Porter, he was hired in 1907 specifically to direct.  This was indeed a first.  He was hired to direct a short film that already had a scenario attached to it:  The Nine Lives Of A Cat became his directorial debut in 1907.  Though D. W. Griffith was two years older than Dawley, he wouldn't make his directorial debut until 1908.  In fact, Dawley would direct Griffith in a film that survives to this day; Rescued From An Eagle's Nest was filmed in 1908, before Griffith made his debut later in the year.  It is a remarkable film, because it contains some of the earliest complicated special effects--films had formally moved on from good old fashioned trick photography.  Some of Dawley's early work in Fort Lee for Edison available on disc include:  A Little Girl Who Didn't Believe In Santa Claus  1907, A Suburbanite's Ingenious Alarm 1908, Fireside Remembrances 1908 (all up to this point co-directed with Porter), and  Cupid's Pranks 1908.  Dawley made the move to California in 1910, earlier than most directors--though he still worked for Edison Manufacturing.  He began to focus of films on works of literature.  He brought works by Twain, the Brothers Grimm, Dickens, Dumas,  and Stevenson amongst others, to the moving picture.  But it would be one work of literature by a female author that Dawley would forever be known for.  In 1910 he made the first ever filmed adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  The film, though a short, features extremely sophisticated special effects--cutting edge for it's time.  

It was released on March 18th and starred Augustus Phillips (in his first film appearance) as Frankenstein and Charles Ogle as his monster.  Being the person chosen to set up Edison in a new studio in the Hollywood area, he also brought in new directors that would go on to have a big impact on silent cinema.  The first non-Edison film that he directed was for Solax (Alice Guy's studio).  The film was Between Two Fires (1912), this was quite a long time before he severed work for Edison.   In 1912 and 1913, he began filming outdoor documentaries, most in Yellowstone National Park, but at least one film was produced in Yosemite as well (Dawley had developed a penchant for photographing and filming in the locations as he made his way from the east coast to the west coast--many of these films were actually filmed during the his time of travel and released later).  In 1913, he made his first film for Zukor's Famous Players, a adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Tess Of The D'Urbervilles.  Though known as a famous silent film director, it should not be forgotten that one of his first skills in the theater was writing, and though he was adept and literary adaptation, he also wrote original scenarios for films as well.  The first of these came in 1909 with The Legend Of Sterling Keep.  In all, he has 40 writing credits to his name.  And though he would never make a film in the sound era, his films were not all silent, in fact, the one credit that he has for cinematographer comes in a De Forest Phononfilm demonstration entitled Adolph Zukor Introduces Phonofilm, a film that has Zukor explaining the Phonofilm sound on film system, it dates from 1923.  In fact, his last 3 films used the De Forest Phonofilm system and were full sound movies:  Abraham Lincoln dates from 1924 and Roger Wolfe Kahn Musical Number dates from 1925.  Dawley's last film came out in 1926:  Brooke Johns and Goodee Montgomery, it is a formally lost and now restored film.  After this, Dawley decided to retire from the movie industry; he eventually made his way over to radio, where he worked successfully through the 1930's.  Dawley would also go on to be one of the founders of an organization to would eventually turn into the Screen Director's Guild.  He certainly influenced a whole host of other directors, both contemporary with him and a younger generation coming into their own when he decided to retire.  Walt Disney mentioned several times how influential Dawley had been for him on multiple levels.  Dawley passed away in Hollywood at the age of 71 on the 30th of March 1949.  Strangely there is no information about a funeral service of any sort.  

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Born Today February 22: P. J. C. Janssen

1824-1907

French astronomer and motion picture pioneer P. J. C. Janssen was born in Paris on this day in 1824.  His birth name was Pierre Jules César; he was variously known as Pierre Janssen or Jules Janssen during his lifetime.  Due to a childhood accident, he walked with a severe limp.  As a young man he went to work as a bank clerk; but science was his passion, so he enrolled in university to study physics and math, eventually graduating and becoming a professor of physics at an architectural university in Paris.  During his lifetime he discovered and invented a great number of important milestones in physics, astronomy and chemistry--and, inadvertently, moving pictures.  Though the British scientist Lockyer was independently on to many of the same observations at the same time, Janssen is credited with figuring out how to observe "Solar prominences" with a spectroscope without the aide of an eclipse.  Through being an enthusiastic observer of eclipses, he also was the first to observe a gaseous vapor that later proved to be a new element:  helium.  And he invented a device called a "photographic revolver;" the device allowed for 180 photographs to run for one frame per second.  This is technically the first moving picture devise (precursor of the projector).  He used this device to run photography of the transition of Venus in 1874 taken in Japan--this is basically the very first movie.  This makes Janssen the very first film director and cinematographer.  The documentary short is listed in film catalog as Passage de Venus (1874).  Janssen would also appear in two documentary shorts from the 1890's by The Lumiere Brothers.  The Photographical Congress Arrives At Lyon (1895), is one of the early shorts that remains quite well known to this day.  Additionally, Janssen appeared in Discussion de Monsieur Janssen et Monsieur Lagrange (1895).  In 1903 Janssen published the famous work Atlas de photographies solaries, which contained more than 6,000 photographs of the sun.  Janssen died on 23 December 1907 at the age of 83 in Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine, France.  He is buried in the historical Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris.  His grave is simply marked "J. Janssen."

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Film showing the Photographic Revolver

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The Story Of The Kelly Gang (1906) Portion

It's strange that this is actually the world's first feature film; strange because it's Australian.  Moving pictures were arguably invented in the US, but countries like France and England were very, very quick to catch on.  However, it was a country that was considered backward to an extreme degree by the rest of the world who gave us the first full length movie; and Australia had only been an actual country for 5 years!  The above is just a portion of the feature, but it's pretty action packed.  Based, of course, on the famous Ned Kelly of the outback; this is the first film ever made about him.  It was remade in 1920.  Happy Labour Day Australia!