Born Today June 29: F. S. Armitage

1874-1933

Relatively unknown but innovative early cinematographer Frederick S. Armitage was born on this day in Seneca Falls, New York. Very little is known about Armitage's life: early or late.  He went to work for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company using their patented Mutoscope hand cranked camera.  Many sources state that his earliest film credits date from 1898, but it appears that he has one credit from 1897.  He apparently shot Trout Poachers with the Mutoscope camera.  From the start he demonstrated a knack for camera innovations--he was obviously influenced in some way by Melies, but it is unclear where he would have had a chance to view any of the French shorts.  Amongst the myriad to tricks that he used involved deliberate over-exposure, time-lapse photography, various types of superimpositions, and reverse negatives.  It has been confirmed that he was solely responsible for one of my favorite "trick actualities" of all time, The Ghost Train dating from 1901 (I have included it in the annual Countdown To Halloween--this post dates from 2012--so much has been discovered about this little film since then (!) including the corrected year.). Many of his films have interesting names for a cameraman that was supposed to specialize in actualities.  He shot the likes of The Demon Barber (1899), The Wizard And The Spirit Of The Tree (1899) and The Ballet Of The Ghosts (1899), just to name a few.  He was quite the prolific filmmaker, having shot some 188 films for Biograph by the end 1899 alone--by the end of his career, the number swelled to over 400.  By the early 1900's he was working with another early innovator in the world of cinematography A. E. Weed, uncle of the Marvin Brothers at Biograph: Harry and Marvin, and a company founder in his own right.  He was one of several camera operators on the well covered boxing match of Jefferies-Sharkey Contest (1899), virtually unprecedented in the world of film at the time; the bout lasted for 22 rounds and the film was 135 minutes in running time!  In 1899 he formally directed his first film 'King' And 'Queen,' The Great High Diving Horses, filmed at Coney Island; the film was a great success for the company.  In 1900, he also became a producer in the truest sense of the word, producing the highly edited film Neptune's Daughters, which featured some of his own earlier camera work, including the above mentioned The Ballet Of The Ghosts--the film survives incredibly (I am so pleased to have a copy in my collection!).  The last film that he is known to have worked on at American Mutoscope was Bargain Day, 14th Street, New York in 1905; he then left the company.  He next landed at Edison working on the 1908 The Boston Tea Party a film directed Edison Co. giant Edwin S. Porter.  He worked for director/producer Ivan Abramson on Her Husband's Wife (1916/I) for Abramson's own Ivan Film Productions.  The last film that he worked on came the following year with Trooper 44, a film directed by Roy Gahris for the E.I.S. Motion Picture Corp.  It seems that Armitage retired after this, but then again, so little is still known of his life.  Interest in his work has been on the rise for a few decades, and since the early 2000's much more biographical material on his life has fortunately surfaced, as some of his work has also been uncovered at the Library of Congress.  What is known to history is that Armitage died on the 3rd of January in 1933 in Ecorse, Michigan--so that at least gives a clue about retirement speculation.  He was only 58 years old.  

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Born Today June 19: William A. Brady

1863-1950

Early studio exec, silent film presenter and all-round successful promoter William Aloysius Brady was born on this date in San Francisco, California. His early life was marked with his having been kidnapped by his reporter father and taken to New York where is father had been hired as a newspaper writer.  When his father died, a 15 year Brady hitched his way back to the city of his birth.  He got a start on the live stage soon after his return there (1882).  He worked his way up the rung and eventually was given an opportunity to produce a show, but it was a failure.  Not letting this stop him, he single handily secured the rights to another play and produced it, the show became a hit and was given a debut date back in New York City.  This got him off into the world of promoting and he continued in the world of the theater. He became somewhat of a legend on Broadway.  It at this time that he sort of accidentally became a boxing promoter--having introduced one of his well built actors into the the world of boxing.  He had such a role in this during his lifetime, that he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1998.  This is what lead him into the world of motion pictures--a medium that he had little respect for in terms of narrative story telling--a stage man through and through.  But as a production tool for boxing, the medium, he thought, held great promise.  His first production credit dates from 1897 with The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight, produced by the Veriscope Company and remarkable for it's 20 minutes in time length!  He would not produce another film until 1913, which was another boxing film.  He did make an appearance in a film as a boxing promoter in 1899 in Jefferies-Sharkey Contest. He then formed his own production company in William A . Brady Picture Plays.  The first film made by the company, which he produced, was The Dollar Mark (1914).  In 1914, he became one of the founders, along with Louis J. Selznick and others, of World Film Company.  He served principally as the company's promoter, true to his talents.  In fact he made the company world famous. He stayed with the company until 1918 or 1919 when he left the film business.  He was there long after Selznick had been forced out and took on the role at the company that Selznick carved out for himself later on in Hollywood, as "Presenter"--a promotional technique that Brady basically invented and Selznick copied.  His production company continued to operate on it's own, but he did bring some of the talent he had hired to World Film.  He first cottoned on the idea of the "presenter" when working on a Maurice Tourneur film for the Shubert Film Corp.: A Butterfly On The Wheel (1915).  In 1917, he added director to his list of credits in Beloved Adventuress, a joint production of Peerless and World Film. And, in 1918, he added writer to that list as well with Stolen Orders, one of his "Brady-World" films--a picture co-directed by Harley Knoles.  The last film that he "presented" was Phil-for-Short in 1919.  The last film that he had anything to do with came in 1920 with Life, a Brady-World production that he produced and shadow directed (he also adapted the screenplay for the original play).  By the time of his death on the 6th of January 1950 at the age of 86, he had relocated back to New York City.  He is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (same place as famed writer Washington Irving of Sleepy Hollow fame).  Brady was the father of actress Alice Brady.  

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