1900s - Part 2
Year
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Event and Significance
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1906-1908
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About 5,000 nickelodeons existed throughout the United States. Many studios were created to keep up with the increased demand for films. In 1907, The Saturday Evening Post reported that daily attendance at nickelodeons exceeded two million. In 1907, the Chicago Daily Tribune denounced nickelodeons as firetraps and tawdry corrupters of children. Nickelodeons spread and numbered between 8,000 to 10,000 by 1908 with 200,000 customers a day, charging five cents for a movie accompanied by a piano.
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1907
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The first film-makers arrived in Los Angeles. Filmmakers began to realize that the Los Angeles area was a good filming area with a favorable climate and a variety of natural scenery. The first movie was also made in Los Angeles soon afterwards (see 1909). Previously, movies were filmed in New York City and in Fort Lee, NJ.
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1907
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The first feature-length (90 minutes) film produced in Europe was L'Enfant Prodigue (aka The Prodigal Son) (Fr.), directed by Michel Carré and shot at the French film production company, the Gaumont Film Company.
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1907
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Edwin S. Porter directed Rescued From an Eagle's Nest, another Edison production. Richard Murphy created a mechanical eagle for this early film (starring future director D. W. Griffith in his first major screen role) - in the scene, a stuffed eagle with movable wings kidnapped a baby and battled the heroic father.
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1907
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The Bell and Howell Company, founded by Chicago movie projectionist Donald H. Bell and camera repairman Albert S. Howell, developed a film projection system. Their firm went on to revolutionize motion picture photography and projection equipment.
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1907
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The first documentary re-creation, Sigmund Lubin's The Unwritten Law (1907) (subtitled "A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy") dramatized the true-life murder -- on June 25, 1906 -- of prominent architect Stanford White by mentally unstable and jealous millionaire husband Harry Kendall Thaw over the affections of showgirl Evelyn Nesbit (who appeared as herself in the one reel film). [Alluring chorine Nesbit would become a brief sensation, and the basis for Richard Fleischer's biopic film The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), portrayed by Joan Collins, and E.L. Doctorow's musical and film Ragtime (1981), portrayed by an Oscar-nominated Elizabeth McGovern.]
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1908
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Nine leading film producers or manufacturers (including Biograph that joined forces with Edison) set up the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), a.k.a. "the Trust." It was an attempt to legally monopolize production in the burgeoning American film industry. Ten producers were granted licenses to use equipment authorized by the Trust, while everyone else was ruled to be running illegal film production operations. The trust formed a subsidiary called the General Film Company in 1910 to use intimidation and violence (with threats of not selling or leasing licensed equipment) against independents or any other distributors who purchased and showed motion pictures from any other company. Kodak agreed to sell film stock only to member companies.
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1908
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There were over 8,000 movie theaters (nickelodeons) throughout the US.
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1908
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The Adventures of Dollie, a story of a young child kidnapped and in peril, was the first one-reel film directed by D. W. Griffith (in the same year that he started as a director at American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City). It was released and debuted in New York. Griffith would go on to direct 450 one-reel films for Biograph in the next five years, developing many innovative techniques.
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1908
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The 8-minute UK short film A Visit to the Seaside (aka A Visit to the Seaside at Brighton Beach, England), directed by George Albert Smith, was the first commercially-produced film in natural color - using the revolutionary Kinemacolor process (a two-color additive process) invented by Smith himself. It was first exhibited in 1908, then shown publically in 1909 in London, and later released in the US in late 1910.
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1908
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The first detective films, the Nick Carter series, were released in France.
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1908
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The first real horror film, William Selig's 16-minute Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, was premiered in Chicago.
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1908
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French director Emile Cohl's animated short film Fantasmagorie was considered the first fully animated film. About a minute in length, it consisted solely of simple line drawings (of a clown-like stick figure) that blended, transformed or fluidly morphed from one image into another.
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1908
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The first film for which a totally-original film score was specifically composed was for the silent film The Assassination of the Duke de Guise (aka L'Assassinat du duc de Guise), by classical composer Camille de Saint-Saëns.
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1909
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The Selig Polyscope Company established the first permanent film studio in the Los Angeles area, at 1845 Allesandro Street (now Glendale Blvd.) in Edendale [present day Echo Park]. The first dramatic film to be completely made on the West Coast, in Los Angeles, California, was debuted by Selig - In the Sultan's Power, from director Francis Boggs.
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1909
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The New York Times published its first movie review, a report on D. W. Griffith's Pippa Passes.
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1909
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The first 'independent' film, arguably, released as the first film from the IMP Company (Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Picture Company), was the one-reel Hiawatha. It was not affiliated with the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) newly-formed in 1908.
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1909
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There were about 9,000 movie theaters in the United States. The typical film was only a single reel long, or ten- to twelve minutes in length, and the performers were anonymous. Acting in a movie was looked upon as degrading compared with stage acting, so actors were never identified by name.
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1909
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The New York Times coined the term ‘stars’ for leading movie players.
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1909
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An American court ruled that unauthorized films infringed on copyrights, in a case over the 1907 film version of Ben-Hur. As a result, film companies began buying screen rights to books and plays.
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1909
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Comedian Ben Turpin was mentioned in a trade journal, and became the first American film actor to have his name published.
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1909
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Cameraman Billy Bitzer became the first to film entirely indoors using artificial light.
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1909
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35 mm was recognized as the international standard film gauge. It has remained the dominant film gauge since that time.
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1907-1914
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The Broncho Billy series, with 400 episodes, popularized westerns. Gilbert Anderson became the first cowboy hero and perhaps the first recognizable character in American films. In 1909, Tom Mix made his first western, in Oklahoma.
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1910s - Part 1
Year
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Event and Significance
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1910
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Thomas Edison introduced his Kinetophone, a sound-film process which made talkies a reality. However, his attempt to combine the phonograph and motion pictures failed commercially.
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1910
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Carl Laemmle set up his own Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP) to counteract the Edison Trust.
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1910
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Laemmle introduced the star system, causing the rise of the American movie star phenomenon, by hiring now-forgotten Florence Lawrence ("The Biograph Girl"), one of Biograph's anonymous stars, and beginning a massive publicity campaign. By most accounts, Lawrence was the first US motion picture "movie star." Carl Laemmle orchestrated a shameless but spectacular, high-profile 'publicity stunt' in March of 1910, with rumors of her death in a street-car accident in St. Louis, and her subsequent resurrection at the IMP Company's St. Louis premiere of her first IMP film (The Broken Oath, aka The Broken Bath), in April of 1910. She was the first film star to make a 'personal appearance' (as a publicity stunt).
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1910
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The first screen credit was given to Florence Lawrence, in IMP's short crime romance The Broken Oath (aka The Broken Bath), directed by her husband Harry Solter.
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1910
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Dialogue titles began to appear with regularity. Studios began distributing publicity stills of actors and actresses.
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1910
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The first US multi-reel "feature" film was Vitagraph's five-reel Life of Moses. It was shown at a single sitting in New Orleans. Such multi-reel films weakened exhibitors' control of their programs (i.e., prior to this development, exhibitors effectively "edited" the program by arranging their selections of short films without directorial intervention.)
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1910
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Film companies began to move to the area later known as Hollywood. Los Angeles annexed Hollywood.
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1910
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The first film made in Hollywood, by Biograph and director D.W. Griffith, In Old California, was released.
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1910
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For the first time, Hollywood purchased the rights to adapt a novel from a publisher (Little, Brown & Company who published Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona), for a D.W. Griffith film to be made in 1910.
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1910
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John Randolph Bray patented the cel process, pioneering true animated cartoons with structured story lines.
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1910
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The first movie stunt -- a man jumped into the Hudson River from a burning balloon.
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1910
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The first Frankenstein monster film in the US was Edison's Frankenstein, a 16-minute (one-reel) version made by the Edison Motion Picture Studios and starring Charles Ogle (uncredited) as the monster, and Mary Fuller as Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth. The film was directed and written by J. Searle Dawley and filmed in the Bronx; the monster appeared misshapen and pathetic rather than horrifying in this first film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel.In this early version, the Monster was created in a cauldron of chemicals.
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1910
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Vaudeville press agent William Foster launched his Foster Photoplay Company, the first African-American film production company (to produce "race films" as they were called), in Chicago. It produced primarily slapstick comedies starring black vaudeville performers.
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1910
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Max Factor created the first makeup formulated especially for film.
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1910
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The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) tried to monopolize film distribution and absorb independent distributors by setting up the General Film Company. Independent William Fox responded by making his own films.
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1910
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In Denmark, Fotorama introduced the multi-reel documentary film Den Hvide Slavehandel (The White Slave Trade) - one of the first examples of a vice film, and the first time film was used to study prostitution.
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1911
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The first US 'feature film' was released when the two parts of D. W. Griffith's Enoch Arden were screened together, running twice the normal length of films at the time. The two parts became a two-reel featurette shown in its entirety - an industry first.
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1911
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The first feature-length film to be released in its entirety in the US was the 69-minute fantasy/horror epic Dante's Inferno (It.) (aka L’Inferno), inspired by Dante's 14th century poem The Divine Comedy. It opened in New York on December 10, 1911 at Gane’s Manhattan Theatre. It was made by three directors Francesco Bertolini, Giuseppe de Liguoro, and Adolfo Padovan, took two years to make, and cost over $180,000.
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1911
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Pennsylvania became the first state to pass a film censorship law.
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1911
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New York Herald comic-strip animator Winsor McCay debuted the first animated cartoon, Little Nemo in Slumberland (with 4,000 hand-drawn cels), with each frame drawn individually.
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1911
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The first US fan magazine Motion Picture Story Magazine debuted in February. The Moving Picture World and The Motion Picture News also offered interviews and gossipy columns about the personal lives and careers of the stars.
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1911
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IMP star Florence Lawrence was interviewed in 1911 in Motion Picture Story Magazine - often considered the first movie star interview.
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1911
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The Nestor Company built the first full-time studio in a district of Los Angeles known as Hollywood. It was the first movie studio based in Hollywood. As a result of the independents desire to escape the restrictions of the MPPC, Hollywood was soon to become the motion-picture capital of the world.
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1911
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Credits began to appear regularly at the beginning of motion pictures.
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1911
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Pathe's Weekly was the first regularly-released US newsreel.
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1912
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Photoplay, the first true movie "fan" magazine, debuted and gave rise to the whole idea of a celebrity and fan culture. By the early 1920's, over a dozen such magazines crowded the news-stands with names like Cinema Art, Film Fun, Motion Picture Journal, Movie Weekly, Picture Play, and Screenland.
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1912
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Carl Laemmle merged IMP and other studios to found the Universal Pictures Company, which was to become the first major, long-lasting Hollywood studio. Mutual Film Corporation was formed. Jesse Lasky also formed the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company in partnership with his brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later renamed Goldwyn) and Cecil B. DeMille. Significantly, the independents made longer 'feature' films than the short one-reelers produced by the MPPC. By 1912, fifteen film companies were operating in Hollywood.
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1912
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Adolph Zukor founded an independent film studio named the Famous Players Film Corporation, with distribution arranged with a new organization named Paramount by 1914. Paramount Pictures is one of the oldest American motion picture studios. Its logo - a majestic mountain peak - still remains recognizable, making it the oldest surviving Hollywood studio film logo.
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1912
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Canadian writer and actor Mack Sennett (the "King of Comedy") formed the Keystone Film Company (and Studio) in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles. The first Mack Sennett Keystone production was Cohen Collects a Debt. The first Keystone Kop film from the studio, Hoffmeyer's Legacy, was released in late 1912. Nearly every major comic performer in America worked at Keystone during this time, including Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin, in mostly slapstick comedy films.
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1912
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Adolph Zukor's Famous Players' first release (opening in New York City at the Lyceum Theatre) was the four-reel French import Queen Elizabeth (aka Les Amours de la Reine Élisabeth) with famous stage actress Sarah Bernhardt in the title role. It was the first full-length drama shown in the United States, and the third film to be shown in its entirety, in its US premiere in July. New York society elites attended the premiere of the film, helping to extend the film's reach (and the entire medium of film) to the upper classes.
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1912
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The first American serial film was the Edison Company's melodrama What Happened to Mary? (1912) (12 episodes, each consisting of one-reel), starring actress Mary Fuller. A print version of the storyline was concurrently published in McClure's Ladies' World magazine.
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1912
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H. A. Spanuth's five-reel production of Oliver Twist was released - it was the first US-produced feature film to last over an hour, and to be shown in its entirety.
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1912
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The five-reel Richard III, starring Frederick Warde, is thought to be the earliest surviving complete feature film made in the US.
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1912
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The rare and restored German film Night and Ice (aka In Nacht und Eis) was one of the earliest disaster films. This film was the first of many feature films about the doomed ship that sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage, after striking an iceberg. This film was made and released a few months after the RMS Titanic's actual sinking! It was of epic length (35 minutes) in comparison to other films of the time. Also that same year, Saved From the Titanic, a one reel, 10 minute film, was also released (it premiered on May 14, 1912, a month to the day after the ship collided with the iceberg) - the second film about the disaster - it was based upon actress, star and screenwriter Dorothy Gibson’s true story of her own survival.
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1912
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D. W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley was released - possibly the first gangster or organized crime film.
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1912
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Thomas Ince pioneered the role of film producer by devising standard production budgeting formulas and introducing a detailed shooting script.
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1912
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Kalmus formed the Technicolor Company to market early versions of the color process.
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1912
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Director Enrico Guazzoni's overblown but successful two-hour spectacle Quo Vadis? was released - one of the first films with over two hours running time. It is often considered the first successful feature-length motion picture. Italian epics would briefly dominate the international film market.
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1912
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William Fox established The Fox Film Foundation - soon to become one of Hollywood's foremost studios.
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1912-1913
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Motion pictures moved out of nickelodeons and into real theaters. The first movie palaces began to appear in 1913. Movies became longer and more expensive as movie companies started hiring the biggest names in theater to star in their movies. Motion picture acting gained respect and was no longer looked upon as degrading, due in part to greater attendance from the American middle-class. The public singled out certain actors and actresses as special favorites. Some of the actors and actresses who were the very first movie stars included cowboy actor Bronco Billy Anderson and comedian John Bunny.
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