Movies had become a popular attraction in amusement arcades, musical halls, travelling fairs, wax museums, and vaudeville houses.
Eastman Kodak company had introduced the brownie camera.
The lumiere brothers projected cinematograph films onto a screen that was visible to 25,000 people.
Re-enactment Episodes of “Transvaal” had a premiere showing in Paris on new
years day.
James Stuart Blackton produced “The Enchanting Drawing”.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyale’s “Sherlock Holmes: The Immortal, Prototypical Detective” appeared on screen
30-second one-reeler.
Broadway had set out white lights stretching from 13th to 14th street in New York City inspiring the nickname
“The great white way”.
Thomas Edison’s ‘Black Maria” studio had closed.
The U.S circuit court recognized Edison’s motion picture patent-infringement claims in a lawsuit against the
American Mutoscope and Biograph company.
James Williamson released an authentic looking action film “Fire”.
The 25th U.S president, William Mckinley, was the first U.S president to be photographed and captured on
film.
Pathe had released Ferdinand Zecca’s short film “The Story of a Crime”.
One of the earliest movie houses that was designed for showing motion pictures was Thomas Tally’s electric
theatre built in Los Angeles.
The stop motion animation film “Fun in a Bakery Shop” which was a trick by Edwin S. Porter.
George Melies first introduced innovative special effects in the first even sci-fi film “A Trip to The Moon”.
The Edison Manufacturing company had brought patient infringement claims in a lawsuit against their rivals.
Leon Gaumont demonstrated his rudimentary sound-on-disk chronophone system.
The oldest continuously working studio facility for film production in the world is named Will Barker Studios.
Edwin S. Porter helped to shift film production towards narrative storytelling.
“The Great Train Robbery” was the first 12-minute dramatic western film and the first to use modern film
techniques.
The first male movie star and first western star was named as Max Aronson, who starred in “The Great Train Robbery”.
Edwin S. Porter’s comedy shorts “Rube and Mand at Coney Island” were made.
The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company moved to a converted New York City brownstone on E.14th
street.
Hollywood was incorporated, as the municipality “Capital execution” was the first feature film that was made by Denmark’s film industry and went on to thrive until the great war.
Thomas Edison had brought a lawsuit against their competitor and producer Sigmund Lubin for copyright infringement.
Edwin Porter’s enterprising and ambitious adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowies familiar and popular novel
had become “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.
Narrative film had begun to become a dominant and popular form of film.
Biograph’s short comedy “The Escaped Lunatic”, was made.
Biograph’s short film the “The Moonshiner”, which was a documentary-like copyrighted film about life
among whisky-making mountain hillbillies, was made.
Biographs “personal” had combined two plot lines: Personal advertisements and a comedic chase involving a
young Frenchman who’s request to find a wife had become overwhelming, was made.
George Melies released his first two-reel film “The Impossible Voyage”.
Marcus Loew had founded Loew’s Theatres.
The first film exchange in the U.S. the Duquesne amusement supply company was founded by Harry, Albert,
Same and Jack Warner for the distribution of films.
The first ever re-make of a film was Siegmund Lupin’s western short “The Great Train Robbery”.
Harry Davis and John Harris opened the first cinema.
The first ever parody of a film was made, which was Edwin Porter’s “The Little Train Robbery”.
The Warner brothers had opened their first cinema and called it the cascade movie palace.
Copper Hewitt Mercurny Lamps made it practical to shoot films indoors without sunlight.
The American Entertainment Trade Journal ‘Variety’, had began their weekly publication.
The Short Action British melodrama “Rescued by Rover was produced by Cecil Hepworth.
Edwin Porter and Edison Manufacturing Company’s family orientated comedy short “The Whole Dam Family
and the Dam Dog” was made.
Stuart Blackton made the earliest surviving animated film.
The world’s first real feature length film was made.
Chicago’s white front theatre had opened.
Vitagraph studios opened its first modern film studio in the U.S.
The oldest and largest continuously operated family owned cinema chain was created.
Edwin Porter directed the first fantasy film “Dream of a Rarebit Fiend”.
“The Paymaster” was noted for its creative use of the available light.
Siegmund Lubin had expanded his chain of cinemas.
In Chicago, ordinance was passed t=by the city council to prohibit the exhibition of immoral or obscene
pictures.
The first eve n filmmakers had arrived in Los Angeles and began to realize that the are was good for filming.
Vitagraph had become the most prolific and leading American film production film company.
The first feature length film was produced in Europe.
Edwin Porter directed “Rescued from an Eagle’s nest”.
Kalem Film company was founded in New York City.
The Essunay film manufacturing company was formed.
The entertainment industry magazine ‘Variety’ Published their first film.
The Bell and Howell company had developed the film projection system.
The first documentary re-creation.
The “Broncho Billy” series had popularized westerns.
Leading film producers had set up the Motion picture patents company.
There were over 8,000 nickelodeon theatres.
A union was formed to project the rights of nickelodeon movie projectionists.
D.W. Griffith began directing films at Biograph.
The silent film actress Florence Lawrence was offered $25 by D.W. Griffith, which she accepted.
“A Visit to the Seaside” was the first commercially produced film in natural colour.
The first detective films, the “Nick Carter” series, were released in France.
The first real Horror film, “Jekyl and Mr. Hyde”, was premiered in Chicago.
Emily Cohl’s animated short film “fantasmagorie” was considered the first fully animated film.
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”, by classical composer Camille de Saint-Saëns.
9,000 movie theatres in the US.
Selig Polyscope company established their first permanent film studio in Los Angeles.
The first feature-length film produced in the US.
Vitagraph’s “Les Misrables” made.
The New York Times published it’s first movie review.
The Fist independent film, which was “Hiawatha”.
D.W. Griffith’s short film “A corner in Wheat” was marked as the first use of ‘Freeze frame’.
The New York Times had coined the term ‘Stars’.
Siegmund Lubin’s shot the “The Yiddisher Boy”, was the first film with flashbacks.
The American court had ruled that unauthorized films that are infringed on copyrights in a case over the early film version of “Ben-Hur”.
Mary Pickford signed on to appear in D.W. Griffiths “The Violin maker of Cremona”.
Ben Turpin had mentioned in a trade journal, and became the first American film actor to have their name
published.
35mm width with 4 perforations per frame recognized as an international standard film gauge.
Siegmund Lubin sold his chain of theatres and incorporated the Lubin manufacturing company Inc., and built
a new film studio.
Carl Laemmle set up his own independent motion picture company.
Laemmle introduced the start system causing the rise of the movie star phenomenon.
The first screen credit given to Florence Lawrence.
Dialogue titles began to appear.
The first US multi-reel feature film.
Film companies had begun to move to Hollywood.
The first film that was made in the municipality of Hollywood.
Hollywood had purchased the rights to adapt a novel.
The first western silent film super-star Tom Mix had made his first major screen appearance.
The Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper cartoonist John Randolph Bay patented cell process.
The first movie stunt had occurred.
Filmdom’s first major comedy star of the silent film era.
The first “Frankenstein” film made in the US.
William foster had launched the foster photoplay company.
Max Factor had created the first Make-up that was formulated for film.
The Motion Picture Patents Company tried to monopolize film distribution.
Fotorama had introduced the multi-reel documentary film “den Hvide Slave Handel”.
French engineer, Leon Gaumont had demonstrated a more advanced chronophone system.
Alice Guy Blanche had become the first and only woman to run her own studio.
The first US feature film was released.
The first feature length film to be released in entirety.
Pennsylvania had become the first state to pass film censorship law.
Winsor McCay debuted the first cartoon “Little Nemo”.
The Motion Picture Story Magazine had debuted.
Florence Lawrence was interviewed by the Motion Picture Story Magazine.
The Nestor Company built the first full time studio.
Credits had begun to appear.
Pathe’s weekly magazine was the first regularly released newsreel.
The first dramatic film in natural colour was made.
Photoplay debuted and gave a rise to the idea celebrity and fan culture.
Carl Laemmle had merged Independent Moving Pictures Company with other independent production
Studios.
Jesse Lasky Formed Jesse L.Lasky Feature Play Company in partnership with his brother-in-law.
Adolph Zukor founded an independent film studio.
Adolph Zukor’s “Famous Players” was released.
Fifteen film companies were operating in Hollywood.
The first American serial film “What Happened to Mary?”.
H.A. Spanuth’s five-reel production of “Oliver Twist” released.
The feature length Kinemacolour silent “Our King and Queen Through India” made.
Dramatic Romance film “Lorna Doone” was made to be the first British five-reel feature.
“Richard III” starring Frederick Warde, was thought to be the earliest surviving complete feature film made in the US.
The process of Panchromatic film was first made.
Alice Guy-Blanche’s “A Fool and His Money” was made.
Etienne Arnaud’s “Saved from The Titanic” was released.
D.W. Griffith’s “The Musketeers of Pig Alley” was released and is possibly the first ever gangster film.
Thomas Ince had pioneered the role of film producer by devising the standard of the production formulas and introducing the detailed shooting script.
Kalmus had formed his Technicolor company to market early versions of the colour process.
Enrico guarzzoni’s “Quo vadis?” was released and was the first film with over two hours running time.
The first Indian feature film had opened in Bombay.
William Fox had established The fox film foundation.
The earliest romantic pair was Francis X. Bushman and Beverly Bane, who starred in “house of Pride”.
Mack Sennet left Biograph and formed the Keystone film company.
The first keystone “Kops” comedy was released.
Motion pictures had moved out of nickelodeon theatres and moved to real theatres.
The name ‘Hollywood’ had been adopted and had replaced the East Coast as the center of the movie
industry.
Carl Laemmle and IMP's first feature-length film release, which was also the first major American feature-length exploitation sex film - was the six-reel melodrama “Traffic in Souls”.
Keystone’s Comedy short “The Bangville Police” was released.
Cinema's first custard-pie-thrown-in-the-face film
D. W. Griffith was credited with defining the art of motion pictures.
The first Episode of the first true cliff-hanger serial was released
the Edison Film Company advertised his latest and greatest invention- the Kinetophone.
first feature-length western was Lawrence B. McGill's six-reel “Arizona”
The first film to feature an all-Native American cast was “Hiawatha”.
John Randolph Bray's first animated film, “The Artist's Dream”.
The short Indian film, “King Harishchandr”, was the first feature-length film made in India.
Denmark's “Atlantis”, another ship-sinking story influenced by the real-life sinking of the Titanic tale one year earlier and filmed off the coast of New Zealand, was one of the first full-length films ever made.
French director Louis Feuillade's “Fantomas” series popularized the crime serial.
The Dickens' adaptation of “David Copperfield” was the first full-length feature to be filmed in England.
The earliest surviving film starring black actors, recently discovered, was “Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day”.
Director Henry McRae's film “The Werewolf” made.
Young Cecil B. De Mille's first motion picture was The Squaw Man and was the first feature-length film produced in Hollywood by a major film studio.
The start of WWI interrupted European motion-picture production and brought it to a halt when there were significant shortages of power and supplies.
Lois Weber became the first woman to direct a full-length feature film in the US.
The first professional film stuntwoman was Helen Gibson, who often stunt-doubled for actress Helen Holmes in the early episodes of Kalem Company's serial or series entitled The Hazards of Helen.
Author L. Frank Baum's 1913 published book, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, was released by his own short-lived independent film company. Earlier in 1900, Baum had published the children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, adapted as a Broadway play in 1902 and later made into the classic film The wizard of oz.
Charlie Chaplin, was recruited to Keystone Studios from an English variety act, and became Mack Sennett's most important discovery. Chaplin made his film debut with the release of the Keystone Cops comedy short Making a Living.
silent comedian Charlie Chaplin made dozens of films and became filmdom's first great star. He made 35
short Keystone films for Mack Sennett in 1914.
silent comedian Charlie Chaplin debuted his trademark small-mustached, derby-hatted, baggy-pants,
bamboo-caned 'Little Tramp' character with oversized shoes in his second picture, the 11-minute Kid Auto Races at Venice, shows him attending a home-made "pushmobiles" race for boys in Venice, California.
Mack Sennett made the first American feature-length comedy - Tillie's Punctured Romance, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin.
George Pearson's early silent film was A Study in Scarlet the first British film to feature Sherlock Holmes - although it neglected to portray his assistant Watson.
Winsor McCay created his third animated film - Gertie the Dinosaur. It was the first "interactive" animated cartoon and character, and was the earliest example of combined 'live action' and animation.
Serials regularly added cliffhangers as one of their features, in multi-part serial films such as The Perils of Pauline (1914) with 20 episodes, featuring Pearl White as the 'damsel in distress' title character.
The world's first feature-length color film, the crime drama The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, premiered in London.
cinema houses were replacing cheaper nickelodeons.
Bert Williams appeared as an actor in his first film Darktown Jubilee). It was one of the first movies to use an African-American actor in blackface, rather than using a white person in the same role in blackface.
The influential three-hour Italian silent film from Giovanni Pastrone, Cabiria, was an early example of spectacular and monumental epic film-making. It laid the pattern and groundwork for future big-budget feature-length films.
Paramount Pictures was founded in Los Angeles as a start-up company in order to release the films of Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company. It soon became the first successful nation-wide film distributor.
The Photo-Drama of Creation, a 1912 religious production by Charles Taze Russell through the auspices of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, was the first major screenplay which incorporated synchronized sound, moving film, and magic lantern color slides. Since its run-time was 8 hours, the b/w show, providing a religious survey from the time of Creation to the end of the Millennium, was divided into 4-part sets.
D. W. Griffith's technically brilliant, three-hour Civil War epic, The Birth of a Nation (1915), premiered.
Because of stereotypical racist themes and celebration of the KKK, screenings of Griffith's controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) were met with protest. It was the first film that was treated as a major cultural event, with theaters charging an unprecedented two dollars per ticket.
Thomas H. Ince introduced a 'factory system' - a method that would be used to mass produce films.
Charlie Chaplin's first masterpiece, The Tramp (1915), produced by the Essanay Company in Chicago, showed the early development of his well-known character with baggy pants, bowler hat, walking cane, funny stride, and oversized shoes.
Vaudeville star W.C. Fields' film debut was in the silent one-reel comedy short Pool Sharks, in which he showed off his pool-playing ability.
The Bell & Howell 2709 movie camera allowed directors to film close-ups without physically moving the camera.
William Fox led a fight against Thomas Edison's Motion Pictures Patents Company - the Edison Trust.
In Mutual Film Corporation V. Industrial Commission of Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that states may censor films, encouraging scrutiny of movies during future decades.
Theda Bara starred in A Fool There Was, personifying the "vamp," the female temptress and sex symbol, and became an overnight sensation. She was one of the first "sex symbols" or stars.
Writer Louis Feuillade directed the epic, nightmarish crime serial The Vampires an almost seven-hour silent film masterpiece that told about an exotic, cross-dressing Parisian gang leader and temptress named Irma Vep played by Musidora, whose group of gangsters terrorized the city. It was shot on location in Paris during the war years, and was banned from showings because of its depictions of crime.
Prolific American film director Lois Weber released her feature-length lyrical parable Hypocrites. She played multiple roles in the production of the film - as actress, director, writer, and producer. The film was controversial for its tasteful depiction of full female nudity. The character of the Naked Truth, reminded people of their hypocritical greed for money, sex and power. The film was also praised for its use of multiple exposures and complex film editing.
Inspiration has generally been regarded as the first non-pornographic American film to feature nudity. Audrey Munson first appeared artistically nude as a sculptor's model, recreating classic artistic paintings in George Foster Platt's controversial film from the Mutual Film Corporation. In fact, the film told the story of her own life. It has been claimed that this was the first known film in which a leading actress stripped down to be naked, making her the first nude film star.
The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston, Massachusetts. The company pioneered the development of color film processes known as Technicolor, beginning to be regularly seen in Hollywood films in the 1920s and continuing for many decades.
The first demonstration of a 3D film was in 1915 at the Astor Theatre in New York City. Red and green glasses were required to view test reels of 3D footage - an untitled anaglyphic one-reel demonstration film made by Edwin S. Porter and William E. Waddell. The film consisted of stereoscopic footage of random scenes.
D.W. Griffith's follow-up film was the monumental historical and dramatic epic Intolerance - told with parallel cross-cutting between its four stories, symbolically linked by the image of Lillian Gish rocking a child.
Writer/director Rev. Thomas Dixon Jr.'s silent film The Fall of a Nation, was notable as the first sequel film ever made. It was a follow-up film to D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Dixon had been a co-screenwriter for Griffith's blockbuster film, and the author of its original source novel and play: "The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan." The film, distributed by Dixon's own studio, was a major flop. Composer Victor Herbert wrote a score specifically for the production, making it one of the first known original symphonic soundtracks for a full-length feature American film. Herbert's score was thought to be lost, but it turned up in the film-music collection of the Library of Congress.
The Jesse L. Lasky Company merged with its friendly rival, Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company, to form the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. The corporation consolidated its production and distribution divisions with Paramount, and audiences began seeing "Paramount Pictures."
Samuel Goldfish and Edgar Selwyn established the Goldwyn Company.
The salary of Charlie Chaplin, filmdom's first major star, went from $125 to $10,000 weekly, when he signed on with the Mutual Film Corporation. The deal specified $10,000/week, plus $150,000 as a signing bonus.
Australian-born swimming and diving champ Annette Kellermann had already gained attention for advocating the scandalous-at-the-time one-piece bathing suit. She caused a further stir when she was seen naked with her flowing hair under a waterfall in Daughter of the Gods- she was the first major female star to appear nude on screen. This controversial film, Kellerman’s second feature film, was also the most expensive film of its decade at $1 million.
The world's oldest open-air cinema still in operation, named the Sun Picture Theatre, located in Broome, Western Australia, officially opened in December of 1916. Its first show was the silent British racing drama Kissing Cup. The theatre continued to show silent films until 1933, when it projected its first 'talkie' - Ernst Lubitsch's romantic musical comedy Monte Carlo with Jeanette MacDonald and Jack Buchanan.
Mary Pickford signed the first seven-figure in Hollywood, a lucrative two-year term guaranteeing $10,000/week against half of the profits, including bonuses and the right of approval of all creative aspects of her films. The contract, specifying that she would get $250,000 per film, was signed with Adolph Zukor at Paramount Pictures.
The first autobiography of a movie star was silent screen star Pearl White's Just Me, published in 1916.
The earliest vampire feature film was director Arthur Robison's German silent film Nachte des Grauens), aka Night of Terror, with strange, vampire-like people.
Lois Weber's controversial drama Where Are My Children? was about the subject of abortion, in a story about a district attorney who discovered that his wife had used illegal abortion services.
The first film to feature an African-American actor was the short comedy film A Natural Born Gambler, starring Biograph's Bert Williams, a vaudeville comedian who had become known by appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies. It was the first time that an African-American produced, wrote, directed, and starred in a film.
Thomas Ince's Civilization contained the first original full orchestral and choral film score for an American feature. It composed by American-born Victor Schertzinger.
Douglas Fairbanks' comedy The Habit of Happiness was reportedly the first Hollywood film to contain profanities. This statement must be qualified. Although there were no swear words in the printed title cards, Fairbanks reportedly told off-color jokes in one particular scene, sparking a nationwide lip-reading movie controversy.
Charlie Chaplin became the first actor with a million-dollar deal, signed with First National, a nine-film deal.
The first African-American owned studio, the pioneering The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, was founded.
Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope to streamline the frame-by-frame copying process. It was a device used to overlay drawings on live-action film.
Producer Hal Roach's sport comedy short Over the Fence, directed by silent film comedian-star Harold Lloyd himself, marked the first time that Lloyd wore his trademark circular, horn-rimmed eyeglasses and a boater hat. He had grown tired of his "Lonesome Luke" character in numerous one-reeler comedies and decided to test out a new persona - the "glasses" character. It was the first of Lloyd's four directed films from 1917-1919. Lloyd would go on to star in many classic feature-length film comedies in the 1920s as the "glasses" guy, his signature character.
The first feature-length motion picture produced in two-strip Technicolor in the US was The Gulf Between. It was also the third feature-length color movie. It is considered a lost film, with only a few frames surviving.
Famed westerns director John Ford made his first films, ten of them, in the year 1917. His first film, the two or three-reel The Tornado, is now considered a lost film. Ford's first feature-length film production was Straight Shooting, also his earliest complete surviving film - a western with his popular collaborative actor Harry Carey, and Hoot Gibson.
The independent African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux formed the Micheaux Film and Book Corporation. His first feature films were released the following year.
The four Warner brothers, Jack, Albert, Harry and Samuel, opened their first West Coast studio.
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was lured in 1918 by the first multi-year, multi-million dollar a year deal to make six-feature films within three years with Paramount.
Charlie Chaplin was the first actor to have a million-dollar contract, with First National Pictures, Inc.
The first Tarzan film, director Scott Sidney's black and white Tarzan of the Apes, premiered at the Broadway Theater in New York, with the first actor to portray Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Lord of the Jungle', Elmo Lincoln, as an adult. Technically, the 'first' Tarzan, a 10-year old youthful Tarzan in the same film, was portrayed by Gordon Griffith. It was the first film adaptation with the Tarzan character, based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' original novel Tarzan of the Apes about the jungle lord. The milestone film was one of the first films to earn over a million dollars.
The US Supreme Court had ordered the Motion Picture Patents Company, known as the "Edison Trust," to disband or dissolve, and it was officially terminated. Soon after, the Edison Company abandoned the film industry.
Early cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay's 12-minute propagandistic, documentary-style The Sinking of the Lusitania, an animation landmark, was the first serious re-enactment of an historical event - the torpedoing of the RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, resulting in the loss of almost 2,000 passengers. It was one of the earliest films to utilize cell animation.
The first full-length Technicolor film produced in the US was The Gulf Between. It used Technicolor Process Number One, but only a few frames of this lost film exist today.
Though Cupid Angling was advertised as the first color feature-length film, both Kinemacolour and Technicolor had produced prior feature films in color.
Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and Mary Pickford established United Artists in an attempt to control their own work outside the established studio system run by movie moguls. UA would distribute and produce their own films, and the actors would share in the profits rather than receiving just a straight contract salary. It was the first serious effort of talented performers to create their own dream
factory. Pickford starred in Daddy-Long-Legs, her first film as an independent producer, giving her rights of approval over the final film edit.
United Artists' first feature film, the comedy His Majesty, the American, premiered. It starred one of the studio's founders, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
The Miracle Man was Lon Chaney's breakthrough film - it first brought his physical skills and makeup abilities to the screen, in his grotesque character portrayal of a fake cripple who was healed by the title character, a faith healer named The Patriarch. Chaney would go on to become the greatest US horror star of the period, collaborating with Universal director Tod Browning on ten feature films from 1919 to 1929, beginning with Universal's The Wicked Darling.
American film comedian Harold Lloyd, during the filming of Haunted Spooks, was seriously injured when posing for publicity photos and a prop bomb went off in his hand, resulting in the loss of a thumb and index finger on his right hand. He would continue to execute some of the most daredevil stunts, using a prosthetic glove.
Producer/director Oscar Micheaux released his first film The Homesteader, starring pioneering African-American actress Evelyn Preer, thereby becoming the first African-American to produce and direct a motion picture feature film. It was the first feature-length movie made for black audiences. He also directed the feature-length Within Our Gates (the following year, his earliest surviving directorial effort.
Max and Dave Fleischer's "Out of the Inkwell" series premiered, introducing KoKo the Clown, one of the first animated characters.
Felix the Cat first appeared. Originated by young animator Otto Messmer, the cat's first two cartoons were the five-minuteFeline Follies and Musical Mews, when Felix was known only as "Master Tom." Feline Follies was a segment of the Paramount Magazine, a semi-weekly compilation of short film segments that included animated cartoons. By the third Felix cartoon, The Adventures of Felix, Felix took his permanent name.
Different From the Others by director Richard Oswald was reportedly the first representation of male homosexuality in a feature-length film, and the first screen depiction of a gay bar - it was notable for sympathetically portraying homosexuality; the two ill-fated lovers were prominent pianist Paul Korner and his young music student; the film had a tragic ending due to the effects of blackmail, jail time for violating anti-homosexuality statutes, and the social stigma of being outed; the film was banned by the Nazis and all prints were ordered destroyed, although one incomplete print surfaced; the film's themes were repeated in Victim, with Dirk Bogarde.
Austrian-born actor Erich von Stroheim, one of the greatest directors of the silent film era, made his directorial debut with his own script for the film Blind Husbands, in which he also starred as Lieutenant Eric Von Steuben. He would acquire the nickname: "The Man You Love to Hate" for his many villainous German character roles over the years.
The silent drama The Dragon Painter featured Hollywood's first Asian star, Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa and his wife Tsuru Aoki. It was one of more than 20 feature films Hayakawa's production company made.
Robert wiene’s “The Doctor of caligari”, was filmed and released in the US and had established the movement of German expressionism.
“The debut of Thomas Cat” was the first colour cartoon.
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. married.
Douglas Fairbanks starred in “The Mark of Zorro”, which was his first swashbuckling part.
Buster Keaton made his first solo appearance, starring in “One Week”
Alice Guy directed her final film.
The discovery of the Kuleshov effect, which had served as a basis for soviet montage-based filmmaking.
John Barrymore had appeared in “Dr. Jekyll and Hyde”.
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