American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Encyclopedia
The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1928. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over three thousand short films and twelve feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

s.

A new corporation with the same name was incorporated in California in 1991.

Founding

The company was started by William Kennedy Dickson, an inventor at Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

's laboratory who helped pioneer the technology of capturing moving images on film. Dickson left Edison in April 1895, joining with inventors Herman Casler
Herman Casler
Herman Casler — American inventor , was co-founder of the partnership called the K.M.C.D. Syndicate, along with W.K-L...

, Henry Marvin and businessman Elias Koopman to incorporate the American Mutoscope Company in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 in December 1895. The firm manufactured the Mutoscope
Mutoscope
frame|right|An 1899 trade advertisementThe Mutoscope was an early motion picture device, patented by Herman Casler on November 21, 1894. Like Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope it did not project on a screen, and provided viewing to only one person at a time...

, and made flip-card movies for it, as a rival to Edison’s Kinetoscope
Kinetoscope
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic...

 for individual “peep shows”, making the company Edison’s chief competitor in the nickelodeon market. In the summer of 1896 the Biograph projector was released, offering superior image quality to Edison’s Vitascope projector. The company soon became a leader in the film industry, with distribution and production subsidiaries around the world including the British Mutoscope Company. In 1899 it changed its name to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, and in 1909 to simply the Biograph Company.

To avoid violating Edison’s motion picture patents, Biograph cameras from 1895 to 1902 used a large-format film measuring 2-23/32 inches (68 mm) wide, with an image area of 2 × 2½ inches, four times that of Edison’s 35 mm
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...

 format. The camera used friction feed, instead of Edison’s sprocket feed, to guide the film to the aperture. The camera itself punched a sprocket hole on each side of the frame as the film was exposed at 30 frames per second.
A patent case victory in March 1902 allowed Biograph and other producers and distributors to use the less expensive 35 mm format without an Edison license, although Biograph did not completely phase out 68 mm production until autumn of 1903.
Biograph offered prints in both formats to exhibitors until 1905, when it discontinued the larger format.

Biograph films before 1903 were mostly “actualities”: documentary footage of actual persons, places and events, each film usually less than two minutes long. The occasional narrative film, usually a comedy, was typically shot in one scene, with no editing. Spurred on by competition from Edison and British and European producers, Biograph production from 1903 onward was increasingly dominated by narratives. As the stories became more complex, the films became longer, with multiple scenes to tell the story, although an individual scene was still usually presented in one shot without editing. Biograph's production of actualities ended by 1908 in favor of the narrative film.

With the increased reliance on narrative films, Biograph moved in 1903 from its rooftop studio on Broadway
Broadway (New York City)
Broadway is a prominent avenue in New York City, United States, which runs through the full length of the borough of Manhattan and continues northward through the Bronx borough before terminating in Westchester County, New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in the city, dating to...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 to a converted brownstone
Brownstone
Brownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States to refer to a terraced house clad in this material.-Types:-Apostle Island brownstone:...

 mansion at 11 East 14th Street, just west of Union Square
Union Square (New York City)
Union Square is a public square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York.It is an important and historic intersection, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the...

 in Manhattan. This was Biograph's first indoor studio, and the first movie studio in the world to rely exclusively on artificial light (photo). Biograph moved again in 1913, as it entered feature film production, to a new, state-of-the-art studio on 175th Street in the Bronx.

There was the problem of the underground "duping" business, where people would illegally duplicate a copyrighted movie and then remove the title screen with the company and copyright notice and then sell it to theaters. In order to make the theater audience aware that they were watching an American Biograph movie (regardless of whether it was illegally "duped" or not) the AB logo would be prominently placed in random parts of the movie.

D.W. Griffith

Director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 D.W. Griffith
D. W. Griffith
David Llewelyn Wark Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the controversial and groundbreaking 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance .Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera...

 joined Biograph in 1908 as a writer and actor, but within months became their principal director. In 1908, the company's head director Warren McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Warren McCutcheon Jr. took his place, but was not able to make a successful film for the company. As a result of these failed productions, studio head Henry Marvin gave the position of head director to Griffith, whose first film was The Adventures of Dollie. He helped establish many of the conventions of narrative film, including cross-cutting
Cross-cutting
Cross-cutting is an editing technique most often used in films to establish action occurring at the same time in two different locations. In a cross-cut, the camera will cut away from one action to another action, which can suggest the simultaneity of these two actions but this is not always the...

 to show events occurring simultaneously in different places, the flashback, the fade-in/fade-out
Fade (lighting)
In stage lighting, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease of the intensity of light projected onto the stage. The term fade-in refers to gradually changing the lighting level from complete darkness to a predetermined lighting level. A fade-out refers to gradually decreasing the intensity of...

, the interposition of closeups within a scene, and a moderated acting style more suitable for film. Although Griffith did not invent these techniques, he made them a regular part of the film vocabulary. Griffith’s prolific output, often one new film a week, and willingness to experiment in many different genres helped the company become a major commercial success. Many early movie stars were Biograph performers, including Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...

, Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...

, Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....

, Dorothy Gish
Dorothy Gish
Dorothy Elizabeth Gish was an American actress, and the younger sister of actress Lillian Gish.-Early life:...

, Robert Harron
Robert Harron
Robert "Bobby" Harron was an American motion picture actor of the early silent film era. Although he acted in scores of films, he is possibly best remembered for his roles in the D.W. Griffith directed films Intolerance and The Birth of a Nation...

, Florence Auer
Florence Auer
Florence Auer was an American theater and motion picture actress whose career spanned more than five decades.-Life and career:...

, Carol Dempster
Carol Dempster
Carol Dempster was an American film actress of the silent film era.-Biography:Born in Duluth, Minnesota, Dempster got her start in films as a protégé of legendary film director D.W. Griffith alongside other Griffith actresses of the mid-1910s Lillian and Dorothy Gish and Mae Marsh...

, Alan Hale, Sr.
Alan Hale, Sr.
Alan Hale, Sr. was an American movie actor and director, most widely remembered for his many supporting character roles, in particular as frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn. His wife of over thirty years was Gretchen Hartman , a child actress and silent film player and mother of their three children...

, Blanche Sweet, Harry Carey
Harry Carey
Harry Carey was an American actor and one of silent film's earliest superstars. He was the father of Harry Carey Jr., who was also a prominent actor.-Early life and career:...

, Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand
Mabel Normand was an American silent film comedienne and actress. She was a popular star of Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and is noted as one of the film industry's first female screenwriters, producers and directors...

, Henry B. Walthall
Henry B. Walthall
Henry Brazeale Walthall was an American film actor.-Career:Walthall began his career as a stage actor, appearing on Broadway in a supporting role in William Vaughn Moody's The Great Divide in 1906–1908. His career in movies began in 1908, in the film Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, which also...

 and Dorothy Davenport
Dorothy Davenport
Dorothy Davenport was an American actress, screenwriter, film director, and producer who appeared in silent film for Biograph Studios under the direction of D.W. Griffith.-Early career:...

. Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...

 honed his craft as an actor and director of comedies at Biograph. After debuting at Biograph, Mary Pickford also became a top star at the studio and would soon be known to audiences as "The Biograph Girl".

In January 1910, D.W. Griffith, and Lee Dougherty with the rest of the Biograph acting company, traveled to Los Angeles. While the purpose of the trip was to shoot the film Ramona
Ramona (1910 film)
Ramona is a 1910 short drama film directed by D. W. Griffith based on Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel Ramona. A copy of the print survives in the Library of Congress film archive.-Cast:* Mary Pickford - Ramona* Henry B. Walthall - Alessandro...

in authentic locations, it was also to determine the suitability of the West Coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...

 as a place for a permanent studio. The group set up a small facility at Washington Street and Grand Avenue (where the Los Angeles Convention Center
Los Angeles Convention Center
The Los Angeles Convention Center is a convention center in the southwest portion of downtown Los Angeles. The LACC hosts annual events such as the Greater Los Angeles Auto Show and Anime Expo, and is best known to video games fans as host to E3...

 now stands). After this, Griffith and his players decided to go a little further north to a small village they had heard about that was friendly, and had beautiful floral scenery. They decided to travel there, and fell in love with this little place called Hollywood. Biograph then made the first film ever in Hollywood called In Old California, a Latino melodrama about the early days of Mexico-owned California. Griffith and the Biograph troupe then filmed other short movies at various locations, then travelled back to New York. After the east coast film community heard about Hollywood, other film companies began to migrate there. Biograph’s little film launched Hollywood as the future movie capital of the world. Biograph opened a studio at Pico and Georgia streets in downtown Los Angeles in 1911, and sent a film crew to work there each year until 1916.

Griffith left Biograph in October 1913, after finishing Judith of Bethulia
Judith of Bethulia
Judith of Bethulia is a film starring Blanche Sweet and Henry B. Walthall. The film was produced and directed by D. W. Griffith and was the first feature-length film made by pioneering film company Biograph, although the second that Biograph released....

, unhappy with their resistance to larger budgets, feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...

 production, or giving onscreen credit to him and the cast. With him went many of the Biograph actors, his cameraman Billy Bitzer
Billy Bitzer
Gottfried Wilhelm "Billy" Bitzer was a pioneering cinematographer notable for his close association with D. W. Griffith....

, and his production crew. As a final slight to Griffith, Biograph delayed release of Judith of Bethulia until March 1914, to avoid a profit-sharing arrangement the company had with him.

Decline

In December 1908, Biograph joined Edison in forming the Motion Picture Patents Company
Motion Picture Patents Company
The Motion Picture Patents Company , founded in December 1908, was a trust of all the major American film companies , the leading film distributor and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak...

 in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust,” as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay Studios
Essanay Studios
The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture studio. It is best known today for its series of Charlie Chaplin comedies of 1915.-Founding:...

, Kalem Company
Kalem Company
The Kalem Company was an American film studio founded in New York City in 1907 by George Kleine, Samuel Long , and Frank J. Marion.The company immediately joined other studios in the Motion Picture Patents Company that held a monopoly on production and distribution...

, George Kleine Productions, Lubin Studios
Lubin Studios
The Lubin Manufacturing Company, was an American motion picture production company that produced silent films from 1902 to 1916. Lubin films were distributed with a Liberty Bell trademark.-History:...

, Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès
Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

, Pathé
Pathé
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France.-History:...

, Selig Studios
Selig Polyscope Company
The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago, Illinois. Selig Polyscope is noted for establishing Southern California's first permanent movie studio, in the historic Edendale district of Los Angeles...

, and Vitagraph Studios
Vitagraph Studios
American Vitagraph was a United States movie studio, founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1907 it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros...

, and dominated distribution through the General Film Company
General Film Company
The General Film Company was a motion picture distribution company in the United States. Between 1909 and 1920, the company distributed almost 12,000 silent era motion pictures....

. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915, and dissolved.

Shielded by the Trust, Biograph had been slow to enter feature film production. Biograph contracted with the theatrical firm of Klaw & Erlanger
Klaw & Erlanger
Klaw & Erlanger was the New York City based theatrical production partnership of entrepreneur A.L. Erlanger and lawyer Marcus Klaw. The two began as a theatrical booking agency in 1886 before expanding into producing plays. In 1896, Klaw & Erlanger joined with Al Hayman, Charles Frohman, Samuel F...

 in 1913 to produce movie versions of the latter’s plays. Their first released feature, Classmates, came out in February 1914, after sixty-nine other American features had been released in 1912–1913. Distribution was hampered by Biograph using a special perforation pattern on the Klaw & Erlanger features which was incompatible with standard projectors, forcing exhibitors to lease specialized equipment from Biograph in order to show the films. With the exodus of the studio’s best actors with Griffith, Biograph was unable develop a marketable star system
Star system (film)
The star system was the method of creating, promoting and exploiting movie stars in Classical Hollywood cinema. Studios would select promising young actors and glamorise and create personas for them, often inventing new names and even new backgrounds...

 as the independent companies were doing, and after the Trust’s fall, Biograph found itself behind the times. The Biograph Co. released its last new feature-length films in 1915, and its last new short films in 1916. Biograph spent the remainder of the silent era reissuing its old films, and leasing its Bronx studio to other producers. When the Biograph Company fell on financial hard times, the studio facilities were acquired by one of Biograph Company's creditors, the Empire Trust Company
Empire Trust Company
Empire Trust Company was a trust company established in 1902 by McVickar Realty Trust Company in New York, NY.-History:On March 1, 1904, the company was acquired by merger by the Empire State Trust Company, and changed its name to the Empire Trust Company....

, although Biograph Company continued to manage the studio. Herbert Yates
Herbert Yates
Herbert John Yates was the founder and president of Republic Pictures, famous for being the home of John Wayne, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers...

 acquired the Biograph Company studios and film laboratory facilities in 1928. Biograph Studios
Biograph Studios
Biograph Studios was a studio facility and film laboratory complex built in 1912 by the Biograph Company, formerly American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, at 807 E. 175th Street, in the Bronx, New York....

 in the Bronx was made a subsidiary of his Consolidated Film Industries
Consolidated Film Industries
Consolidated Film Industries was a film laboratory, and film processing company, and was the leading film laboratory in the Los Angeles area for many decades. CFI processed negatives and made prints for motion pictures and television...

 in 1928. The studio and laboratory facilities burned down in 1980.

In 1954–1957, Sterling Television Company distributed a package of 100 quarter-hour television shows titled Movie Museum, featuring Biograph, Edison, and other early films from the vaults of the Museum of Modern Art and the George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...

.

See also

  • Biograph Studios
    Biograph Studios
    Biograph Studios was a studio facility and film laboratory complex built in 1912 by the Biograph Company, formerly American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, at 807 E. 175th Street, in the Bronx, New York....

  • Cinema of the United States
    Cinema of the United States
    The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

  • History of cinema
  • List of film formats
  • List of Hollywood movie studios

Original company

(note: not complete after 1903) (note: not complete)

New company



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