Edison Studios

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Edison Studios
Defunct1918; 106 years ago (1918)
Headquarters
United States
Number of locations
Area served
United States, Europe
Key people
Products
Parent
Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911)
Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918)

Edison Studios was an American

feature length, and the remainder were shorts.[1]
All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.

History

Several films in production at Edison's Bronx studio, c. 1912. Seated in the foreground, with his legs crossed, is Charles Brabin; seated to the rear, with the card "26" under his arm, is Harold M. Shaw.

The first production facility was Edison's Black Maria studio, in West Orange, New Jersey, built in the winter of 1892–93. The second facility, a glass-enclosed rooftop studio built at 41 East 21st Street in Manhattan's entertainment district, opened in 1901. In 1907, Edison had new facilities built, on Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place, in the Bedford Park neighborhood of the Bronx.

Thomas A. Edison, eventually left to form the Biograph Company
.
Horace G. Plimpton, an Edison Studios film producer 1909–1915

Thomas Edison himself played no direct part in the making of his studios' films, beyond being the owner and appointing

American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1895, he was replaced as director of production by cameraman William Heise, then from 1896 to 1903, by James H. White. When White left to supervise Edison's European interests in 1903, he was replaced by William Markgraf (1903–1904), then Alex T. Moore (1904–1909), and Horace G. Plimpton
(1909–1915).

The first commercially exhibited motion pictures in the United States were from Edison, and premiered at a Kinetoscope parlor in New York City on April 14, 1894. The program consisted of ten short films, each less than a minute long, of athletes, dancers, and other performers. After competitors began exhibiting films on screens, Edison introduced its own, Projecting Kinetoscope, in late 1896.

The earliest productions were brief "actualities", showing everything, from acrobats, to parades, to fire calls. But, competition from French and British story films, in the early 1900s, rapidly changed the market. By 1904, 85% of Edison's sales were from story films.

In December 1908, Edison led the formation of the

Lubin Studios, Georges Méliès, Pathé, Selig Studios, and Vitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution through the General Film Company. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915,[3] and were dissolved.[4]

The breakup of the Trust by federal courts, under

Lincoln & Parker Film Company, of Massachusetts
.

Notable productions

Edison Studios produced the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1910).

Some of the studio's notable productions include

Kinetophone" sound films in 1913–1914 using a sophisticated acoustical recording system capable of picking up sound from 30 feet away. They released a number of Raoul Barré cartoon films in 1915 and the first film version of the Robert Louis Stevenson historical novel Kidnapped
.

Legacy

Everson, calling Edison Studios "financially successful and artistically unambitious," wrote that other than directors

Biograph films, on a year-by-year basis. On the contrary, there is a sense of stagnation.[6]

However, new restorations and screenings of Edison films in recent years contradict Everson's statement; indeed, Everson citing The Land Beyond the Sunset points out creativity at Edison beyond Porter and Collins, as it was directed by Harold M. Shaw (1877–1926), who later went on to a successful career directing in England, South Africa, and Lithuania before returning to the US in 1922. Other important directors who started at Edison included Oscar Apfel, Charles Brabin, Alan Crosland, J. Searle Dawley, and Edward H. Griffith.

Notable films

See also

References

  1. ISBN 9780306802614
    .
  2. ^ "Motion Picture Patents Company". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  3. ^ U.S. v. Motion Picture Patents Company., 225 F. 800 (E.D. Pa. Oct. 1, 1915).
  4. ^ "Company Records Series – Motion Picture Patents Company". The Thomas A. Edison Papers. Retrieved 2007-04-13.
  5. ^ Eagan, Daniel (2011). "Five Films About Faith", Smithsonian Magazine (Washington, D.C.), 15 December 2011, online copy of article from the Smithsonian Institution's original printed periodical. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  6. ISBN 0-306-80876-5
    .
  7. ^ https://dokumen.tips/download/link/the-studios-edison-edisons-assistant-william-kennedy-dickson-who-supervised-the.html

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edison Studios.


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