Key Films of 1914

Publicity material claimed Marguerite Snow had been 'taking things easy' but she had actually given birth to co-star James Cruze's child.

Sennett feared that, in Chaplin, he had, in the words of Mabel Normand, “hooked himself up with a dead one.”

During the shoot, agents of the Trust delivered anonymous threatening messages and took potshots at the director as he rode home from work on his horse

The first film D. W. Griffith filmed as a feature effectively sounded the death knell for Biograph...

“The party of the second part, being of age, takes her part... at her own risk, and in case of accident or loss of life she or relations have no claim for damages against the party of the first part…”

"Zukor needed Tess to succeed. His practice of showing “famous players in famous plays” was floundering."

The Spoilers was a hit with both the critics and the public, despite lingering fears that audiences wouldn’t sit through a film lasting nine reels...

Ironically, having left Biograph to make longer pictures, Griffith chose for one of his first Mutual films a movie made up of three short stories.

Largely remembered today for its early depiction of cross-dressing and bisexuality... it’s doubtful that the film is an early endorsement of such lifestyles...

Griffith’s film mines material previously unexplored by filmmakers, and pre-dates German expressionism by half-a-decade.

In May 1914, Siegmund Lubin's future looked assured, yet two years later he would be bankrupt and his empire just a memory...

Marie Dressler complained that the same scrap of banana had been stuck to Chaplin's collar for sixteen days...

Otis Turner's ambitious costume epic was the first of thousands to emerge from Universal's newly built studio.

"Had space flight been a thing in the early twentieth century, Selig might well have assured us Tom Mix had conquered Mars before pulling on his cowboy boots."

"The intense heat in the Grand Canyon melted the actors' makeup in its containers..."

The plot of Frederick A. Thomson's film bore so many similarities to Quo Vadis? that he even inserted shots from Enrico Guazzoni's epic into it to cut costs.

"It seems odd that Famous Players chose Kirkwood to direct the man whom he was cuckolding..."