Vitagraph

Vitagraph, one of the most important movie studios of American cinema’s early years, was founded by two Englishmen, the cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, an amateur magician. The two met in 1894 through their mutual friend Ronald Reader, another magician, who believed the three of them would benefit from combining their acts. The trio performed a few shows together, but enjoyed little success.

In 1895, Blackton found work as a reporter for the New York Evening World, and on 22nd April 1896 was asked to interview Thomas Edison about his latest invention—a projecting machine. During the interview, Blackton drew a caricature of Edison which so impressed the great man that he invited the 19-year-old to repeat the feat for the camera at his Black Maria studio.

There is some uncertainty over how Blackton and Smith acquired their first projector. Blackton said he ordered a Kinetoscope from Edison during their meeting, but Smith insisted he invented the Vitagraph projector, which he said in his autobiography debuted at Tony Pastor’s a month before Edison’s Vitascope was unveiled. Yet another account claims that they purchased an illegal Edison Vitascope from a trader licensed only to sell to the foreign market. However they acquired the machine, they soon incorporated the screening of moving pictures into their act, which was now a duo.

Sometime in late 1896 or early 1897, the two men formed the American Vitagraph Company and rented an office in the Morse Building on Nassau Street in New York. On 16th May 1897, they filmed their first picture on the building’s roof, a simple one-scene, 60-second effort called The Burglar on the Roof. Blackton played the burglar and was apparently so convincing that the janitor’s wife attacked him with a broom.

In February 1898, amidst fierce anti-Spanish sentiment following the sinking of the U.S. Battleship Maine, Vitagraph enjoyed its biggest success to date with Tearing Down the Spanish Flag, in which Blackton’s hand is seen ripping the Spanish flag from a flagpole and replacing it with the Stars and Stripes. Unable to afford to travel to Cuba to film footage of the Spanish-American War, they staged mock battles in Blackton’s bathtub and in the company office to recreate The Battle of Manila Bay (1898) and The Battle of Santiago Bay (1898).

In July 1898, Edison served Blackton and Smith with subpoenas charging them with pirating his films and infringing on his projector patent. To avoid possible imprisonment, Vitagraph effectively became an Edison licensee. At this point, William T. “Pop” Rock became a partner in the company and provided the much-needed business experience and acumen his two younger partners lacked.

The turn of the century saw the beginning of a steady rate of expansion for the studio. They moved to new, larger premises on Nassau Street and built a glass-enclosed, purpose-built studio in the Flatbush area of Brooklyn. With construction completed in late 1906, they assembled a stock company of actors and directors, including Florence Turner. At a time when movie actors received no screen credits, Turner became a favourite with audiences, who dubbed her the Vitagraph Girl.

By the end of 1907, Vitagraph was America's most prolific film production company. Between 1908 and 1911, the studio produced eleven adaptations of William Shakespeare’s plays, including Macbeth (1908), Antony and Cleopatra (1908), and Julius Caesar (1908). Maurice Costello, who was to become the industry’s first matinee idol, joined the company in 1908.

On 18th December 1908, Vitagraph became a founding member of the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), together with Edison, Biograph, Essanay, Selig Polyscope, Lubin, Kalem, Star Film Paris, American Pathé, George Kleine, and Eastman Kodak. These companies represented the major producers and distributors in the industry, and the MPPC was a coalition formed in a bid to control all motion picture patents and licencing. 

Vitagraph’s output grew more ambitious in 1909, first with a two-reel biopic of Napoleon (released as two single reels), and then the five-reel biblical saga The Life of Moses. Believing audiences wouldn’t sit through a fifty-minute picture and, under pressure from the MPPC, Vitagraph released the film in five weekly instalments.

1910 saw the studio more than double its profits on the previous year, although a fire at its Nassau Street offices destroyed the negatives of all its early productions. As a result, the company expanded its Flatbush studio, adding a three-story office building. Their directors started travelling further afield in search of authentic locations, and in February 1911, the studio sent Rollin S. Sturgeon to California to open a unit for the shooting of Westerns. Initially operating out of a small house in Santa Monica, the unit moved to larger headquarters the following year.

1911 also marked the debut of Norma Talmadge in the studio’s A Tale of Two Cities, a prestige production which featured the studio’s entire stock company. The rotund comic John Bunny also joined the company and embarked on a series of hugely popular comedies opposite the stick-thin Flora Finch. Out west, Vitagraph opened a new studio on Prospect Avenue in Los Angeles in 1914 because fog rolling in from the ocean often disrupted shooting at the Santa Monica studio.

As feature production became more prevalent, Vitagraph entered into a four-way distribution partnership organised by George Kleine. The new organisation was named V-L-S-E Inc., after the initials of its founding companies: Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig and Essanay. The first Vitagraph film released under this new agreement was The Juggernaut. 1915 also saw the release of J. Stuart Blackton’s highest-grossing movie ever: The Battle Cry of Peace (1915) was a propaganda piece promoting the USA’s preparedness for war; while making the film, Blackton became an American citizen. The film created a fair amount of controversy and often drew comparisons with The Birth of a Nation (1915). Despite the film’s success, Vitagraph’s profits fell from approximately $900,000 in 1914 to $150,000 in 1915. A combination of events conspired to bring about this drastic downturn in the company’s fortunes; the death of John Bunny and the firing of Maurice Costello after his arrest for beating his wife proved particularly damaging, as did the outbreak of WW1, which cut-off much of the European market. VLSE start-up costs were also a drain on the studio's finances.

1916 offered little respite. Pop Rock died of heart disease and diabetes just one month after leaving the company. The incorporation of a new company, the Smith-Blackton Corporation, to merge VLSE with Paramount and Famous Players-Lasky under a deal brokered by Benjamin Hampton foundered when Adolph Zukor blocked the deal. Potential backers disappeared as a result, leaving Smith and Blackton with a debt of $250,000.

Blackton resigned from the company in June 1917 to become an independent producer, and there followed a period of financial and managerial uncertainty that saw a decline in the company’s fortunes. Smith emerged victorious, defeating what he described as “a conspiracy on the part of the financial crowd to steal the company.”

1917 saw Larry Semon star in his first comedy for Vitagraph after joining as a director the previous year. Largely forgotten today, Semon was popular enough in the 1920s to be compared with the likes of Chaplin and Keaton. As his popularity grew, so did the cost of his productions, placing an immense strain on the studio’s finances. He left the studio in 1923, and almost immediately his popularity began to wane. By February 1928, Semon was filing for bankruptcy, and eight months later he died of tuberculosis.

J. Stuart Blackton returned to the company in 1923 as an equal partner and Vice-President and directed five features in 1924. However, Vitagraph had never established its own exhibition circuit and found theatres forced to block-book from larger companies like Paramount unwilling to show their films. While Smith realised the need for Vitagraph to establish its own exhibition circuit, ill health persuaded him to withdraw from the business. On 20th April 1925, he sold America’s oldest existing film company to Warner Brothers for $735,000; the proceeds were split evenly between Smith, Blackton and Johnnie Rock, Pop’s son. A week later, J. Stuart Blackton resigned as vice-president.

Sources: The Big V, Anthony Slide; Vitagraph, Andrew A. Erish; Buccaneer: James Stuart Blackton and the Birth of American Movies.