Date

Event

2^nd January

Under instruction from Gaston Méliès, his son, Paul, and director Wallace McCutcheon arrive in San Antonio, Texas to search for a ranch to serve as a studio. They select a spot across the San Antonio River from the Hot Wells Resort as the location for The Star Film Ranch.

20^th Jan (approx)

D. W. Griffith and company arrive in Los Angeles to complete filming of The Newlyweds, a film Griffith started shooting in New York. They stay to film a further 24 films before returning to New York in April.

1^st February

Edison continues his experiments with sound, producing Kinetophone short sound films at West 43^rd Street before moving to his studios at Decatur Avenue in the Bronx.

Early February

Rumours circulate that the actress known only as the Biograph Girl has perished in a streetcar accident.

10^th March

D. W. Griffith’s 17-minute short In Old California, the first film shot entirely in Hollywood, is released.

12^th March

Carl Laemmle’s IMP run an advertisement in Moving Picture World proclaiming “We Nail a Lie.” The ad denounces the rumours (possibly circulated by them) that Miss Lawrence (the “Imp” girl formerly known as the “Biograph” girl) is alive and working for them. It is the first time a leading player is mentioned by name and marks the beginning of the star system.

14^th March

Florence Lawrence receives the first ever screen credit for her role in The Broken Oath, directed by her husband Harry Solter for Carl Laemmle’s IMP production company.

18^th April

The MPPC forms its own distribution company, The General Film Company, in an attempt to control regional distributors.   The Trust's main opponents include William Fox, Carl Laemmle and Adolph Zukor.

23^rd May

Biograph release D. W. Griffith’s Ramona, starring Mary Pickford and based on the novel of the same name by Helen Hunt Jackson. It is the first known instance of a film studio purchasing the rights to film a novel.

2^nd July

A fire in a Vitagraph storeroom in the Morton building at 116 Nassau Street, New York destroys all of the studio’s pre-1910 films.

30^th July

Gilbert M. Anderson makes his first screen appearance as Western hero Broncho Billy in Broncho Billy’s Redemption.

31^st July

Tom Mix makes his screen debut in Otis Turner’s Western documentary Ranch Life in the Great South-West for Selig.

24^th October

Vitagraph hire rotund early screen comic actor John Bunny at a salary of $40 a week. His first film is Jack Fat and Jim Slim at Coney Island (released 2^nd December 1910), in which he co-stars with Kate Price.

October

French filmmaker Alice Guy Blaché forms the Solax Company to produce films at the Gaumont studio in Flushing, Queens, New York.

Siegmund Lubin begins making medical and scientific films at his “Lubinville” studio in North Philadelphia.

By the end of the year there are an estimated 12,000 cinemas – mostly nickelodeons – in the United States.

In Chicago, William Foster founds the Foster Photoplay Company, the first production company established by an African-American.

Watterson R. Rothacker founds the Industrial Film Company in Chicago, the first company to specialise in films for industrial purposes.

Date

Event

19^th January

Three days after releasing D. W. Griffith’s His Trust, Biograph release His Trust Fulfilled, the second part of a tale Griffith intended to be shown as a single film. The studio believes audiences won’t accept longer-form pictures.

February

The first issue of J. Stuart Blackton’s Motion Picture Story Magazine is published.

8^th April

New York Herald comic strip artist Winsor McCay releases Little Nemo, one of the earliest animated films.

April

The separation of production, distribution and exhibition begins to take shape when William Wadsworth Hodkinson, the San Francisco regional representative for the MPPC’s General Film Company, offers a cash advance to independent producers in return for exclusive rights to distribute their films. This is a move to replace the existing ‘state rights’ system whereby a producer will sell a print outright to any exhibitor, usually at a charge of 10 cents per foot.

12^th June

Biograph releases D. W. Griffith’s two-reel Enoch Arden in two parts, each one-reel long. The studio then accedes to exhibitors’ requests that they be allowed to show it as one film to satisfy customer demand.

19^th June

The Pennsylvania legislature passes an act creating the Pennsylvania State Board of Censors, the country’s first state-wide censorship board. It will not become active until 1914.

July

The Italian film Dante’s Inferno becomes the first feature film to be exhibited in the USA.

8^th August

The first edition of Pathé Weekly is screened in the USA.

August

The first issue of Photoplay magazine is published. By 1915, under the editorship of James R. Quirk, it will be the most popular of all movie magazines.

11^th September

Harry Aitken forms the Majestic Motion Picture Co. Its first studio is a disused car barn near New York’s Hudson River. Its biggest star is Mary Pickford

7^th October

The Moving Picture World reports that the French production company Éclair is to begin production at its new American studio based in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

27^th October

The Nestor Film Company’s new studio open in the former Blondeau Tavern located at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. It is the first permanent motion picture studio in Hollywood.

13^th November

The Supreme Court rules that Kalem created “an unlawful dramatization” with its 1907 dramatisation of Lew Wallace’s novel Ben Hur. The studio is forced to pay a $25,000 fine, making Ben Hur the most expensive film of its time.

2^nd December

The New York Motion Picture Co announces it has purchased the services of the Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West Show and its company of 350 in Bear Valley, California. The first film under the agreement, directd by Thomas H. Ince, is War on the Plains (1912)

Credits regularly appear on new releases.

George Eastman starts selling film stock to independent producers.

Vitagraph opens a studio in Santa Monica, California