Date

Event

1^st January

D. W. Griffith gives the first of two sneak previews of The Clansman on successive nights in Riverside, California.

12^th January

The Box Office Attraction Co. release A Fool There Was. The film’s star is the unknown actress, Theda Bara. Her real name is Theodosia Goodman, but Fox’s publicity department give the 29-year-old a completely new past, claiming she is the daughter of a French father and Arab mother. Bara becomes famous after (silently) uttering the line, “Kiss me, you fool.”

1^st February

Charlie Chaplin’s first release for Essanay, His First Job, is released.

1^st February

The Fox Film Corporation is formed in Albany, New York with capitalisation of $500,000

8^th February

Shortly after 8pm, D. W. Griffith’s The Clansman premieres at Clune’s Auditorium despite legal attempts by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to obtain an injunction against it.

18^th February

The Birth of a Nation is screened for President Woodrow Wilson at the White House.

22^nd February

The release of David Harum marks the first on-screen romantic collaboration between Harold Lockwood and May Allison. They make a further twenty-two films together before Lockwood’s death from flu in 1918.

23^rd February

In the case of Mutual Film Corp. v Industrial Commission of Ohio, the US Supreme Court rules that motion pictures are items of commerce and therefore not subject to free-speech protection.

3^rd March

The Clansman goes on general release under its new title: The Birth of a Nation. The monumental 195-minute Civil War epic receives universal critical acclaim but also condemnation for inflammatory racist content which provokes riots in some cities.

15^th March

Although production began there in June 1914, Carl Laemmle invites the public to the official opening of Universal City, his new studio north of the Hollywood Hills. The event is so successful, organised tours of the studio continue at a charge of 25c, which includes a boxed lunch.

March

The National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures changes its name to the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.

11^th April

Charlie Chaplin’s short comedy The Tramp is released. Its final scene treats moviegoers to the iconic image of the little tramp shrugging off his woes as he strolls along a country lane.

5^th April

Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig and Essanay, all former member companies of the MPPC, form the distribution company V-L-S-E

2^nd May

William Monroe Trotter addresses a crowd of thousands gathered on Boston Common to protest the screening of D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.

May

The Massachusetts Senate vote in favour of establishing a film censorship board, largely in response to protests led by black activist William Monroe Trotter over The Birth of a Nation.

10^th June

Edwin S. Porter and W. E. Waddell give the first presentation of a 3D film to a paying audience at the Astor Theatre in New York. The show consists of three one-reel films.

18^th June

Twenty-six directors form the Motion Picture Directors Association (MPDA), a precursor to the Directors Guild of America.

23^rd June

Richard A. Rowland, Louis B. Mayer and George Grombacher found Metro Pictures Corporation.

June

Four former member companies of the MPPC form the distribution company V-L-S-E

26^th July

Spitball Sadie, the first one-reel comedy to feature Harold Lloyd’s Lonesome Luke character, is released.

July

Harry Aitken forms Triangle Pictures with D. W. Griffith, Thomas Ince and Mack Sennett.   It is the first attempt in the US to form a vertically integrated film company controlling production, distribution and exhibition of its output.

9^th September

J. Stuart Blackton’s pro-war The Battle Cry of Peace, inspired by inventor Hudson Maxim’s Defenceless America, a book warning of the threat the Kaiser posed to America, is released.

9^th September

The first issue of trade paper Wid’s Films and Film Folks is published. It will change its name in 1918 to Film Daily.

11^th September

A nitrate film fire destroys the Famous Players studio at 221 West 26^th Street in New York. Several complete but unreleased films are lost and have to be reshot.

19^th September

W. C. Fields makes his screen debut in Pool Sharks, a comedy short based on one of his stage routines.

September

The Motion Picture Board of Trade is formed. J. Stuart Blackton is its president.

1^st October

Judge Oliver P. Dickinson of the United States District Court rules that the MPPC and its General Film Company violate the Sherman Law regulating interstate and foreign commerce. Although the Trust appeals, the ruling effectively ensures the MPPC’s demise.

18^th October

The Final Judgment, stage actress Ethel Barrymore’s first film for the recently formed Metro Pictures, is released. The actress receives a salary of $40,000 per picture.

31^st October

Opera singer Geraldine Farrar makes her screen debut in Cecil B. DeMille’s Carmen on the same day that Raoul Walsh’s rival version starring Theda Bara is released.

7^th November

Fine Arts release The Lamb, Douglas Fairbanks’ first film. D. W. Griffith provided the scenario under the pseudonym Granville Warwick, and Christy Cabanne directed. The Broadway star is on a ten-week trial contract at $2,000 a week.

18^th November

Audrey Munson becomes the first actress to appear nude in a mainstream American movie when she stars in Thanhouser’s Inspiration, which is released today.

6^th December

Max Fleischer files a patent application for an invention he calls the Rotoscope, a device to enable animators to reproduce realistic human movement.

13^th December

Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat is released to great acclaim. He shot the film in tandem with the The Golden Chance, filming one during the day and the other at night. Fannie Ward and Sessue Hayakawa star.

15^th December

Inventor H. C. Bullis files a patent application for a ‘Talking-picture apparatus’ which records sound and picture on separate, synchronised films.

Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties make their first appearance.

Herbert T Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock and W Burton Westcott found the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation.

Poet Vachel Lindsay’s ‘The Art of the Moving Picture’, the first book to treat movies as art, is published.

Thomas Ince increases productivity at his Inceville studio by dividing labour into producers, department heads and workers, a system that will soon become dominant throughout the movie production industry.

The Duplex Corporation creates the Split Duplex, an early form of widescreen.

Although Hollywood is firmly established as the USA’s filmmaking capital, some residents still resent those involved in the business and dismissively refer to them as ‘movies.’

Vaudeville’s monopolistic United Booking Office bans its members from working in any theatre not booked through their organisation, making it almost impossible for actors who work in films to get bookings in vaudeville.