Date

Event

18^th February

William Randolph Hearst’s International Film Services release Introducing Krazy Kat and Ignatz, the first film featuring comic strip animator George Herriman’s characters.

26^th February

Charlie Chaplin signs a new one-year contract with Mutual. He will receive $10,000 per week in addition to a sum of $150,000 upon signing

12^th March

Allan Dwan’s The Habit of Happiness starring Douglas Fairbanks is released. The film receives complaints for a scene in which the actor can be seen uttering profanities.

27^th March

Rising starlet Gloria Swanson marries Wallace Beery in Pasadena on her seventeenth birthday. She later claims in her autobiography that he raped her on their wedding night.

27^th March

Mutual’s opens the Lone Star studio where new signing Charlie Chaplin will shoot his films for them.

2^nd April

Essanay release an expanded version of A Burlesque on Carmen, Charlie Chaplin’s last film for them. It includes added scenes featuring Ben Turpin and Wesley Ruggles as gypsies and outtakes Chaplin rejected.

10^th April

Lois Weber’s Where Are My Children? which deals with abortion is released. The film is banned in Pennsylvania.

17^th April

Thomas H. Ince’s epic anti-war film, Civilization, is released. Inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s non-interventionist policy towards WWI, it is also intended as a pacifist response to J. Stuart Blackton’s The Battle Cry of Peace.

April

Lewis J. Selznick Productions is founded.

12^th May

Charlie Chaplin seeks an injunction against Essanay’s expanded version of A Burlesque on Carmen.

15^th May

Mutual release The Floorwalker, Charlie Chaplin’s first film for them. The comic got the idea for the film when he witnessed a pedestrian skid down an escalator on Sixth Avenue in New York.

May

Mabel Normand forms the Mabel Normand Feature Company in partnership with Mack Sennett. It produces only one film: Mickey (1918)

24^th June

Charlie Chaplin’s attempt to halt exhibition of Essanay’s expanded version of A Burlesque on Carmen fails on appeal in the US Supreme Court.

24^th June

Mary Pickford signs a new two-year contract with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players under which she will receive the greater of $500,000 or half the profits of her films and a $300,000 bonus.

28^th June

The Jesse Lasky Feature Play Co. and Famous Players merge to form Famous Players-Lasky Corporation with Adolph Zukor as company president.

27^th July

Film pioneer William T. ‘Pop’ Rock dies from heart disease and diabetes at age sixty-two.

July

The Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) is formed.

5^th August

A sneak preview of D. W. Griffith’s new film Intolerance is held in Riverside, California.

16^th August

Paramount forms Artcraft Pictures Corporation to manage the distribution of Mary Pickford’s film.

1^st September

The Lubin Manufacturing Company is declared bankrupt. Its Los Angeles and Coronado studios close, and creditors seize its Lubinville and Betzwood studios.

5^th September

D. W. Griffith’s monumental epic Intolerance, in part made as a response to the accusations of racism aimed at him for The Birth of a Nation, is released. Its pacifist message results in a decline in revenue following America’s entry into WWI the following year.

14^th September

Following clashes with Adolph Zukor and Mary Pickford, Samuel Goldfish resigns from his position as chairman of Famous Players-Lasky’s board of directors but retains stock and remains on the board.

September

Vitagraph buys out its partners in VLSE. Selig and Essanay each receive $50,000 while Lubin receives $100,000.

18^th September

Thomas Dixon’s The Fall of a Nation, a sequel to The Birth of a Nation, which was based on two of Dixon’s novels, is released. The film flops in the US and receives criticism for its anti-German stance but performs well in Europe.

1^st October

Charlie Chaplin starts legal proceedings to prevent the publication of the unauthorised biography, Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story.

7^th October

Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle announces that he is to leave Keystone at the end of the year to join Joseph M. Schenck’s Comique Film Corporation. The comic will have full artistic control of his films, receive $5,000 per week and ten per cent of profits.

17^th October

Fox Film Corporation release Herbert Brenon’s $1 million production A Daughter of the Gods starring Annette Kellerman, who becomes the first major star to appear nude for a waterfall scene.

12^th November

Russian actress Alla Nazimova makes her screen debut in Herbert Brenon’s War Bride.

9^th December

Charlie Chaplin wins his court case to prevent the publication of the unauthorised biography, Charlie Chaplin’s Own Story.

16^th December

Samuel Goldfish forms a new production company, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, with Broadway producers Edgar and Arch Selwyn.  

The National Committee for Better Films is formed with the aim to ‘both liberate and formulate thought regarding motion pictures, their uses and possibilities, and the best way to achieve a free screen of the most desirable kind.’

German-born Harvard psychologist Hugo Munsterburg carries out a study on the effects on audiences of watching films entitled The Photoplay: a Psychological Study.

George and Noble Johnson form the Lincoln Film Corporation, to produce black films in Los Angeles.

The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) is formed.