Hollywood Timeline: 1917

 Date

Event

1^st January

After making at least 122 shorts for Keystone, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle begins a new contract with independent producer Joseph Schenck. In addition to script and cast control Arbuckle will receive $5,000 per week plus 10 per cent of profits.

1^st January

Mack Sennett, unhappy with Triangle’s distribution set-up, announces his films can be exhibited in theatres unconnected with the company.

2nd January

Douglas Fairbanks informs Triangle of his decision to sever

5th January

The Exhibitors Herald reports that in 1916 it reviewed 4,113 films and passed none that featured the white slave trade or nudity.

7^th January

Panthea, the first film from Joseph Schenck and actress wife Norma Talmadge’s new production company is released. Talmadge stars as a wife who sacrifices everything for her husband’s career.

8^th January

Maurice Tourneur’s The Pride of the Clan starring Mary Pickford is released.

28^th January

The Americano, Douglas Fairbanks’ last film for Triangle, is released.

4^th February

Bebe Daniels and Snub Pollard appear with Harold Lloyd in Luke’s Trolley Troubles, the latest in the comedian’s Lonesome Luke series directed by Hal Roach.

9^th February

Douglas Fairbanks signs a contract with Walter E. Greene and Al Lichtman of Artcraft.   The deal gives the actor’s newly formed Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corporation complete autonomy, and awards Fairbanks a weekly salary of $10,000 plus a percentage of profits.

14^th February

Triangle obtain an injunction preventing Douglas Fairbanks from making pictures for Artcraft, claiming he is under contract to them until October 1918. The injunction is lifted when the actor agrees to pay Triangle an unspecified sum.

21^st February

Keystone comic Fred Mace dies of a stroke in a New York hotel room. He was 38-years-old.

3^rd March

The Tornado, the first film directed by John Ford (working under the name Jack Ford), is released.   Ford also stars and co-writes.

5^th March

Mary Pickford's latest picture, Poor Little Rich Girl, is released. Frenchman Maurice Tourneur directs her for the second time.

11^th March

D. W. Griffith severs his connection with Triangle.

12^th March

William Farnum plays both Charles Darnay and Sidney Carton thanks to the use of double exposure in Frank Lloyd’s adaptation of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities for Fox.

17^th March

Six days after leaving Harry Aitken’s Triangle, D. W. Griffith signs for Adolph Zukor’s Artcraft.

19^th March

Hearts and Saddles, cowboy star Tom Mix’s first film for Fox after leaving the now-defunct Selig Polyscope Company, is released.

24^th March

Edison Studio copyrights The Dinosaur and the Missing Link, a Prehistoric Tragedy, a short using puppet animation directed by Willis O’Brien.

March

Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle invites Buster Keaton to shoot some scenes with him after they are introduced to each other by Arbuckle’s agent, Lou Anger.

March

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels informs newsreel producers that their films will be censored.

9^th April

In the case of Motion Picture Patents Co vs Universal Film Manufacturing Co, the Supreme Court rules that the MPPC misused its patents, effectively spelling the end for Edison’s Trust.

14^th April

Twenty-seven regional distributors led by Thomas L. Tally, J. D. Williams and E. B. Johnston meet in New York to form a new production company, First National Exhibitor’s Circuit, to rival Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players-Lasky and Artcraft company.

17^th April

Moving Picture World claims that comedian Harold Lloyd has, in less than eighteen months, become “one of the few great screen comedians in the country.”

23^rd April

The Butcher Boy, Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle’s first film for his own Comique Film company, is released.   The film co-stars newcomer Buster Keaton.

30^th April

Attendances for D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, already declining, drop away sharply following the United States’ entry into WW1.

5^th May

Second Deputy Funkhouser denies producer Robert Goldstein a permit to exhibit his feature Spirit of ’76 on the grounds that it contains matter offensive to Great Britain, America’s allies in the Great War.

6^th May

Following the end of a three-month run at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway and Forty-Second Street in New York, the city’s licensing commissioner refuses to allow Margaret Sanger’s controversial pro-birth control docudrama Birth Control to be shown at the Park Theatre, citing citizen complaints.

17^th June

Charlie Chaplin signs a “million dollar contract” with the newly formed First National, who will advance him $125,000 for each of eight films he is to produce independently. The contract is supposed to run one year but takes Chaplin four years to fulfill.

24^th June

Douglas Fairbanks’ Wild and Woolly is released. John Emerson directs and Victor Fleming is on camera.

25^th June

Triangle buys out Mack Sennett. He sells the ailing company his stock in Keystone and other shares for $200,000. Sennett has already arranged to join Paramount.

29^th June

Mack Sennett signs a fifteen-month contract with Paramount

30^th June

Moving Picture World reports that Thomas H. Ince has left Triangle after selling them all his holdings for $750,000.

12^th July

Cecil B. DeMille’s film The Little American, starring Mary Pickford, is released. Wallace Beery, Ramon Novarro and Sam Wood all have small uncredited parts.

12^th July

Government officials meet with film industry leaders to explain how movies can help the war effort. D. W. Griffith is in attendance and will chair a new group to co-ordinate the industry’s war efforts with those of Committee for Public Information.

July

Mabel Normand leaves Mack Sennett and signs with Samuel Goldfish’s Goldwyn Corporation.

27^th August

John Ford’s first feature, Straight Shooting, is released. Harry Carey stars. Future cowboy star Hoot Gibson is also in the cast.

August

Faced with mounting gambling debts, Lewis J. Selznick sells 50% of Lewis J Selznick Productions to arch-rival Adolph Zukor. The new company is named Select Pictures as one of Zukor’s conditions of purchase is that Selznick’s name is not used.

7^th September

18-year old Irving Thalberg places an ad in the New York Journal of Commerce: “Situation Wanted – Secretary, stenographer, Spanish, English, high school education, inexperienced, $15.”

9^th September

Polly of the Circus, Goldwyn Pictures first feature, is released. Mae Marsh stars as the circus horse rider who falls for a minister, played by Vernon Steele.

9^th September

Harold Lloyd’s famous ‘Glasses Character’ debuts in the short baseball comedy Over the Fence. Bebe Daniels and Snub Pollard co-star.

9^th September

Jack Pickford crashes into a truck driving home from a party at 4am. The truck driver suffers lacerations, a broken hand and concussion. Pickford and his passengers, including his wife, Olive Thomas, suffer no serious injuries

15^th September

Louis B Mayer announces he has signed leading lady Anita Stewart from Vitagraph. However, Vitagraph immediately request an injunction, insisting the actress is still under contract to them.

21^st September

The Gulf Between, the first two-strip Technicolor film, has a private screen at Aeolian Hall in New York. Technical difficulties delays its public release until 25^th February 1918.

25^th September

US Govt sets up the Division of Films under The Committee of Public Information to promote US WW1 effort.

7^th October

A Bedroom Blunder, Mack Sennett's first film for Paramount, is released. Eddie Cline directs Charles Murray and Mary Thurman.

9^th October

Max Fleischer patents the Rotoscope. The revolutionary technique enables animators to project live action onto an easel frame-by-frame to trace human movement.

13^th October

Popular leading lady Florence La Badie dies of septicaemia after she was seriously injured in a car accident on 28^th August 1917. She was 29-years-old.

14^th October

Crowds are turned away from the premiere of the Fox Film Corporation’s historical epic Cleopatra at the Lyric Theatre in New York. Theda Bara stars as the Egyptian queen and Fritz Lieber plays Caesar.

16^th October

D. W. Griffith returns to America with the film crew for his latest film, Hearts of the World, which has been shooting in England and on the French front.

22^nd October

The Adventurer, Charlie Chaplin’s last two-reel comedy for Mutual, is released.   His co-star is Edna Purviance.

27^th October

Balaban and Katz open the Central Park Theatre in Chicago. It is an immediate success and results in the rapid expansion of its cinema chain.

28^th November

Fred and Adele Astaire make their Broadway debut in the hit musical revue Over the Top

30^th November

Paramount, under the guiding hand of Adolph Zukor, emerge as a major force in the motion picture industry.   Major stars under contract to the studio include Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart and Charles Ray.

20^th December

Burly comic actor Eric Campbell, familiar to picture-goers as a regular foil for Charlie Chaplin, dies in a drunk driving accident. His unclaimed ashes are not buried until 1952.

The Secretary of War assigns the Signal Corps the task of recording the war on film.