Hollywood Timeline: 1918

Date

Event

21^st January

Marshall Neilan’s drama Stella Maris, starring Mary Pickford is released.

21^st January

Charlie Chaplin opens the new studios of the Charles Chaplin Film Company on the corner of La Brea Avenue and Sunset Boulevard to produce films for First National.

25^th January

The Motion Picture Patents Company announces it is to withdraw its appeal against the 1915 ruling that it was in violation of anti-trust laws.

27^th January

Edgar Burrough Rice’s enduring character Tarzan appears on-screen for the first time in a 10-reel version of Tarzan of the Apes at the Broadway Theatre in New York. Elmo Lincoln plays the title role.  An 8-reel version goes on general release on 2^nd April 1918. 

28^th January

Rita Jolivet, a survivor of the sinking of the Lusitania, stars in Léonce Perret’s Lest We Forget, in which she plays a fictional survivor of the disaster involved in intrigue and deception

1^st February

Sid Grauman’s Million Dollar Theater, situated in the Edison Building, Third and Broadway, Los Angeles, opens. William S. Hart’s The Silent Man is the first movie shown there.

5^th February

Francis X. Bushman’s wife sues him for divorce, claiming he is living in New York with a certain woman member of his company (believed to be his regular screen co-star Beverly Bane).

25^th February

Wray Physioc’s The Gulf Between, the first feature to use two-strip Technicolor, is released in New York

February

Variety opens a branch in Los Angeles.

10^th March

My Four Years in Germany, the first feature produced by the Warner Brothers, premieres in New York.

12^th March

D. W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World, featuring brief sequences shot on the front, premieres at Clune’s Auditorium in Los Angeles. Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Miles Minter and Mack Sennett are among the celebrities attending.

Robin Macdougall and Tula Belle in Maurice Tourneur’s The Bluebird.

30^th March

Thomas Edison sells Edison Studios to the Lincoln & Parker Film Company of Massachusetts.

31^st March

Maurice Tourneur’s heavily stylized and colour-tinted fable The Bluebird is released.

8^th April

An estimated twenty thousand people gather at the junction of Broad and Wall Street to hear Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin to buy war bonds. Several women faint in the crush.

12^th April

Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Anna Beth Sully separate. Sully complains she can no longer tolerate her husband’s attentions to another woman.

15^th April

A jury finds movie producer Robert Goldstein guilty of being in violation of the Espionage Act for failing to delete scenes from his feature Spirit of ’76 which were considered to give encouragement to the enemies of America’s allies. One of the objectionable scenes featured an English soldier stabbing a baby with a bayonet.

15^th April

A Black Sherlock Holmes, the first film from the Chicago-based Ebony Film Corporation, is released.

30^th April

Actress May Maurice dies at the age of 73. During her nine-year movie career, Maurice played so many mothers and grandmothers she earned the nickname ‘The Grand Old Lady of the Films.

26^th May

D. W. Griffith is elected President of the Motion Picture War Service Association which announces it is to build two hospitals for wounded servicemen. Vice-chairmen are Cecil B. DeMille, Lois Weber, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and William S. Hart.

1^st July

Louella Parson takes up her new position as movie columnist for  the New York Morning Telegraph.

1^st July

Playmates, a short film directed by Charley Chase for King Bee Productions, is released. Chase, Billy West, and Oliver ‘Babe’ Hardy star.

3^rd July

Five-year-old Alan Ladd and a friend accidentally burn down the Hot Springs apartment building Ladd’s family live in after playing with matches.

Harry Carey (centre) in John Ford’s Hell Bent.

6^th July

John ‘Jack’ Ford directs Harry Carey as Cheyenne Harry for the ninth time in Hell Bent.

26^th July

Eighteen-year-old Colleen Moore signs with Selig Polyscope.

29^th July

Three days after his divorce from his first wife, Francis X. Bushman marries his regular leading lady, Beverly Bane.

July

Stan Laurel, described by Variety as ‘the British Charlie Chaplin,’ signs for Rolin Studios.

Summer

Louis B. Mayer forms the Boston-based Gordon-Mayer Film Exchange with theatre owner Nathan Gordon.

15^th August

Winsor McCay’s 12-minute animated short The Sinking of the Lusitania is released.

August

Mickey, the first (and only) feature to be released by screen comedienne Mabel Normand’s Mabel Normand Feature Film Company, is released.

30^th September

Will Rogers makes his screen debut in Hobart Henley’s comedy, Laughing Bill Hyde.

September

The film business is declared an ‘essential industry’ by the US government under wartime legislation.

13^th October

Elmo Lincoln and Enid Markey reprise their roles as Tarzan and Jane for Wilfred Lucas’s The Romance of Tarzan, the sequel to Tarzan of the Apes, which was a major hit earlier in the year.

18^th October

The major studios enter into an informal agreement to refrain from poaching each other’s stars.

18^th October

Variety reports that, with the exception of Vitagraph, all studios have agreed to halt film production and the release of new films for four weeks due to the influenza epidemic.  

Harold Lockwood (1887-1918)

19^th October

Leading man Harold Lockwood dies of influenza in New York at the age of thirty-one.

22^nd October

Leading actress Myrtle Gonzales dies of influenza in Los Angeles at the age of twenty-seven.

23^rd October

Charlie Chaplin marries 16-year-old actress Mildred Harris after she falsely claims to be pregnant with his child.

October

Variety reports that nearly 90% of theatres in the United States are closed due to the influenza epidemic. Those that have remained open are playing to near-empty houses.

9^th November

Mary Pickford signs a three-film deal with First National after making her name in 34 films for Adolph Zukor. The deal is worth $250,000 per film plus a $150,000 advance to the actress.

11^th November

21-year-old actor John Gilbert is drafted on the same day that the Armistice is signed.

30^th November

Paul Powell’s comedy All Night is released. It is the first leading role for young Italian former taxi dancer Rudolpho di Valentina (Rudolph Valentino).

30th November

Beth Sully is granted a divorce from her husband Douglas Fairbanks, naming an unknown woman as the co-respondent. She is awarded custody of their 8-year-old son, Douglas Jr.

6^th December

Elizabeth MacCaulay accuses William S. Hart of being the father of her illegitimate son. Hart denies the charge, but agrees to pay $50 a month towards the child’s support.

12^th December

Wallace Beery is granted a divorce from Gloria Swanson on the grounds of desertion. The couple separated on 1^st June 1917.

15^th December

The Squaw Man, Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of his own 1914 feature, is released. Elliott Dexter, Ann Little, and Katherine McDonald star.

23^rd December

Movie producer Samuel Goldfish receives a telegram from his attorney Gabriel L. Hess proclaiming ‘SAMUEL GOLDFISH IS DEAD. LONG LIVE SAMUEL GOLDWYN’ after Supreme Court Justice Donnelly authorises his change of name.

30^th December

Gloria Swanson signs for Famous Players-Lasky for a wage of $150 per week rising to $350 after two years.

31^st December

1918 sees an influx of foreign talent to Hollywood. Directors working in America’s film capital at the end of the year include Maurice Tourneur, Emile Chautard, Leonce Perret, and Louis Gasnier.

America replaces the United Kingdom as the chief importer of movies to South America.

The Selig Polyscope Company ceases production.

Alexander Victor presents a paper to the Society of Motion Picture Engineers urging the adoption of 28mm safety film.