Hollywood Timeline: 1919

In 1919, Four of Hollywood's biggest stars form United Artists, Gloria Swanson rockets to fame in DeMille's Don't Change Your Husband, and Lon Chaney gets noticed in The Miracle Man.

Gloria Swanson and Ted Shawn in Cecil B. DeMille's Don't Change Your Husband (1919)

Date	Event
8^th January	The American Society of Cinematographers is formed following the disbanding of The Static Club of America and the Cinema Camera Club in 1918.
26^th January	The sophisticated comedy Don’t Change Your Husband, Gloria Swanson’s first collaboration with Cecil B. DeMille, is released. The film is the joint-fifth highest grossing picture of 1919 and makes a star of Swanson.
	Mary Pickford, D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, founders of United Artists.
5^th February	Four of Hollywood’s biggest names found The United Artists Corporation. Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D. W. Griffith become equal shareholders of their own production company, with former Paramount board member, Hiram Abrams, in charge.
20^th February	Debut director Oscar Micheaux’s The Homesteader premieres at the 8^th Regiment Armory in Chicago. The first feature-length film aimed at a black audience, it is based on Micheaux’s 1917 novel.
22^nd February	Trade papers report that Vitagraph has bought all the properties of the now defunct Kalem Studio.
2^nd March	Cast and crew travelling to the Korbel Mountains in Oregon to shoot scenes for The Valley of the Giants are involved in a train crash. Wallace Reid’s is administered morphine for the pain from his injuries.
24^th March	The Turn in the Road, King Vidor’s first feature-length film, is released by the Brentwood Film Co.
	Marion Davies in The Belle of New York (1919)
27^th March	The Belle of New York, an adaptation of the 1897 musical stage comedy, is released. Marion Davies stars.
18^th April	Famous Players acquire half the capital stock of New York and Pacific Coast Amusement Company which operates Sid Grauman’s Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles.
19^th April	Sidney Drew, the star of more than 150 short domestic comedies, dies of uremic poisoning at the age of fifty-five.
19^th April	Lewis J. Selznick confirms that Adolph Zukor has withdrawn from Select Pictures, after selling his half to Selznick for $500,000.
11^th May	The first film from the Mary Pickford Corporation is released. Daddy-Long-Legs stars Pickford and is directed by Marshall Neilan.
11^th May	Norma Talmadge stars in Chester Withey’s The New Moon as a princess who protects Russian women from evil Bolsheviks.
	Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess in D. W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919)
13^th May	D. W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms premieres at the Geoge M. Cohan Theatre, New York. Lillian Gish stars as a waif-like girl beaten by her brutal father (Donald Crisp) and loved by a dope-smoking Chinaman (Richard Barthelmess).
17^th May	The Exhibitors Herald and Motography reports that the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry is to drive salacious pictures from disreputable theatres. In a move designed to avoid government censorship, members agree to submit all picture to NAMPI for approval before release.
26^th May	Thin Ice, the second Vitagraph film to feature Corinne Griffith and Alice Terry, is released. The drama is directed by Thomas R. Mills, and features Charles Kent, Jack McLean and Walter Miller.
28^th May	Real Art Pictures is established as a subsidiary of Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players-Lasky organisation.
1^st June	D. W. Griffith’s True Heart Susie, starring his regular female leading actress Lillian Gish, is released.
21^st June	Adolph Zukor signs 17-year-old Mary Miles Minter, intending to build her into a rival of Mary Pickford.
12^th July	Samuel Goldwyn forms Eminent Authors with Rex Beach, a new company devoted to producing the works of America’s greatest living novelists.
31^st July	Charlie Chaplin begins shooting The Kid, his first feature film. His co-star will be four-year-old Jackie Coogan.
July	Goldwyn Pictures announces that it will allow exhibitors to view pictures to judge their quality before buying.
July	Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal, appoints 20-year-old Irving Thalberg as his executive secretary.
1^st August	Famous Players acquires a $2,000,000 interest in the Stanley chain of theatres.
14^th August	Comedy actor Harold Lloyd loses the thumb and forefinger of his right hand when a prop bomb he is holding for a photograph at the Witzel Studio in downtown L. A. explodes.
30^th August	The Catholic Photoplay Pre-Review Service, which will provide film reviews for Catholic publications, is established.
31^st August	United Artists’ first release, Joseph Henabery’s His Majesty, the American, starring Douglas Fairbanks and Marjorie Daw, premieres at the Woodlawn Theatre in Chicago.
1^st September	Variety reports that a Japanese syndicate fronted by actor Sessue Hayakawa is evading state laws to purchase picture houses on the Pacific coast.
	Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle brings the house down in Back Stage (1919)
7^th September	In his new film Back Stage, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle avoids being crushed by the front of a building by standing in the path of its open window. Co-star Buster Keaton will re-use the gag nine years later in Steamboat Bill Jr.
7^th September	Out of the Inkwell, the first film in Max Fleischer’s Koko the Clown cartoon series is released. Koko is based on rotoscoped footage of Max’s brother Dave Fleischer.
8^th September	A Temperamental Wife, the first film from the Constance Talmadge Film Company, is released.
14^th September	Lon Chaney creates a stir in George Loane Tucker’s The Miracle Man by playing the Frog, a predatory conman who can dislocate his limbs.
15^th September	Members of the Internation Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) strikes for better pay.
29^th September	Frank’s Café opens at 6669 Hollywood Boulevard. Owner Frank Toulet will rename the establishment Musso & Frank’s when he goes into partnership with Joseph Musso.
11^th October	The Fox Film Corporation releases the first of its Fox News newsreels. Modelled on Pathé’s Weekly, it is released twice weekly.
11^th October	Marcus Loew offers 160,000 shares in his newly established Loew’s Inc., at a price of $32 per share.
12^th October	Famed escapologist Harry Houdini stars in Irvin Willat’s The Grim Game for Paramount.
24^th October	New York’s Capitol Theater, the world’s largest, opens with a screening of His Majesty, the American, starring Douglas Fairbanks.
	Felix the Cat debuts in Feline Follies (1919)
9^th November	Otto Nessmer’s Felix the Cat makes his debut in Feline Follies, although his character is called Master Tom.
22^nd November	Associated Producers, a distribution company founded this month by directors Allan Dwan, Thomas H. Ince, Marshall Neilan, Mack Sennett, Maurice Tourneur and George Loane Tucker denies it is financed by outside interests.
23^rd November	Male and Female, Cecil B. DeMille’s screen adaptation of J. M. Barrie’s stage play, The Admirable Crichton is released. Gloria Swanson plays the spoiled Lady Mary Lasenby and Thomas Meighan plays her self-sufficient butler.
23^rd November	Anne of Green Gables, 17-year-old Mary Miles Minter’s first feature for Adolph Zukor’s Realart Pictures Corporation, is released.

7^th December	Blind Husbands, the directorial debut of Erich ‘The Man You Love to Hate’ Stroheim goes on general release. Sam de Grasse and Francelia Billington star as a married couple whose marriage is threatened by an amorous Austrian military officer (Stroheim).
18^th December	House and Senate education committees appeal to the movie industry to “do all within its power to upbuild and strengthen the spirit of Americanism within our peoples.”
20^th December	Gloria Swanson marries Herbert Samborn, a millionaire from Pasadena, at the Alexandria Hotel.
December	Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks found the short-lived Disney-Iwerks Commercial Artists company.
December	Eleven-year-old Bette Davis receives burns to her face when a candle sets light to the Santa Claus costume she is wearing for her school’s Christmas celebration.

	Technicolor move from a two-colour additive colour film experiment to a two-colour subtractive process.

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