Get Our Extension
Select Wikiz in another Language
Nederlands
Settings
A
A
Text Highlights
Notes/Citations
Edit on Wikipedia

Share This Article

About Wikiz About Us Cookies Policy Terms & Services Privacy Policy Contact Contact us Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA
Enjoying Wikipedia Content? DONATE TO WIKIPEDIA

Biograph Studios

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Biograph's first studio was similar to Edison's Black Maria, pictured here, only located ...... on the roof of 841 Broadway in Manhattan.
Biograph's first studio was similar to Edison's Black Maria, pictured here, only located ...
Biograph's first studio was similar to Edison's Black Maria, pictured here, only located ...... on the roof of 841 Broadway in Manhattan.
... on the roof of 841 Broadway in Manhattan.

Biograph Studios was an early film studio and laboratory complex, built in 1912 by the Biograph Company at 807 East 175th Street, in The Bronx, New York City, New York.

Discover more about Biograph Studios related topics

Biograph Company

Biograph Company

The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films. During the height of silent film as a medium, Biograph was America's most prominent film studio and one of the most respected and influential studios worldwide, only rivaled by Germany's UFA, Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri and France's Pathé. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.

The Bronx

The Bronx

The Bronx is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York City borough of Queens, across the East River. The Bronx has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,472,654 in the 2020 census. If each borough were ranked as a city, the Bronx would rank as the ninth-most-populous in the U.S. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density. It is the only borough of New York City not primarily on an island. With a population that is 54.8% Hispanic as of 2020, it is the only majority-Hispanic county in the Northeastern United States and the fourth-most-populous nationwide.

New York City

New York City

New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States and more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. New York City is located at the southern tip of New York State. It constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within 250 mi (400 km) of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.

New York (state)

New York (state)

New York, often called New York state, is a state in the Northeastern United States. With 20.2 million people enumerated at the 2020 United States census, its highest decennial count ever, it is the fourth-most populous state in the United States as of 2021. Approximately 44% of the state's population lives in New York City, including 25% in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens; and 15% of the state's population is on the remainder of Long Island, the most populous island in the United States. With a total area of 54,556 square miles (141,300 km2), New York is the 27th-largest U.S. state by area. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to its south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to its east; it shares a maritime border with Rhode Island, east of Long Island; and an international border with the Canadian provinces of Quebec to its north and Ontario to its northwest.

History

See also: Biograph Company

Early years

Biograph Studio, 11 East 14th Street (1906–1913)
Biograph Studio, 11 East 14th Street (1906–1913)

The first studio of the Biograph Company, formerly American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was located just south of Union Square on the roof of 841 Broadway at 13th Street in Manhattan, known then as the Hackett Carhart Building and today as the Roosevelt Building. The set-up was similar to Thomas Edison's "Black Maria" in West Orange, New Jersey, being mounted on circular tracks to be able to get the best possible sunlight. As of 1988, the foundations of this machinery were still extant. [1]

The company moved in 1906 to a brownstone a few blocks away at 11 East 14th Street, where it remained until 1913. The brownstone was torn down in the 1960s. It was at this location that D. W. Griffith began as a director, and quickly became the studio's focus. Griffith found and developed for the company stars such as Florence Lawrence, Blanche Sweet, Mary Pickford, the Gish sisters - Lillian and Dorothy, Lionel Barrymore, Henry B. Walthall, Mae Marsh, Mabel Normand, Harry Carey, Owen Moore, Robert Harron and director Mack Sennett.[1] Due to their overwhelming popularity and the fact that their names were not credited, stars like Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford became known as the 'Biograph Girls,' before screen credits began to become the norm.

A poster for Three Friends, a Biograph Studios release from 1913
A poster for Three Friends, a Biograph Studios release from 1913

Post-Griffith years

Griffith left the company in 1913, and it moved its facilities to 807 East 175th Street in The Bronx.[2][3] Without Griffith, the studio did not prosper, and the company was dissolved in 1915,[1] and the studio property was leased out to other production companies after Biograph's production stopped. The studio facilities and laboratory were acquired by one of Biograph Company's creditors, the Empire Trust Company, although some of the Biograph old management continued to manage it.[4][5] Herbert Yates acquired the Biograph Studio properties and Film laboratory facilities in 1928. Biograph Studio facilities in The Bronx were made a subsidiary of his Consolidated Film Industries.[6][7]

Some advertising films and a few feature films were made at the studio in the 1930s, including Midnight (1934), Woman in the Dark (1934), The Crime of Dr. Crespi (1935), Manhattan Merry-Go-Round (1937), the Yiddish-language folk drama Tevya (1939), and the Oscar Micheaux production The Notorious Elinor Lee (1940).

However, the studio facilities principal activity in that decade was the production of shorts for Universal, Columbia, and RKO, mostly involving New York-based actors and entertainers. The studio suspended operations in 1939, due partly to curtailment of the activities of independent producers because of World War II and partly to a decline in the commercial film market, according to its general manager. At this time, the remaining Biograph films collection was donated to the film department of the Museum of Modern Art.[8] The Soundies Distributing Corporation filmed at the Biograph Studios in 1944.[9]

Empire Trust later assigned management of the property to one of its own subsidiaries, The Actinograph Corp., which held it until 1948.[10]

Gold Medal Studios

Martin Poll (who later became New York's Commissioner of Motion Picture Arts) restored the Biograph Studio facilities and reopened it in 1956 as the Gold Medal Studios.[11][12][13] Gold Medal Studios became the largest film studio in the United States outside of Los Angeles at the time of its 1956 reopening.[11] Poll sold the property in 1961,[14] when it was incorporated into a newer company unrelated to the original Biograph Company, using the name Biograph Studios, Inc. It opened in 1961.[15]

The television series Naked City, Car 54, Where Are You?, and East Side/West Side, and movies such as A Face in the Crowd, Odds Against Tomorrow, The Fugitive Kind, The Goddess, Pretty Boy Floyd, BUtterfield 8, The Incident, and John and Mary were filmed there. The Biograph Studio facilities went dormant again in the 1970s. The studio facilities and laboratory burned down in 1980.[16]

The site is now occupied by a New York City Department of Sanitation garage.

Discover more about History related topics

Biograph Company

Biograph Company

The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films. During the height of silent film as a medium, Biograph was America's most prominent film studio and one of the most respected and influential studios worldwide, only rivaled by Germany's UFA, Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri and France's Pathé. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.

Broadway (Manhattan)

Broadway (Manhattan)

Broadway is a road in the U.S. state of New York. Broadway runs from State Street at Bowling Green for 13 mi (21 km) through the borough of Manhattan and 2 mi (3.2 km) through the Bronx, exiting north from New York City to run an additional 18 mi (29 km) through the Westchester County municipalities of Yonkers, Hastings-On-Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, and Tarrytown, and terminating north of Sleepy Hollow.

Edison's Black Maria

Edison's Black Maria

The Black Maria was Thomas Edison's film production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It was the world's first film studio.

14th Street (Manhattan)

14th Street (Manhattan)

14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, traveling between Eleventh Avenue on Manhattan's West Side and Avenue C on Manhattan's East Side. It forms a boundary between several neighborhoods and is sometimes considered the border between Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan.

D. W. Griffith

D. W. Griffith

David Wark Griffith was an American film director. Considered one of the most influential figures in the history of the motion picture, he pioneered many aspects of film editing and expanded the art of the narrative film.

Florence Lawrence

Florence Lawrence

Florence Lawrence was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was long thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career.

Blanche Sweet

Blanche Sweet

Sarah Blanche Sweet was an American silent film actress who began her career in the early days of the motion picture film industry.

Lillian Gish

Lillian Gish

Lillian Diana Gish was an American actress, director, and screenwriter. Her film-acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent film shorts, to 1987. Gish was called the "First Lady of American Cinema", and is credited with pioneering fundamental film performance techniques. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Gish as the 17th greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema.

Dorothy Gish

Dorothy Gish

Dorothy Elizabeth Gish was an American actress of the screen and stage, as well as a director and writer. Dorothy and her older sister Lillian Gish were major movie stars of the silent era. Dorothy also had great success on the stage, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Dorothy Gish was noted as a fine comedian, and many of her films were comedies.

Lionel Barrymore

Lionel Barrymore

Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul (1931), and remains best known to modern audiences for the role of villainous Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life.

Henry B. Walthall

Henry B. Walthall

Henry Brazeale Walthall was an American stage and film actor. He appeared as the Little Colonel in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915).

Mabel Normand

Mabel Normand

Amabel Ethelreid Normand, better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company. Onscreen, she appeared in twelve successful films with Charlie Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing films featuring Chaplin as her leading man.

Source: "Biograph Studios", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2022, December 13th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biograph_Studios.

Enjoying Wikiz?

Enjoying Wikiz?

Get our FREE extension now!

Download Extension

Further Reading

D. W. Griffith

Mary Pickford

Dorothy Gish

Biograph Company

Edison Studios

Kalem Company

Marion Leonard

Linda Arvidson

Friends (1912 film)

Mary Pickford filmography

Herbert Yost

Gladys Egan

The Call of the Wild (1908 film)

The Italian Barber

Edgar Allen Poe (film)

A Wreath in Time

A Sound Sleeper

Trying to Get Arrested
References

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Alleman, Richard (1988), The Movie Lover's Guide to New York, New York: Harper & Row, ISBN 0060960809, p.147-48
  2. ^ Kane, Sherwin A. (December 26, 1933). "The New Biograph Makes Its Debut". Motion Picture Daily. pp. 4–5 (including full page ad). Retrieved September 5, 2013.
  3. ^ Hevesi, Dennis (April 20, 2012). "Martin Poll Dies at 89; Built a Movie Studio in New York". The New York Times. Retrieved September 5, 2013.
  4. ^ "Screen News Here and in Hollywood". The New York Times. September 27, 1939. p. 29.
  5. ^ "Securities at Auction". The New York Times. December 27, 1928. p. 39.
  6. ^ Tuska, Jon (1999). The Vanishing Legion: A History of Mascot Pictures, 1927–1935. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company. p. 42. ISBN 0-7864-0749-2.
  7. ^ Keith R. Pillow, Public Relations Manager, Thompson/Technicolor (owner of CFI), May 4, 2006.
  8. ^ Iris Barry, "Why Wait for Posterity?" Hollywood Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jan. 1946), pp. 131–137. Mary Pickford had purchased negatives and prints many of her Biograph films in the 1920s. Christel Schmidt, "Preserving Pickford: The Mary Pickford Collection and the Library of Congress", The Moving Image, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 2003, pp. 59–81. The Search for a Film Legacy: Mary Pickford 1909–1933, Library of Congress Report.
  9. ^ "Coinmen You Know", Billboard, July 15, 1944, p. 64.
  10. ^ Ron Magliozzi, Assistant Curator, Research and Collections, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. [email protected]
  11. ^ a b "Martin Poll dies at 89, Producer drew Oscar nomination for 'The Lion in Winter'". Variety. 2012-04-16. Retrieved 2012-04-24.
  12. ^ The Bronx Stage and Film Company, History Archived 2006-08-14 at the Wayback Machine.
  13. ^ "Motion Picture Industry Returns to the Bronx," Bronxboro, vol. 34, fall 1957, p. 3.
  14. ^ "Producer Shapes 6-Film Schedule," The New York Times, May 4, 1964, p. 36.
  15. ^ State of New York—Secretary of State
  16. ^ "Bronx Blaze Damages Old Biograph Studios," The New York Times, July 9, 1980, p. B4.

Further reading

  • Koszarski, Richard. Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff, Rutgers University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8135-4293-5.
Categories

The content of this page is based on the Wikipedia article written by contributors..
The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence & the media files are available under their respective licenses; additional terms may apply.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use & Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization & is not affiliated to WikiZ.com.