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Champion Film Company

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Champion Film Company
IndustryFilm
Founded1909
FoundersMark M. Dintenfass
Headquarters,
United States
ProductsMotion pictures

The Champion Film Company was an independent production company founded in 1909 by Mark M. Dintenfass.[1][2][3][4] The studio was one of the film companies that merged to form Universal Pictures.

Champion was the first film production company to establish itself in the area around Fort Lee, New Jersey, when the town was the home of America's first motion picture industry[5][6][7] It built its studio in the vicinity of Fort Lee, at the town line with Englewood Cliffs in Coytesville, then a relatively remote area, to make them look as little like a studio as possible. The building was demolished on 2013.[8]

Movie still from In the Great Big West
Movie still from In the Great Big West

Dintenfass tried avoid the investigators of Thomas Alva Edison, always looking for the "pirates" who escaped the rigid conditions posed by the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), the monopoly of the sector that it imposed, between the other, to use only the technical material (film cameras, film, etc.) that was to be provided exclusively by the trust.[9][10] To circumvent the MPPC, the independents - including Dintenfass - distributed their films through the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company of Carl Laemmle.

On April 30, 1912, Laemmle brought together Pat Powers of Powers Motion Picture Company, Mark Dintenfass of Champion Film Company, William Swanson of Rex Motion Picture Company, David Horsley of Nestor Film Company, and Charles Baumann and Adam Kessel of the New York Motion Picture Company, to merge their companies with Independent Moving Pictures and create Universal Film Manufacturing Company, with Laemmle assuming the role of president.[11] Dintenfass later founded the Vim Comedy Company (1915)[12]

In its four years of activity, Champion produced more than two hundred films. It specialized initially in westerns and historical reconstructions of military episodes of the American Civil War and American Revolution. Later, he produced numerous drama films, documentaries and some movies related to famous people, such as the aviators Blanche Scott and Robert G. Fowler. Among those who appeared in Champion films were John G. Adolfi, Irving Cummings, Jeanie Macpherson.

Discover more about Champion Film Company related topics

Fort Lee, New Jersey

Fort Lee, New Jersey

Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop The Palisades.

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

Englewood Cliffs is a borough in Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 5,342, an increase of 61 (+1.2%) from the 2010 census count of 5,281, which in turn reflected a decline of 41 (-0.8%) from the 5,322 counted in the 2000 census.

Motion Picture Patents Company

Motion Picture Patents Company

The Motion Picture Patents Company, founded in December 1908 and terminated seven years later in 1915 after conflicts within the industry, was a trust of all the major US film companies and local foreign-branches, the leading film distributor and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak. The MPPC ended the domination of foreign films on US screens, standardized the manner in which films were distributed and exhibited within the US, and improved the quality of US motion pictures by internal competition. But it also discouraged its members' entry into feature film production, and the use of outside financing, both to its members' eventual detriment.

Carl Laemmle

Carl Laemmle

Carl Laemmle was a film producer and the co-founder and, until 1934, owner of Universal Pictures. He produced or worked on over 400 films.

Nestor Film Company

Nestor Film Company

The Nestor Film Company, originally known as the Nestor Motion Picture Company, was an American motion picture production company. It was founded in 1909 as the West Coast production unit of the Centaur Film Company located in Bayonne, New Jersey. While not the first movie studio in Los Angeles, on October 27, 1911, Nestor established the first permanent motion picture studio in Hollywood, California, and produced the first Hollywood films. The company merged with its distributor, the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, on May 20, 1912. Nestor became a brand name Universal used until at least mid-1917.

New York Motion Picture Company

New York Motion Picture Company

The New York Motion Picture Company was a film production and distribution company from 1909 until 1914. It changed names to New York Picture Corporation in 1912. It released films through several different brand names, including 101 Bison, Kay-Bee, Broncho, Domino, Reliance, and Keystone Studios.

Independent Moving Pictures

Independent Moving Pictures

The Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP) was a motion picture studio and production company founded in 1909 by Carl Laemmle. The company was based in New York City, with production facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey. In 1912, IMP merged with several other production companies to form Universal Film Manufacturing Company, later re-named Universal Pictures Company with Laemmle as president.

American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union and the Confederacy, the latter formed by states that had seceded. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which was widely believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.

American Revolution

American Revolution

The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown and establishing the United States as the first country founded on Enlightenment principles of liberal democracy.

Blanche Scott

Blanche Scott

Blanche Stuart Scott, also known as Betty Scott, was possibly the first American woman aviator.

John G. Adolfi

John G. Adolfi

John Gustav Adolfi was an American silent film director, actor, and screenwriter who was involved in more than 100 productions throughout his career. An early acting credit was in the recently restored 1912 film Robin Hood.

Irving Cummings

Irving Cummings

Irving Caminsky was an American movie actor and director.

Filmography

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Travers Vale

Travers Vale

Travers Vale was an English-born silent film director. He directed more than 70 films between 1910 and 1926. He was born in Liverpool and died in Hollywood, California from cancer. Travers Vale's actual birth name was Solomon Flohm, son of Joseph Flohm and Esther Flegeltaub who were both Russian Polish Jews who had emigrated to the UK during the Crimean War.

Ulysses Davis

Ulysses Davis

Ulysses Davis, was an American film director. He directed 86 films between 1911 and 1916, some at Champion Film Company. He is probably best remembered today for having directed The Kiss, a 1914 film starring Margaret Gibson and William Desmond Taylor.

Wallace Reid

Wallace Reid

William Wallace Halleck Reid was an American actor in silent film, referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover". He also had a brief career as a racing driver.

Jay Hunt (director)

Jay Hunt (director)

Jay Hunt was an American film director and actor. He directed nearly 70 films between 1911 and 1919. He continued his career as an actor until 1931. The White Squaw, a 1920 film directed by Hunt, was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.

Sidney M. Goldin

Sidney M. Goldin

Sidney M. Goldin, born Samuel Goldstein was an American silent film director as well as a prominent writer, actor and producer for Yiddish theater and Yiddish cinema during the early 20th century. During his career, he worked frequently with Molly Picon, Maurice Schwartz and Ludwig Satz in Europe and Palestine.

John Griffith Wray

John Griffith Wray

John Griffith Wray was an American stage actor and director who later became a noted Hollywood silent film director. He worked on 19 films between 1913 and 1929 that included Anna Christie (1923) and Human Wreckage (1923), Dorothy Davenport's story about her husband Wallace Reid's drug addiction and death.

Source: "Champion Film Company", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2022, January 8th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champion_Film_Company.

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References
  1. ^ "MARK M. DINTENFASS, FILM PIONEER, DIES; Once Had Studio at Ftt. Leeu Ran for Governor of New Jersey as Single-Taxer". timesmachine.nytimes.com.
  2. ^ a b c "The Champion: A Story of America's First Film Town". Trailers From Hell. September 23, 2017.
  3. ^ Fort Lee: Birthplace of the Motion Picture Industry. Arcadia Publishing. August 19, 2006. ISBN 9780738545011 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Grilli, Jon (December 4, 2018). "The Birth of the Universal Studios Tour". KCET.
  5. ^ Kannapell, Andrea. "Getting the Big Picture; The Film Industry Started Here and Left. Now It's Back, and the State Says the Sequel Is Huge.", The New York Times, October 4, 1998. Accessed December 7, 2013.
  6. ^ Amith, Dennis. "Before Hollywood There Was Fort Lee, N.J.: Early Movie Making in New Jersey (a J!-ENT DVD Review)", J!-ENTonline.com, January 1, 2011. Accessed December 7, 2013. "When Hollywood, California, was mostly orange groves, Fort Lee, New Jersey, was a center of American film production."
  7. ^ Rose, Lisa."100 years ago, Fort Lee was the first town to bask in movie magic", The Star-Ledger, April 29, 2012. Accessed December 7, 2013. "Back in 1912, when Hollywood had more cattle than cameras, Fort Lee was the center of the cinematic universe. Icons from the silent era like Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish crossed the Hudson River via ferry to emote on Fort Lee back lots."
  8. ^ "From the Archives: Remember the Champion Studio!". Fort Lee, NJ Patch. December 21, 2013.
  9. ^ Koszarski, Richard (March 2, 2005). Fort Lee: The Film Town (1904-2004). Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780861969425 – via Google Books.
  10. ^ "Fort Lee Film Commission | Fort Lee, NJ". April 5, 2011. Archived from the original on April 5, 2011.
  11. ^ Dick, Bernard F. (May 1, 1997). City of Dreams: The Making and Remaking of Universal Pictures. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813120164.
  12. ^ "State Archives of Florida Online Catalog, Creator:Bletcher, Billy, 1894-1979, Title, Dates:Billy Bletcher's Vim Southern Studio motion picture photographs, 1915-1917". Archived from the original on 2011-07-26. Retrieved 2011-07-26.

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