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Christie Film Company

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Coordinates: 34°05′54″N 118°19′21″W / 34.098280°N 118.322558°W / 34.098280; -118.322558

Al Christie's troupe, circa 1916.[1]
Al Christie's troupe, circa 1916.[1]

Christie Film Company was an American pioneer motion picture company founded in Hollywood, California by Al Christie and Charles Christie, two brothers from London, Ontario, Canada. It made comedies.

While Charles served almost exclusively in administration, it was Al Christie who made the films. Al had worked with David Horsley at his Centaur Film Company in Bayonne, New Jersey and moved to California on October 27, 1911, to run Nestor Studios, the first ever motion picture studio in Hollywood. The firm closed in 1933.

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Geographic coordinate system

Geographic coordinate system

The geographic coordinate system (GCS) is a spherical or ellipsoidal coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on the Earth as latitude and longitude. It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used of the various spatial reference systems that are in use, and forms the basis for most others. Although latitude and longitude form a coordinate tuple like a cartesian coordinate system, the geographic coordinate system is not cartesian because the measurements are angles and are not on a planar surface.

Al Christie

Al Christie

Alfred Ernest Christie was a Canadian-born film director, producer, and screenwriter.

Charles Christie

Charles Christie

Charles H. V. Christie was a motion picture studio owner.

London, Ontario

London, Ontario

London is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River, approximately 200 km (120 mi) from both Toronto and Detroit; and about 230 km (140 mi) from Buffalo, New York. The city of London is politically separate from Middlesex County, though it remains the county seat.

David Horsley

David Horsley

David Horsley was an English pioneer of the film industry. He founded the Centaur Film Company and its West Coast branch, the Nestor Film Company, which established the first film studio in Hollywood in 1911.

Centaur Film Company

Centaur Film Company

The Centaur Film Company was an American motion picture production company founded in 1907 in Bayonne, New Jersey, by William and David Horsley. It was the first independent motion picture production company in the United States. In 1909 the company added a West Coast production unit, the Nestor Film Company, which established the first permanent film studio in Hollywood, California, in 1911. The company was absorbed by the Universal Film Manufacturing Company in 1912.

Bayonne, New Jersey

Bayonne, New Jersey

Bayonne is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Located in the Gateway Region, Bayonne is situated on a peninsula situated between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east. As of the 2020 United States census, the city was the state's 15th-most-populous municipality, with a population of 71,686, an increase of 8,662 (+13.7%) from the 2010 census count of 63,024, which in turn reflected an increase of 1,182 (+1.9%) from the 61,842 counted in the 2000 census. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 69,211 in 2021, ranking the city the 544th-most-populous in the country.

New Jersey

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New Jersey is a state situated within both the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is the most densely populated U.S. state, and is situated at the center of the Northeast megalopolis, the most populous American urban agglomeration. New Jersey is bordered on its north and east by the state of New York; on its east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on its west by the Delaware River and Pennsylvania; and on its southwest by Delaware Bay and the state of Delaware. At 7,354 square miles (19,050 km2), New Jersey is the fifth-smallest state in land area, but with close to 9.3 million residents as of the 2020 United States census, its highest decennial count ever, ranks 11th in population. The state capital is Trenton, and the most populous city is Newark. New Jersey is the only U.S. state in which every county is deemed urban by the U.S. Census Bureau, with 13 counties included in the New York metropolitan area, seven counties in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, and with Warren County constituting part of the rapidly industrializing Lehigh Valley metropolitan area.

California

California

California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state's capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country's most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and it has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Hollywood, Los Angeles

Hollywood, Los Angeles

Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures, are located near or in Hollywood.

The Christies in Hollywood

In June 1912, Nestor Studios became part of the newly formed Universal Film Company and Al Christie was put in charge of the comedy companies. He remained with Universal Film until January 1916 at which time he and his brother, Charles Christie, formed their own movie studio named the Christie Film Company. The two rented facilities from Universal at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, the place where Al Christie had first started in Hollywood. For the first six months of operations, the new Christie Film Company made comedies under a contract with Universal Film. In July of that year, the company began producing other comedies to sell to the independent distributors and their immediate success was such that they were soon able to finance the acquisition of their studio property. Within a short time, the Christie brothers doubled their stage capacity and constructed a film laboratory equipped with the latest in technology.

Unlike some of the "over the top comedies" being produced at the time, Christie Studios emphasized situational comedy that sometimes featured show girls in skimpy costumes. As comedy specialists, the Christie Film Company debuted comedy actors Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, Anita Garvin and black actor Spencer Williams, later known for his portrayal of Andy Brown in the Amos & Andy" CBS Television series. The innovative Christie company began issuing Film Follies, a magazine advertising the latest films and events at the studio.

In 1921, Canadian Mary Pickford was a driving force behind the creation of the Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization designed to help actors who had fallen on hard times. Christie Film Company supported this and Charles Christie played a major role, serving on the first Board of Trustees.

By 1922, the brothers were so successful that they set up Christie Realty Corporation with $1 million in capital stock.

The Christie brothers welcomed Canadian talent and stars such as Marie Dressler and Marie Prevost appeared in their films and became personal lifelong friends. In 1928, they hired Florence Ryerson to write several short films, including Hot Lemonade. Al Christie also hired African-American Spencer Williams as a sound technician but soon recognized Williams' many talents and involved him in script writing. In early 1929, the Christie Film Company began making the first series of talking pictures written and conceived exclusively for African-American performers. They produced a number of comedy-musical shorts that featured an all-black cast from the Lafayette Players Stock Company out of Harlem, New York. The films, based on the popular Saturday Evening Post's Darktown Birmingham stories by Octavus Roy Cohen (1891-1959), were distributed by Paramount Studios.

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Charles H. V. Christie was a motion picture studio owner.

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Harold Lloyd

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Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.

Anita Garvin

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Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford

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Motion Picture & Television Fund

Motion Picture & Television Fund

The Motion Picture & Television Fund (MPTF) is a charitable organization that offers assistance and care to those in the motion picture and television industries and their families with limited or no resources, including services such as temporary financial assistance, case management, and residential living.

Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler

Marie Dressler was a Canadian stage and screen actress, comedian, and early silent film and Depression-era film star. In 1914, she was in the first full-length film comedy. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931.

Marie Prevost

Marie Prevost

Marie Prevost was a Canadian-born film actress. During her 20-year career, she made 121 silent and sound films.

Florence Ryerson

Florence Ryerson

Florence Ryerson was an American playwright, screenwriter, and co-author of the script for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Between 1915 and 1927 she published more than 30 short stories and then joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1926 to work on silent film scripts. In 1930 and 1933 she and her husband wrote two of the earliest novels about the teenage years for girls. The novels were based on a short story series Ryerson had started in 1925. She continued to write for most of her life, writing plays for Broadway in the 1940s.

Demise of company

However, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression devastated many businesses and in January 1933, the Christie brothers companies went into receivership and their studio assets were acquired by another large film making company.

Source: "Christie Film Company", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 26th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christie_Film_Company.

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References
  1. ^ Standing, left to right: Harry Rattenbury, George French, Anton Nagy (cameraman), Al Christie, Eddie Barry, Charles Christie, unidentified cameraman, Horace Davis, unknown, Mr Lyons. Seated: Lee Moran, Ukulele Jane, Edie Lyons, Betty Compson, Billie Rhodes, Ray Gallagher, Stella Adams, Neal Burns. On the floor: Joseph Janecke, Gus Alexander, unknown.
  • Paul Zollo, Hollywood Remembered
  • Gregory Paul Williams, The Story of Hollywood By Gregory Paul Williams, page 62
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