Essanay Studios

Uptown is one of Chicago, Illinois’ 77 community areas. Uptown's boundaries are Foster Avenue on the north; Lake Michigan on the east; Montrose, and Irving Park on the south; Ravenswood, and Clark on the west. To the north is Edgewater, to the west is Lincoln Square, and to the south is Lake View.

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the third most populous in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is also the most populous city in the Midwest. As the seat of Cook County, the city is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, one of the largest in the world.

Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson was an American actor, writer, film director, and film producer, who was the first star of the Western film genre. He was a founder and star for Essanay studios. In 1958, he received a special Academy Award for being a pioneer of the film industry.

Bernard "Ben" Turpin was an American comedian and actor, best remembered for his work in silent films. His trademarks were his cross-eyed appearance and adeptness at vigorous physical comedy. Turpin worked with notable performers such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, and was a part of the Mack Sennett studio team. He is believed to have been the first filmed "victim" of the pie in the face gag. When sound came to films, Turpin chose to retire, having invested profitably in real estate, although he did do occasional cameos.

George Periolat was an American actor.

Bernard "Ben" Turpin was an American comedian and actor, best remembered for his work in silent films. His trademarks were his cross-eyed appearance and adeptness at vigorous physical comedy. Turpin worked with notable performers such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, and was a part of the Mack Sennett studio team. He is believed to have been the first filmed "victim" of the pie in the face gag. When sound came to films, Turpin chose to retire, having invested profitably in real estate, although he did do occasional cameos.

Colleen Moore was an American film actress who began her career during the silent film era. Moore became one of the most fashionable stars of the era and helped popularize the bobbed haircut.

Francis Xavier Bushman was an American film actor and director. His career as a matinee idol started in 1911 in the silent film His Friend's Wife. He gained a large female following and was one of the biggest stars of the 1910s and early 1920s.

Gloria May Josephine Swanson was an American actress and producer. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, most famously for her 1950 return in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, which also earned her a Golden Globe Award.

Ann Little, also known as Anna Little, was an American film actress whose career was most prolific during the silent film era of the early 1910s through the early 1920s. Today, most of her films are lost, with only 12 known to survive.

Helen Dunbar was an American theatrical performer and silent film actress.

Florence Oberle was a stage and film actress from Tarrytown, New York.

Günther Edward Arnold Schneider was an American actor of the stage and screen.

Edmund Fessenden Cobb was an American actor who appeared in more than 620 films between 1912 and 1966.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.

Allan Dwan was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter.

Jesse Woodson James was an American outlaw, bank and train robber, guerrilla and leader of the James–Younger Gang. Raised in the "Little Dixie" area of Western Missouri, James and his family maintained strong Southern sympathies. He and his brother Frank James joined pro-Confederate guerrillas known as "bushwhackers" operating in Missouri and Kansas during the American Civil War. As followers of William Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, they were accused of committing atrocities against Union soldiers and civilian abolitionists, including the Centralia Massacre in 1864.

Alexander Franklin James was a Confederate soldier and guerrilla; in the post-Civil War period, he was an outlaw. The older brother of outlaw Jesse James, Frank was also part of the James–Younger Gang.

Arthur Rolette Berthelet was an American actor, stage and film director, dialogue director, and scriptwriter. With regard to screen productions, he is best remembered for directing the 1916 crime drama Sherlock Holmes starring William Gillette, an actor who since 1899 had distinguished himself on the Broadway stage and at other prominent theatrical venues with his numerous, "definitive" portrayals of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional detective. In 1918, Berthelet also directed the controversial author and feminist Mary MacLane in Men Who Have Made Love to Me, a production notable for being among the first cinematic dramas to break the "fourth wall" and among the earliest American film projects to bring together on screen a woman's work as a published author, "scenarist", actor, and narrator through the use of intertitles.

Pieing or a pie attack is the act of throwing a pie at a person. In pieing, the goal is usually to humiliate the victim while avoiding actual injury. For this reason the pie is traditionally of the cream variety without a top crust, and is rarely if ever a hot pie. In Britain, a pie in the context of throwing is traditionally referred to as a custard pie. An aluminium pie pan or paper plate filled with whipped cream or more typically, shaving foam can substitute for a real pie.

Bernard "Ben" Turpin was an American comedian and actor, best remembered for his work in silent films. His trademarks were his cross-eyed appearance and adeptness at vigorous physical comedy. Turpin worked with notable performers such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, and was a part of the Mack Sennett studio team. He is believed to have been the first filmed "victim" of the pie in the face gag. When sound came to films, Turpin chose to retire, having invested profitably in real estate, although he did do occasional cameos.

Mr. Flip is a 1909 American silent comedy film made by Essanay Studios, directed by Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson and starring Ben Turpin. The film is about a man going to various locations in town where he flirts with the women, and they in turn get comedic revenge on him, causing him to leave their establishment, and leave them alone. This film is believed to have included the first cinematic instance of a comedian being hit in the face with a pie, later known as the Pie in the Face, when Ben Turpin was struck. However, the pie Turpin was hit with was hand-held, not thrown.

Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, many animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth, or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two- and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets, or clay figures.

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the third most populous in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is also the most populous city in the Midwest. As the seat of Cook County, the city is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, one of the largest in the world.

Colorado is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the eighth most extensive and 21st most populous U.S. state. The 2020 United States census enumerated the population of Colorado at 5,773,714, an increase of 14.80% since the 2010 census.

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California, with 815,201 residents as of 2021, and covers a land area of 46.9 square miles, at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include SF, San Fran, The City, Frisco, and Baghdad by the Bay.

Niles Canyon is a canyon in the San Francisco Bay Area formed by Alameda Creek, known for its heritage railroad and silent movie history. The canyon is largely in an unincorporated area of Alameda County, while the western portion of the canyon lies within the city limits of Fremont and Union City. The stretch of State Route 84 known as Niles Canyon Road traverses the length of the canyon from the Niles district of Fremont to the unincorporated town of Sunol. Two railroads also follow the same route down the canyon from Sunol to Niles: the old Southern Pacific track along the north side, now the Niles Canyon Railway, and the newer Union Pacific track a little to the south. At the west end of the canyon are the ruins of the Vallejo Flour Mill, which dates to 1853.

Francis Xavier Bushman was an American film actor and director. His career as a matinee idol started in 1911 in the silent film His Friend's Wife. He gained a large female following and was one of the biggest stars of the 1910s and early 1920s.

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.

Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson was an American actor, writer, film director, and film producer, who was the first star of the Western film genre. He was a founder and star for Essanay studios. In 1958, he received a special Academy Award for being a pioneer of the film industry.

Mack Sennett was a Canadian actor, filmmaker, and studio head, known as the 'King of Comedy'.

Keystone Studios was an early film studio founded in Edendale, California on July 4, 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from actor-writer Adam Kessel (1866–1946) and Charles O. Baumann (1874–1931), owners of the New York Motion Picture Company. The company, referred to at its office as The Keystone Film Company, filmed in and around Glendale and Silver Lake, Los Angeles for several years, and its films were distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation between 1912 and 1915. The Keystone film brand declined rapidly after Sennett went independent in 1917.

The Tramp is Charlie Chaplin's sixth film for Essanay Studios and was released in 1915. Directed by Chaplin, it was the fifth and last film made at Essanay's Niles, California studio. The Tramp marked the beginning of The Tramp character most known today, even though Chaplin played the character in earlier films. This film marked the first departure from his more slapstick character in the earlier films, with a sad ending and showing he cared for others, rather than just himself. The film co-stars Edna Purviance as the farmer's daughter and Ernest Van Pelt as Edna's father. The outdoor scenes were filmed on location near Niles.

Bernard "Ben" Turpin was an American comedian and actor, best remembered for his work in silent films. His trademarks were his cross-eyed appearance and adeptness at vigorous physical comedy. Turpin worked with notable performers such as Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, and was a part of the Mack Sennett studio team. He is believed to have been the first filmed "victim" of the pie in the face gag. When sound came to films, Turpin chose to retire, having invested profitably in real estate, although he did do occasional cameos.

Olga Edna Purviance was an American actress of the silent film era. She was the leading lady in many of Charlie Chaplin's early films and in a span of eight years, she appeared in over 30 films with him.

Leo White, was a German-born British-American film and stage actor who appeared as a character actor in many Charlie Chaplin films.

William Edward "Bud" Jamison was an American film actor. He appeared in 450 films between 1915 and 1944, notably appearing in many shorts with The Three Stooges as a foil.

John Rand was an American actor who started his film career in the 1910s, and most notably supported Charles Chaplin in over 20 of his subjects.

Gabriel Leuvielle, known professionally as Max Linder, was a French actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and comedian of the silent film era. His onscreen persona "Max" was one of the first recognizable recurring characters in film. He has also been cited as the "first international movie star" and "the first film star anywhere".

Vitagraph Studios, also known as the Vitagraph Company of America, was a United States motion picture studio. It was founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, as the American Vitagraph Company. By 1907, it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros. in 1925.

The Lubin Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture production company that produced silent films from 1896 to 1916. Lubin films were distributed with a Liberty Bell trademark.

The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company that was founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago. The company produced hundreds of early, widely distributed commercial moving pictures, including the first films starring Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, Colleen Moore, and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Selig Polyscope also established Southern California's first permanent movie studio, in the historic Edendale district of Los Angeles. Ending film production in 1918, the business, based on its film production animals, became an animal and prop supplier to other studios and a zoo and amusement park attraction in East Los Angeles until the Great Depression in the 1930s. In 1947, William Selig and several other early movie producers and directors shared a special Academy Honorary Award to acknowledge their role in building the film industry.

George Kleine was an American film producer and cinema pioneer.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. Founded in 1923 by four brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, the company established itself as a leader in the American film industry before diversifying into animation, television, and video games, and is one of the "Big Five" major American film studios, as well as a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

The Black Cat was an American fiction magazine launched in 1895 by Herman Umbstaetter, initially published in Boston, Massachusetts. It published only short stories, and had a reputation for originality and for encouraging new writers. Umbstaetter’s editorial approach was unusual in several ways: the cover price was low, at five cents; he paid on merit, not on story length; and he was willing to buy stories by new authors rather than insisting on well-known names. He frequently ran story contests to attract amateur writers. The magazine was immediately successful, and its circulation was boosted by the appearance in an early issue of “The Mysterious Card”, by Cleveland Moffett, which was so popular that two print runs of the issue it appeared in sold out.

Richard Travers was a Canadian film actor of the silent era. He appeared in more than 140 films between 1912 and 1930.

Marguerite Clayton was an American actress of the silent era. She appeared in more than 170 films between 1909 and 1928, many of which were westerns with Broncho Billy Anderson and Harry Carey.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of U.S. Constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party." The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law. However, it may act only within the context of a case in an area of law over which it has jurisdiction. The court may decide cases having political overtones, but has ruled that it does not have power to decide non-justiciable political questions.