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Famous Players Film Company

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The Famous Players Film Company
IndustryMotion pictures
FoundedMay 8, 1912; 110 years ago (1912-05-08)
FounderAdolph Zukor
Defunct1916; 107 years ago (1916)
FateCorporate merger
SuccessorsFamous Players-Lasky
Paramount Pictures
Headquarters,

United States
PLAY: Andy's Dog Day (1921) by Wallace A. Carlson for Celebrated Players Film Corporation. An animated film with balloon texts, this short features the character Andy Gump, who is repeatedly harassed by dogs (duration 05:54).

The Famous Players Film Company was a film company founded in 1912 by Adolph Zukor in partnership with the Frohman brothers, powerful New York City theatre owners and producers.

Discover more about Famous Players Film Company related topics

Adolph Zukor

Adolph Zukor

Adolph Zukor was a Hungarian-American film producer best known as one of the three founders of Paramount Pictures. He produced one of America's first feature-length films, The Prisoner of Zenda, in 1913.

Frohman brothers

Frohman brothers

The Frohman brothers were American theatre owners, including on Broadway, and theatrical producers who also owned and operated motion picture production companies.

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.

Theatre

Theatre

Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον, itself from θεάομαι.

History

Discussions to form the company were held at The Lambs, a famous theater club where Charles and Daniel Frohman were members. The company advertised "Famous Players in Famous Plays" and its first release was the French film Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912) starring Sarah Bernhardt and Lou Tellegen. Its first actual production was The Count of Monte Cristo (1912, released 1913), directed by Edwin S. Porter and starring James O'Neill, the father of dramatist Eugene O'Neill.

In 1914, the company purchased the former headquarters of New York City's Ninth Mounted Cavalry unit at 221 West 26th Street in Manhattan.[1] The cavernous brick building made excellent filming space for Zukor, and the modernized site is still used today as Chelsea Television Studios.[1]

Hiring its performers straight from the New York City stage, Famous Players had an early roster of some of the city's biggest names including Marguerite Clark, Hazel Dawn, and H. B. Warner.[1] The company also featured cinema's biggest star of the era, Mary Pickford, and presented theater idol John Barrymore in his first two feature films.[1] The company produced both short and feature-length productions.

In 1916, the company merged with the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company to form Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which later became Paramount Pictures.[2]

Famous Players Fiction Studios

In 1915, the company established Famous Players Fiction Studios at 5300 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. The new studio's first film starred Mary Pickford.[3] The studio later became Clune Studio, then California Studio, then Gross-Krasne,[4] followed by Producers Studios Inc., and is now known as Raleigh Studios.[5] Raleigh Studios is known for being the site of Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, and Let's Make a Deal. It is one of the oldest studios in Hollywood.

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Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth

Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth

Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, Les Amours d'Élisabeth, Reine d'Angleterre or La reine Élisabeth is a 1912 feature 4-reel French silent film based on the love affair between Elizabeth I of England and the Earl of Essex. It was condensed from a play of the same name and directed by Louis Mercanton and Henri Desfontaines. It was shot in Paris and starred Sarah Bernhardt as Elizabeth and Lou Tellegen as Essex. Bernhardt by then was 68 and said of the film "This is my last chance at immortality". She and Tellegen were already romantically involved, and this was their second film together.

Lou Tellegen

Lou Tellegen

Lou Tellegen was a Dutch-born stage and film actor, film director and screenwriter.

Edwin S. Porter

Edwin S. Porter

Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, director, studio manager and cinematographer with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. Of over 250 films created by Porter, his most important include: What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City (1901); Jack and the Beanstalk (1902); Life of an American Fireman (1903); The Great Train Robbery (1903); The European Rest Cure (1904); The Kleptomaniac (1905); Life of a Cowboy (1906); Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908); and The Prisoner of Zenda (1913).

James O'Neill (actor, born 1847)

James O'Neill (actor, born 1847)

James O'Neill was an Irish-American theatre actor and the father of the American playwright Eugene O'Neill.

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day's Journey into Night is often included on lists of the finest U.S. plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. Located near the southern tip of New York State, Manhattan is based in the Eastern Time Zone and constitutes both the geographical and demographic center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. Over 58 million people live within 250 miles of Manhattan, which serves as New York City’s economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and the city’s historical birthplace. Residents of the outer boroughs of New York City often refer to Manhattan as "the city". Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world, and hosts the United Nations headquarters. Manhattan also serves as the headquarters of the global art market, with numerous art galleries and auction houses collectively hosting half of the world’s art auctions.

Hazel Dawn

Hazel Dawn

Hazel Dawn was an American stage, film and television actress, and violinist. She was born to a Mormon family in Utah, and studied music in Europe where her father was a missionary. Dawn rose to fame as a stage actress in Ivan Caryll's 1911 Broadway production of The Pink Lady, which ran for over 300 performances and earned Dawn the eponymous nickname. She performed extensively on Broadway and began work in film in 1914, appearing in a total of 13 feature films. Dawn died at age 98 in New York City.

H. B. Warner

H. B. Warner

Henry Byron Warner was an English film and theatre actor. He was popular during the silent era and played Jesus Christ in The King of Kings. In later years, he successfully moved into supporting roles and appeared in numerous films directed by Frank Capra. Warner's most recognizable role to modern audiences is Mr. Gower in the perennially shown film It's a Wonderful Life, directed by Capra. He appeared in the original 1937 version of Lost Horizon as Chang, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

John Barrymore

John Barrymore

John Barrymore was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. A member of the Drew and Barrymore theatrical families, he initially tried to avoid the stage, and briefly attempted a career as an artist, but appeared on stage together with his father Maurice in 1900, and then his sister Ethel the following year. He began his career in 1903 and first gained attention as a stage actor in light comedy, then high drama, culminating in productions of Justice (1916), Richard III (1920) and Hamlet (1922); his portrayal of Hamlet led to him being called the "greatest living American tragedian".

Jesse L. Lasky

Jesse L. Lasky

Jesse Louis Lasky was an American pioneer motion picture producer who was a key founder of what was to become Paramount Pictures, and father of screenwriter Jesse L. Lasky Jr.

Famous Players-Lasky

Famous Players-Lasky

Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was an American motion picture and distribution company formed on June 28, 1916, from the merger of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company—originally formed by Zukor as Famous Players in Famous Plays—and the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.

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.

Source: "Famous Players Film Company", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 28th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famous_Players_Film_Company.

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References
  1. ^ a b c d Alleman, Richard (2005). New York: The Movie Lover's Guide. New York City: Broadway Books. p. 231. ISBN 0-7679-1634-4.
  2. ^ "$12,500,000 MERGER OF FILM COMPANIES; Famous Players and Jesse L. Lasky Feature Unite in a New Corporation. ADOLPH ZUKOR, PRESIDENT Consolidate to Meet Present Conditions ;- 84 Pictures a Year to be Distributed by Paramount". The New York Times. 1916-06-29. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-26.
  3. ^ Raleigh Studios Archived May 26, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Gross-Krasne Buys California Studios. The Billboard (Archive: 1894–1960) 64.40 (Nov 29, 1952): 11
  5. ^ Gary Wayne. "Raleigh Studios". Seeing Stars.com. Retrieved 2013-10-10.
External links

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