 | |
| Industry | Motion pictures |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1894; 131 years ago (1894) |
| Founder | Thomas A. Edison |
| Defunct | 1918; 107 years ago (1918) |
| Headquarters | United States |
Number of locations |
|
Area served | United States,Europe |
Key people |
|
| Products | Silent films |
| Parent | Edison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918) |
Edison Studios was an Americanfilmproduction organization, owned by companies controlled by inventor and entrepreneur,Thomas Edison. Thestudio made close to 1,200 films, as part of theEdison Manufacturing Company (1894–1911) and thenThomas A. Edison, Inc. (1911–1918), until the studio's closing in 1918. Of that number, 54 werefeature length, and the remainder wereshorts.[1] All of the company's films have fallen into the public domain because they were released before 1928.
The first production facility wasEdison's Black Maria studio, inWest Orange, New Jersey, built in the winter of 1892–93. The second facility, a glass-enclosed rooftop studio built at 41 East 21st Street inManhattan's entertainment district, opened in 1901. In 1907, Edison had new facilities built, on Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place, in theBedford Park neighborhood ofthe Bronx.
Thomas Edison himself played no direct part in the making of his studios' films, beyond being the owner and appointingWilliam Gilmore as vice-president and general manager. Edison's assistantWilliam Kennedy Dickson, who supervised the development of Edison's motion picture system, produced the first Edison films intended for public exhibition, 1893–95. After Dickson's departure for theAmerican Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1895, he was replaced as director of production by cameramanWilliam Heise, then from 1896 to 1903, byJames H. White. When White left to supervise Edison's European interests in 1903, he was replaced byWilliam Markgraf (1903–1904), thenAlex T. Moore (1904–1909), andHorace G. Plimpton (1909–1915).
The first commercially exhibited motion pictures in the United States were from Edison, and premiered at aKinetoscope parlor in New York City on April 14, 1894. The program consisted of ten short films, each less than a minute long, of athletes, dancers, and other performers. After competitors began exhibiting films on screens, Edison introduced its own,Projecting Kinetoscope, in late 1896.
The earliest productions were brief "actualities", showing everything, from acrobats, to parades, to fire calls. But, competition from French and British story films, in the early 1900s, rapidly changed the market. By 1904, 85% of Edison's sales were from story films.
In December 1908, Edison led the formation of theMotion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers.[2] The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph,Essanay Studios,Kalem Company,George Kleine Productions,Lubin Studios,Georges Méliès,Pathé,Selig Studios, andVitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution through theGeneral Film Company. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty ofantitrust violation in October 1915,[3] and were dissolved.[4]
The breakup of the Trust by federal courts, undermonopoly laws, and the loss of European markets duringWorld War I, hurt Edison financially. Edison sold its film business, including the Bronx studio, on 30 March 1918, to theLincoln & Parker Film Company, ofMassachusetts.
Some of the studio's notable productions includeThe Kiss (1896);The Great Train Robbery (1903);Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1910);Frankenstein (1910), the first film adaptation of the novel;The Battle of Trafalgar (1911);What Happened to Mary (1912), one of the earliest film serials; andThe Land Beyond the Sunset (1912), which was directed byHarold M. Shaw and was later described by film historianWilliam K. Everson as "'the screen's first genuinely lyrical film'".[5] The company also produced a number of short "Kinetophone" sound films in 1913–1914 using a sophisticated acoustical recording system capable of picking up sound from 30 feet away. They released a number ofRaoul Barrécartoon films in 1915 and the firstfilm version of theRobert Louis Stevenson historical novelKidnapped.
Everson, calling Edison Studios "financially successful and artistically unambitious," wrote that other than directorsEdwin S. Porter andJohn Hancock Collins,
[T]he Edison studios never turned out a notable director, or even one above average. Nor did the Edison films show the sense of dynamic progress, that one gets, from studying theBiograph films, on a year-by-year basis. On the contrary, there is a sense of stagnation.[6]
However, new restorations and screenings of Edison films in recent years contradict Everson's statement; indeed, Everson citingThe Land Beyond the Sunset points out creativity at Edison beyond Porter and Collins, as it was directed byHarold M. Shaw (1877–1926), who later went on to a successful career directing in England, South Africa, and Lithuania before returning to the US in 1922. Other important directors who started at Edison includedOscar Apfel,Charles Brabin,Alan Crosland,J. Searle Dawley, andEdward H. Griffith.
