9
The Film Industry Achieves Modest Stability: 1898–1901

Biograph at Its Zenith

In the years immediately following the Spanish-American War, the motion-picture industry gained a modicum of stability as exhibitors found permanent venues for their services, primarily in vaudeville houses. Since dependable outlets in turn required a larger and more regular supply of films, all aspects of the industry were affected. Biograph, in particular, prospered. By October 1898, Biograph's service was employed at twenty different locations. After the war, biographs remained at Keith's four vaudeville theaters on a permanent, year-round basis. Across the country, most other first-class vaudeville managers booked the biograph for at least one extended run per theatrical season, a policy that continued for the next two to three years. At Cook's Opera House in Rochester, New York, it played for twenty-one consecutive weeks during the 1898–1899 season, fifteen weeks over two runs during 1899–1900, and nine consecutive weeks during 1900–1901. The Orpheum theaters in San Francisco and Los Angeles shared a biograph during the same three seasons.¹

Biograph's mutoscope business also thrived. The machines were initially placed in saloons, amusement resorts, and railway stations and on steamers, where each earned between 750 and $1.80 per day. At bicycle races, sportsmen's exhibits, and dog shows, groups of three to fourteen mutoscopes earned as much as $5 per machine per day. Early in 1898, Biograph began to build a network of mutoscope parlors. The first opened at 1193 Broadway, New York City, where seventeen machines brought in $236.05 over seven days—an average of $2.32 per day per machine. Three additional Manhattan parlors soon appeared, with machines averaging between 92¢ and $1.98 per day. A parlor with twenty mutoscopes was established in Boston. When another opened in Philadelphia early the following year, it was received as something "entirely new to this city" but quickly "established itself with the amusement-loving public, including the women and children." Biograph estimated that mutoscopes would gross approximately $1.00 a day or $300 a year. With expenses (maintenance, commissions, and rental of new subjects) and a 15 percent ($45) royalty, investors could expect to earn $135 per year per machine. Regional subcompanies like the New England Mutoscope Company and the Ohio Mutoscope Company, formed in 1899, not only boosted the parent company's sales as they acquired mutoscopes and reels of cards but continued to pay substantial royalties.²

By mid 1899, when it had officially changed its name to the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, Biograph was part of an international organization that included eight sister companies: the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company (for which Dickson remained chief producer and cameraman), the Biograph and Muto-scope Company for France, Ltd., and the Deutsche Mutoskop and Biograph Gesellschaft in Berlin, as well as companies in the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Italy, and India.³ The viability of these organizations varied, as did their actual contributions of films to the parent company. Biograph's "remarkable series of panoramic views of Venice," for example, were taken by W. K. L. Dickson, not by the Italian organization. In early September 1899, Dickson also went to Gibraltar, at the entrance to the Mediterranean, and took a series of views of Admiral Dewey and his fleet on their way to the United States.⁴ These were shot for American company and sent directly to the New York office, where they arrived prior to Dewey. As the war hero's return stirred the nation, Admiral Dewey Receiving His Mail (No. 1234), Officers of the "Olympia" (No. 1238) and "Sagasta," Admiral Dewey'S Pet Pig (No. 1240) were shown to enthusiastic audiences. Assuring an international selection of films and an added market for the American product, Biograph's network of sister companies reached its apex at about this time.

The American Mutoscope Company's production levels remained high:

By mid April 1899, when Biograph records become more detailed, the company had four main cameramen: Frederick S. Armitage, "Billy" Bitzer, Arthur Marvin, and C. Fred Ackerman. In addition, head producer Wallace McCutcheon occasionally acted as cameraman, primarily for studio productions. (Eugène Lauste also made a series of short films in New Haven in May 1899.) These cinematographers periodically shifted assignments, either as individuals rose and fell in the esteem of executives or to ensure that no one was constantly on the road. F. S. Armitage shot the vast majority of studio films from April 1899 to May 1900, when Arthur Marvin took over and Armitage was sent out on location. After a few months, Armitage returned and they shared the duties. Despite what he suggests in his memoirs, Bitzer would not photograph a significant number of studio or acted films until 1903.

Biograph was the only American company to send a cameraman to the Philippines, where the U.S. military was fighting a dirty guerrilla war against the native independence movement. There, from November 1899 until early March 1900, C. Fred Ackerman took scenes of America's newest territorial acquisition and U.S. troops fighting to secure it: Co. "L" Thirty-Third Infantry Going to Firing Line (No. 1350), Repelling the Enemy (No. 1383), and Making Manila Rope (No. 1384). This ambitious undertaking was matched by Biograph's English sister company, which sent W. K. L. Dickson to South Africa to film the Boer War. Ackerman returned to the Far East in September 1900 and shot films in China during the Boxer Rebellion (Sixth Cavalry Assaulting South Gate of Pekin, No. 1763; In the Forbidden City, No. 1766). Home from his Far East assignment, Ackerman assumed the role of projectionist and teamed up with war correspondent Thomas F. Millard. Together they toured the United States presenting the illustrated lecture "War in China" which included Ackerman's own lantern slides as well as his biograph films. In Boston their lecture was "classed among the most interesting of the season's entertainments," and some of the pictures were said to be "thrilling enough to arouse the patriotism of the most apathetic soul."⁵ Biograph's propagandistic stance continued.

As Ackerman's activities suggest, the line between photographer and projector operator was a thin one at Biograph. Bitzer had started out as a projectionist (and Dickson's camera assistant) before becoming a cinematographer. F. A. Dobson, who ran a biograph at the Lyceum Theater in Memphis, Tennessee, for eight weeks late in 1898, would work as a Biograph cameraman from June 1904 to June 1907. Cameramen often had more than one job. Bitzer not only made films but was a troubleshooter, responsible for keeping projectors in running order.⁶ Avoiding narrow specialization, many of Biograph's personnel thus familiarized themselves with different phases of cinema practice.

Biograph organized production along different lines depending on the choice of subject matter and the circumstances under which it was to be filmed. What has been termed the cameraman system was frequently used for shooting actualities.⁷ Here a cameraman, usually part of a team, was responsible for production. Bitzer, for example, headed a three-man unit while taking local views in Boston. As the equipment became easier to handle, a cinematographer (like Ackerman) may have occasionally functioned on his own. Yet cameramen frequently worked closely with Wallace McCutcheon, who, as general manager, assumed the role of producer. He arranged the filming of actualities even when he was not directly responsible for the camera. As the New York Clipper remarked more than once, "Wallace McCutcheon keeps that machine in the front rank of animated picture machines." When the New York Naval Parade steamed up the Hudson on 20 August 1898, "McCutcheon was on hand with a tug and secured a striking reproduction of the seven battle scarred victors in parade, and the biograph added another link to its chain of success."⁸ Important news events, such as New York's Dewey celebration in late September 1899 and the America's Cup races that immediately followed, involved complex logistics and extensive filming with multiple cameras. The results justified the expense: these films became the featured act at Keith's and other theaters.

In its dual role as production entity and exhibition service, Biograph was in a unique position to meet the demands of amusement managers by making films of particular interest to a specific theater's patrons. Biograph's methods for delivering these scenes took two principal forms. In some instances, the cameraman would visit a gathering of fraternal organizations or military units and selectively photograph groups hailing from cities where Biograph was showing or would soon be showing its films. During the Spanish-American War, for example, cameramen filmed pertinent regiments at various army camps. After the war, a Biograph cameraman shot at least a dozen views of the Knights Templar parade in Pittsburgh on 11 October 1898, including St. Bernard Commandery, Chicago (No. 813), Boston Commandery

(No. 821), and The Grand Commandery of New York State (No. 822). When Boston Commandery was shown at Keith's Boston vaudeville house, "the new pictures made the biggest hit of the program."⁹

In other instances, a cameraman traveled to a specific city and took various local views for use on the contracting theater's bill. Thus, in early April 1899, an unknown cameraman (probably Billy Bitzer) went to Providence and shot Providence Fire Department (No. 917), Market Square, Providence, Rhode Island (No. 920), and other scenes. In late August F. S. Armitage took eight views of Rochester, New York. That fall, during its eleven-week run, Biograph showed a new local view each week except for the first and last weeks (with many of these views reprised for the finale). On occasion, a special trip might yield only a single subject, as when Arthur Marvin photographed Heroes of Luzon (No. 1199), a scene of President McKinley reviewing troops in Pittsburgh on 28 August 1899. At the other extreme, Bitzer stayed in the Boston area for most of 1899 (since he had grown up in nearby Roxbury, he was a logical choice). By this stage the resulting pictures were intended primarily for Keith's Boston house.

Meanwhile the Biograph camera itself was undergoing significant modifications. By early 1899, its tripod had a panning head that turned smoothly and quickly, yielding results far superior to any achieved by the Edison group. The new head was employed for In the Grip of the Blizzard (No. 875) in mid February and then Panoramic View of Niagara Falls in Winter (No. 878, copyrighted as Niagara Falls, Winter), which contains a sweeping panorama of about ninety degrees moving from left to right and then reversing itself. Biograph employed the same apparatus several times during the next months, but it was not applied to fictional film until September 1900, when Bitzer shot Love in the Suburbs (No. 1632), a one-shot comedy. By this time, Bitzer was using an experimental, hand-cranked camera that had been developed and tested by Marvin and Casier earlier that year. Much more portable than earlier models, it also was used by him while he was photographing the Galveston disaster that same month.¹⁰

Studio productions were made by collaborative teams and not, as Bitzer's memoirs suggest, spontaneously created by individual cameramen. Even simple gags required scenarios, sets, and careful planning, and the potential expense in wasted stock alone was high enough to concern Biograph executives. Most studio comedies consisted of about 132 feet of 70-mm film. Since Biograph's camera and projectors consumed roughly 4 feet of film per second, a 132-foot subject lasted less than 35 seconds.¹¹ Although the length was sometimes doubled in 1899 and 1900, Biograph productions developed a reputation for being short and rarely very complex.

A production still from The X-Ray Mirror (No. 1179), taken 17 July 1899, documents the personnel involved in such productions: five men off-camera and three women and a man performing. One man (McCutcheon) is clearly giving directions, since a second (Frank J. Marion?) stands by his right shoulder, timing the scene. Three stagehands also watch the proceedings. In addition, a camera operator may be in the booth with the camera.¹² Carefully rehearsed comic timing is evident in A Good Shot (No. 1024), which Armitage filmed on the rooftop. The set is the backyard of a house, where a girl holds a target attached to a broom while a boy shoots at it with his rifle. The first time everything works well, but then Bridget (the Irish maid, played by a hefty man in drag) comes out and does some laundry. The children, enjoying their activity, repeat it: this time Bridget feels the charge in her behind. The gag is thus set up by the successful trial, allowing the audience to anticipate and enjoy the denouement.

Careful planning was particularly evident in a few multi-shot fiction narratives that Biograph made in 1900, by which time the company was lagging behind many domestic and foreign rivals in this area.¹³ That May, Arthur Marvin shot and McCutcheon produced The Downward Path (NOS. 1471–1475) with each scene listed separately in the catalog. The series, according to the catalog, was "intended to convey a moral lesson in the career of a young country girl who succumbs to temptations, and becomes involved in the wickedness of a big city." The country lass is seduced by a book agent who "pictures to her the fascinations of the city" (The Cheeky Book Agent). She flees from her family and elopes with the book agent (She Ran Away with the City Man). In the city, she becomes a streetwalker, and the book agent prevents her from being rescued by her aged parents (The Girl Who Went Astray). She takes a job in a Bowery concert hall as a dancer and prostitute (The New Soubrette). Finally, the fallen woman is deserted by the book agent and despairingly commits suicide with carbolic acid (In Suicide Hall). One month later, Marvin photographed the five-part A Career of Crime, which showed the ruin of a young man. Although he nabs a thief at his new job, the youth is soon

on the downward path as well. Losing his hard-earned money at the horse races, he turns to a life of crime. While robbing a safe, the young man kills a banker and afterward indulges his wanton desires in a disreputable saloon, only to be captured by the police. He finally pays for the crime in the electric chair. Here again, the tale recalls a Briggs lantern-slide series, "Story of a Country Boy."

In both multi-shot subjects, key moments of conflict are represented in a rudimentary fashion; the woman's seduction by the agent, for example, is stated rather than shown. The characters lack any psychology or individuality: why and how the young man ends up at the racetrack is never explained. Yet these brief scenes, which appropriated situations if not complete narratives from popular melodramas, laid out many themes found in subsequent American dramatic films. The Downward Path already emphasizes the central role of the family; the parents' failed attempts to rescue their daughter and their grief over her death intensify the moral lesson. The family is the principal obstacle to corruption, the key social institution in the struggle against evil. By contrast, the policeman, a representative of the law and the state, is indifferent to the woman's plight in scene 3 and shrugs off her death at the denouement. The evil of the large, impersonal city is contrasted to the innocence of the countryside. The city slicker corrupts an unsuspecting country girl, and the upright country boy, ruined by the racetrack, eventually turns to murder. At the same time, the countryside is threatened by the city, thus evoking not only an economic reality but the social counterpart of industrialization: the massive migration of rural Americans into urban areas, where they encountered a harsh and impersonal world.

Nonetheless, when these "dramas" (actually listed under "Miscellaneous Views" in Biograph's 1902 catalog) are compared to Biograph's many comedies and sexually suggestive scenes, certain contradictions emerge. The gay young women who display their bodies before the camera are meant to be savored and enjoyed. Their "downward path"' is not emphasized lest it interfere with the pleasure of viewing. The wisdom of authority (the father, who throws out the book agent) is venerated in the dramas but lampooned in the comedies. Tramps and burglars are distanced from the viewer through burlesque. The male spectator does not pause to think that he could enter such a downward spiral. Film comedy and film melodrama both confront urbanization and industrialization, just as both articulate progressive and conservative values—but in inverted relation to each other. In fact, the moralizing dramas were atypical of most Biograph productions, which epitomized the freedom, excitement, and opportunity of city life. They played with and/or appealed to people's desires—sexual desire; the desire for sophistication; the desire to belong, to succeed, to consume.¹⁴

35-mm Exhibitors Experience an Interim Period of Difficulty

The 35-mm section of the industry did not achieve commercial stability as readily as Biograph. Although the Spanish-American War had rescued these exhibitors from commercial difficulty, unsettling conditions returned at its end. The number of theaters showing films in New York City again declined; by late September 1898, there were only four prominent ones: Keith's, the Eden Musee, Proctor's Pleasure Palace, and Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theater. At Proctor's houses, Vitagraph supplemented war-related scenes with its own version of Vanishing Lady in September

and a short comedy, The Burglar on the Roof, in early October. The press commended the exhibition service for its efforts; nonetheless, its run at the Pleasure Palace was terminated in early November, "much to the relief of the regular patrons."¹⁵ A month later, Vitagraph's presentations at the Twenty-third Street Theater ended as well, leaving the function of a visual newspaper to be continued by Tobey's views on the stereopticon. By the end of the year, the Eden Musee was the only New York theater regularly showing 35-mm films. Exhibitors had to scramble for short-term opportunities in order to survive.

The stability of the 35-mm industry was made even more uncertain as Edison continued to sue competitors, often with the encouragement of its licensee, American Vitagraph, which tried to replace the unlucky defendants in the theaters. Although Eberhard Schneider attempted to join the Edison group, his efforts were not successful, and he was served with a subpoena just before Christmas. When he failed to appear in court, an injunction, widely publicized by the Edison Company, was issued against him. Schneider claimed, however, that he had been tricked into going to the company's offices on the court date after being promised a license. Whatever the cause, he was required to show only Edison films on his programs. George Huber, manager of Huber's Museum, was also sued for patent infringement after he hired several unlicensed exhibitors, culminating with d'Hauterives's historiographe in April 1899. In response, Huber simply removed all films from his bill.¹⁶

With biographs in the top vaudeville theaters, 35-mm exhibitors generally depended on outlets in second- or third-class houses for the 1898–1899 season. In Boston, Austin & Stone's Museum offered films during most of that period (though often switching services). In San Francisco, 35-mm films were shown regularly at the Chutes (a mostly outdoor entertainment center) and later also at A. W. Furst's small Cineograph Theater, which opened sometime in 1899 and offered a picture show for ten cents. Venues of any kind were scarce. In St. Louis, only after Biograph concluded a three-month stay did 35-mm showmen win a few brief contracts over the remainder of the theatrical season. In Chicago, the biograph was at two theaters during the fall of 1898, while 35-mm films were rarely shown (or at least advertised). For many weeks during the winter and spring of 1899, Chicago's commercial theaters were not showing films of any kind. Yet this retreat was a brief pause while vaudeville managers absorbed the lessons of the Spanish-American War. The war had taught them that under the proper circumstances motion pictures could act as a headline attraction on the bill. Yet to benefit fully from such circumstances, vaudeville managers had to nurture the exhibition services they called upon.

35-mm Moving Pictures Become a Permanent Vaudeville Attraction

The bleak situation endured by 35-mm exhibitors changed dramatically during the course of 1899 as vaudeville theaters established permanent relations with exhibition services. Lubin's cineograph was first: returning to Bradenburgh's museum in Philadelphia on 30 January, it henceforth remained on the bill whenever the amusement center was open (it closed during the summer). American Vitagraph was next: the vitagraph opened at Tony Pastor's Theater in New York City on 19 June and provided what the New York Clipper called "an entertaining part of the programme."¹⁷ With their own production capabilities, the Vitagraph partners offered an effective, timely service that rivaled the biograph at Keith's. Continued enthusiasm gave it a permanent place on Pastor's vaudeville bill for the next nine years.

Pastor's decision to hire Vitagraph for an indefinite run paid rich dividends when Admiral Dewey arrived in New York City on 26 September to celebrate his victory over the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. As a theatrical journal subsequently reported: "The American Vitagraph has been excelling in enterprise during the past week. Several views were taken at the Olympia [the Admiral's flagship] and projected here the evening of the same day, and the Dewey land parade was seen on Saturday evening, five hours after the views were taken. The vitagraph is a popular fixture here and continually gains in favor."¹⁸ Vitagraph cameramen then followed Dewey to Washington and filmed his reception there on 3 October. The views were shown the following day at Pastor's matinee. Following a rough chronological order, Vitagraph's programs offered a narrative account of "Dewey's Doings":

• A panoramic view of the Olympia
• Receiving of Mayor Van Wyck and the reception committee by Admiral Dewey
• Departure of Mayor Van Wyck and the committee
• Arrival of Dewey at the city hall
• Presentation of the loving cup to Dewey by Mayor Van Wyck at the city hall
• Start of the Dewey parade from Grant's Tomb, led by Sousa's band
• The West Point Cadets
• Dewey reviewing the parade at the Dewey Arch
• Parade from the White House, Washington, led by Dewey and President McKinley
• Presentation of the sword to Dewey by Secretary Long and President McKinley¹⁹

Proctor's theaters did not show films of the Dewey celebration, although the Twenty-third Street house celebrated the admiral's arrival by exhibiting a cycloramic oil painting of the Manila bombardment. Stereopticon slides of Dewey's reception were also projected, but moving pictures shown at other houses received much more favorable comment in the press. Proctor's was outdone again the following week on the occasion of the America's Cup yacht races. While Vitagraph received applause for showing pictures of the events at Pastor's and Koster & Bial's Music Hall only a few hours after their occurrence, Proctor's opted for a cumbersome and ultimately less interesting presentation: the positions of the boats on the race course were reported to the theater by Marconi's wireless and their progress charted on an immense map between acts.²⁰ Since the races occurred during the day such a map was useless during the evening, when most patrons attended the theater—and on off-racing days as well.

When manager J. Austin Fynes and owner F. F. Proctor saw the error of their ways, they quickly formalized a relationship with William Paley, famed for his films of the Spanish-American War. His kalatechnoscope opened on 9 October at Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theater and two weeks later at the Pleasure Palace, where Paley soon had an office and lab facilities that enabled him to put films on the screen with maximum speed. Paley filmed a vessel that caught fire in Long Island Sound off Rye, New York, on 14 October and then showed the results, The Burning of the "Nutmeg State," that same evening. He filmed Automobile Parade and Dick Crocker Leaving Tammany Hall in November and quickly put them on the screen.²¹ In the trade papers, Fynes declared:

The secret of Moving Pictures consists in the TIMELINESS. Without that feature such an Exhibition must inevitably fail. I regard the Kalatechnoscope as incontestibly the most perfect and most thoroughly Up-to-date Machine in existence. It has proved its superior qualities in these Houses and I have booked it for an indefinite run (Clipper, 4 November 1899, p. 756).

The kalatechnoscope was soon at Proctor's house in Albany, New York, as well, and once the vaudeville impresario took over the Fifth Avenue Theater in May 1900 and the 125th Street Theater in August, Paley had his service in five Proctor houses on a full-time basis. The opening of Proctor's Montreal theater in March 1901 provided Paley with a sixth permanent outlet. Although Paley exhibited in other venues, these contracts were of brief duration; Proctor was to remain his key customer in the years ahead.

The general popularity of moving pictures at this time is underscored by Paleyrelated evidence. A photograph of Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theater in 1900 shows that over the marquee there was a sign in bright lights announcing "Moving Pictures." The kalatechnoscope was also given a prominent role in Charles Frohman's theatrical production of Hearts Are Trumps, which opened at New York's Garden Theater on 21 February 1900. According to Cecil Raleigh's script, a music-hall girl lures a lecherous, evil earl to a studio and has him surreptitiously filmed as they do a dance. Later, after the nobleman's perfidious nature is revealed, he is humiliated—and the music hall is saved from bankruptcy—when the films are shown to delighted crowds.²² For the play's story to be believable, film exhibitions had to be seen as having drawing power, particularly when they could offer a popular subject.

Another exhibition service that established a permanent outlet in New York City was the newly formed Kinetograph Company. This enterprise had two silent partners: James White, head of Edison's kinetograph department, and John Schermerhorn, assistant general manager of the Edison Manufacturing Company and also William Gilmore's brother-in-law. The third, public partner was Percival Waters, a small, New York-based jobber of Edison films and former Vitascope Company employee. Since the Edison Company—unlike its principal licensees and rivals—did not have its own exhibition service, this newly formed partnership partially filled the void. Although Waters ran the enterprise, White and Schermerhorn sent business to him, extended him several thousand dollars worth of credit, and made films that would help their joint enterprise.²³ In November 1899, Waters' kinetograph service opened at Huber's Fourteenth Street Museum, where it remained for many years.

By the end of 1900, eight New York theaters—seven of them vaudeville houses—were showing moving pictures on a permanent basis. These managers had come to conceive of films quite differently from other vaudeville turns. They were permanent fixtures, not acts booked for a few weeks or months at a time. (Not coincidentally the widespread diffusion of the reframing device at this time, improved exhibitions and made a permanent service more attractive.) Vaudeville managers had come to provide film companies with steady commercial outlets that enabled them to retain the necessary staff and resources to cover important news events and provide a reliable service.

The White Rats Strike

According to one contemporary observer, Robert Grau, film exhibition in vaudeville houses assumed special prominence and reached a quantitative peak with the White Rats vaudeville strike of 1901. While this claim has been alternately accepted and contested, historians have generally shied away from the extensive research necessary for even a preliminary assessment.²⁴ On 21 February, the White Rats of America, an organization of vaudeville performers, walked out of the theaters controlled by the Eastern members of the Association of Vaudeville Managers, which included Benjamin F. Keith, F. F. Proctor, P. B. Chase in Washington, and Hyde & Behman and Percy Williams in Brooklyn. For Grau, who was then a theatrical agent, "the situation proved not only an opportunity but a harvest," reported the New York Dramatic Mirror on 2 March. "He met the difficulty thoroughly and didn't sleep for seventy-two hours." Scouring New York's metropolitan area for acts to place in these short-handed houses, Grau experienced the crisis firsthand.

The strike appears to have had little impact on the number of machines used in Manhattan, Boston, and several other cities, since the houses that were struck already exhibited motion pictures on a regular basis. In these places, however, films often assumed a more important role insofar as they filled in for missing acts.²⁵ Not surprisingly, evidence for such activities is sketchy, since the newspapers generally played down the troubles of managers who advertised prominently in their pages.

The situation was quite different in Brooklyn, where not a single vaudeville house showed films on a permanent basis prior to the strike. Although Percy Williams had occasionally placed the vitagraph in his three theaters since January 1899, many weeks went by when films were not shown in any Brooklyn house. As the strike began, one Williams venue happened to be showing films (The McGovern-Gans Fight), but it belonged to a touring vaudeville company. By the following week, however, the vitagraph was playing in all three of Williams' locations, and the biograph became a last-minute addition at Hyde & Behman's. Thus, as the strike went into its first full week, four Brooklyn vaudeville houses had added films.

Managers were clearly ready to use films to fight the strike and fill out their bills. Just as clearly, the motion-picture companies were pleased to accommodate them. It is worth noting, moreover, that those houses supporting the White Rats, such as Koster & Bial's, did not have any motion pictures on their bills during the strike. Vaudevillians generally evinced negative attitudes toward motion pictures, seeing them as a money-saving device for management. Although Brooklyn was an extreme example, the Biograph Company reported that "there are more Biographs playing in the leading vaudeville theatres of the United States than have been in any week since moving pictures were invented."²⁶ In Washington, P. B. Chase hired the biograph to fill out his strike-battered bill and kept it there for almost four months. Generally, the boom was short-lived. In Brooklyn, Hyde & Behman quickly dropped the biograph, and Williams soon retained the services of only one vitagraph, which he rotated among his theaters. Nonetheless, Vitagraph had won a new, permanent outlet and cemented relations with an important manager.

The impact of motion pictures on the White Rats strike, and vice versa, was thus real if modest. Films provided only one of several ways to flesh out bills depleted by striking performers. In some cases, the pictures made a difference in the managers' ability to operate their houses, but they were not in themselves decisive. Nevertheless, the exhibition services had proved that they were the managers' allies, bringing the two groups closer together. Perhaps this saved some outlets for films during the "chaser period" that would follow. (See chapter 10.) Grau therefore seems a credible chronicler of events, but with an important proviso: generalizing from his own experiences with the Brooklyn houses, where the situation was the most serious, he overstated the nationwide significance of this incident.²⁷

Steady outlets and relative prosperity required new organizational structures. The heads of successful 35-mm exhibition services became less involved in actually presenting the films and focused more on management. At Vitagraph, Blackton and Smith were responsible for keeping accounts as well as acquiring and making new films, while Rock booked theaters and handled commercial relations. Others were hired to serve as projectionists. (Nonetheless, all three partners continued to pursue outside interests: magic work for Smith, chalk acts for Blackton, and slot machines for Rock.) The activities of traveling exhibitor Lyman Howe also reflected this separation of planning and execution. Beginning with the 1899–1900 theatrical season, he stopped traveling with his company and instead established a base in his hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to devote himself to planning and administration. Freed from actual performances, Howe cultivated his contacts with New York producers, enriched his selection of films, and improved the quality of his exhibitions.

As they sought to change programs each week at their permanent venues (a goal not always attained), American exhibition services benefited from a growing diversity of films from foreign sources. Walter Wainwright, William Rock's original partner in the Louisiana Vitascope enterprise, acted as Vitagraph's special London agent, thus assuring an attractive supply of European subjects. In 1900 American Vitagraph had 246 non-Edison films in its collection, 117 of which were made in England and 66 in France. Méliès's trick films in particular were reported to have "created no end of merriment" among American spectators and proved an invaluable antidote to a year of war topicals; by 1899 Lubin boasted two such trick films, both of which he called A Trip to the Moon (one was undoubtedly La Lune À un mÈtre, otherwise known in English as The Astronomer's Dream).²⁸ The most popular and influential Méliès's film was Cinderella, which first appeared in the United States during the 1899 Christmas holidays. Its use of dissolves when shifting from scene to scene was soon emulated by Blackton and Smith (Congress of Nations © 16 November 1900) and then others, but the unprecedented spectacle of Cinderella exceeded any American accomplishment for some time. Over the next few years the film was a featured attraction wherever it played, underscoring both the importance of international contacts and the popularity of more ambitious films. American production, weakened by Edison's patent suits, was increasingly supplemented by overseas productions.

Edison and His Licensees

The symbiotic relationship between the Edison Manufacturing Company and its licensed affiliates functioned effectively in many situations. To cover the Dewey celebration, Edison manager James White organized and coordinated eight camera crews, many composed of licensed filmmakers. By relying on its licensees, the Edison group covered more locations than Biograph. Arrangements among the licensees were handled equitably as prints simultaneously reached all the license-affiliated theaters. The subjects were then quickly copyrighted and offered for sale to other exhibitors, enabling Edison to achieve a profit. Edison also depended on Vitagraph for developing and duping uncopyrighted Lubin and Amet films, which it then marketed.

Perhaps half of the films sold by the Edison Company in the period between 1898 and 1900 were made by its licensees, while the other half were made by White and Heise. By the end of the century, acted films had become a larger part of the Edison Company's repertoire: approximately 40 percent in 1899 (32 of Edison's 77 copyrighted subjects) and in 1900 (27 of 69). Vitagraph supplied many popular comedies (Maude's Naughty Little Brother copyrighted by Edison 16 November 1900) and various trick films (Hte Clown and the Alchemist copyrighted by Edison 16 November 1900). Blackton and Smith combined the mysterious and comic in A Visit to the Spiritualist, which, according to the Edison catalog of March 1900, was "acknowledged by exhibitors to be the funniest of all moving magical films." Using double exposures and stop-action techniques, the film showed a country rube who is mesmerized by a spiritualist and "sees funny things." A handkerchief turns into a ghost. The rube tries to shed his clothes, but they jump back onto his body. The naive farmer is once again a victim of the sophisticated city and modern technology, in this case the motion-picture camera.

After James White recovered from an illness contracted in the Far East, he assumed multiple roles: producer, salesman, department executive, cameraman, and actor. Blessed with a sparkling personality, the kinetograph department manager used his position to enjoy life to its fullest. He not only made the Adventures of Jones series, a group of nine short comedies that were shot intermittently during 1899 and 1900, but sometimes played the title role. In these brief vignettes, Jones is a clubman, a well-to-do businessman (the catalog description suggests a broker) who indulges in alcohol and extramarital sex, and must often pay for his excesses. In Jones' Return from the Club, a fight ensues after the drunkard insults and abuses a helpful policeman. In Why Mrs. Jones Got a Divorce, Jones seduces the pretty cook, only to be discovered by his wife. White also produced reenactments of military battles taking place in the Philippines (Advance of Kansas Volunteers at Caloocan and Filipinos Retreat from Trenches) and South Africa (Battle of Mafeking). Like McCutcheon, this manager performed many functions that would later be assigned to different individuals and whole departments.

James White may have been a problematic executive, but he understood what many exhibitors wanted: groups of related films that could be sequenced into larger units. During the summer of 1900, he visited the Paris Exposition, enjoyed the sights, and shot at least sixteen films (Panorama of Paris Exposition, from the Seine). On his trip, he may also have picked up a new piece of camera equipment—a panning head for the tripod—since the camera now swiveled with much greater ease than in earlier Edison productions. The photographer indulged the camera's new-found freedom in Panorama of Place de l' OpÉra, where his framing follows one carriage, then picks up and follows a bus, and finally assumes a static position as the frantic vehicles move on- and off-screen. For Panorama of Eiffel Tower, White moved the camera vertically, first showing the base of the tower, then tilting up to its top, and finally returning to eye level. Edison camera pans, however, still lacked the evenness and precision found in Biograph's camera movements from this period.

The vast majority of films at this time still consisted of one shot, but in the latter part of 1899 White made several multi-shot films. As with the 1897 Suburban Handicap, he was ready to impose his editorial ideas when the situation seemed appropriate. Shoot the Chutes Series showed that familiar pastime from three different vantage points. The camera was placed first at the bottom of the chutes, then at the top looking down the ramp, and finally in a boat as it went down the ramp and into the basin. With two or more takes made from each camera position, the film totaled 275 feet. White made two multi-shot acted films late in 1899 as well, both of which were "picture songs," an application of the song-slide idea to motion pictures. As described in the March 1900 Edison catalog, the more elaborate was the six-shot Love and War, in which a soldier is promoted to the rank of captain for bravery, meets and marries a Red Cross girl, and returns home to his parents. The Edison Company also supplied the necessary words and music. The illustrated-song idea allowed the production company to assume responsibility for the complete organization of picture and sound. Since these appropriations of editorial control remained infrequent, however, they did not challenge the exhibitor's dominant responsibility for the arrangement of scenes.

Although Edison's licensing arrangements provided his company with a diversity of film subjects for its customers, the licensor-licensee relationship did not work as well as the inventor must have initially expected. Four of the five New York-based exhibition services with permanent outlets were licensees, yet the Edison Company did not prosper. Its profits from film sales fell from more than $24,000 a year for the 1896–1897 and 1897–1898 business years to sums fluctuating between approximately $13,000 and $20,000 for each of the following three years. Gross income from such sales was also considerably reduced. While the sale price of films had been driven down during the course of 1898 to fifteen cents a foot, the number of feet sold either remained steady or decreased slightly.

The licensing arrangement often benefited the licensees more than the licensor. Since licensed exhibitors made their own films, their demand for Edison's product was much lower than if they had been without this capability. In addition, many licensee activities were such that Edison could not make a profit. Frequently, news films were not turned over to Edison until their economic value had faded. Vitagraph sometimes serviced its clients by giving them special films that would have been of no interest to anyone else. When the First American Vaudeville Excursion, which toured with a vitagraph, went to Cuba early in 1899, a film was made of the members' departure, developed on board ship, and shown in a Havana theater on their arrival. Likewise, when Paley's kalatechnoscope presented local views in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1900, the trade press reported that they "drew very heavily." But while Paley received substantial remuneration from this undertaking, the films were of no economic value to Edison (they were neither copyrighted nor offered for sale).²⁹ Since Paley's and Vitagraph's incomes were derived chiefly from their exhibitions, they considered film sales of little importance. Yet such sales were the keystone of Edison's motion-picture business.

Edison, frustrated by his licensing arrangements, tried to shift the commercial balance in his favor when he contracted with the Klondike Exposition Company in March 1899. Organized by Thomas Crahan of Montana, the Klondike Exposition Company acquired two large-format motion-picture cameras that the Edison Company had built the previous year, in clear emulation of Biograph. That summer,

accompanied by Edison's motion-picture expert Robert K. Bonine, Crahan went to Alaska to make films for possible display at the 1900 Paris Exposition. From the exhibition of these films, Edison was to receive 20 percent of the net receipts, but the cameras failed to operate properly, and the company exhausted its cash long before any films were ready. Thus this attempt to establish a new kind of licensing arrangement failed.

The symbiosis between Edison and his licensees became increasingly tense. Perhaps attempting to redefine the relationship, Edison failed to acknowledge (through either cash or credits) Vitagraph's royalties on print sales. Finally, "Pop" Rock threatened to sue for an accounting. As a result, Edison terminated Vitagraph's license on 20 January 1900 and forbade any activities that did not use Edison films and machines. Since such restrictions were certain to ruin Vitagraph's business, the Vitagraph partners responded by turning their company over to a new corporation of the same name that was owned by George S. W. Arthur, Albert Smith's father-in-law, and Ronald Reader, an earlier associate of Blackton and Smith from their days on the Lyceum circuit. This "new" management then rehired the "old" partners as employees. Forbidden to violate Edison's patents, Blackton and Smith simply had someone else turn the camera crank. While this bold ruse allowed Vitagraph to continue its operations for a time, Edison challenged the evasion in court. Judge E. Henry Lacombe believed that Blackton and Smith had conspired to disobey the court's earlier injunction and was ready to punish them with imprisonment. He insisted, however, that Edison first pay for a close examination of the new corporation and its stockholders.

In the fall of 1900, before further action was taken, the Edison Company reconciled its differences with Vitagraph. White was eager to market the Happy Hooligan Series, a group of comedies that Blackton and Smith had made over the summer. When a hurricane struck Galveston, Texas, in September 1900, Albert Smith traveled to the devasted town and photographed the aftermath. Using the new tripod head, he filmed the ruins in long, sweeping panoramas. Eight subjects, including Searching Ruins on Broadway, Galveston, for Dead Bodies, were copyrighted, and between seventeen and thirty-five positive prints of each subject were sold. In resuming a licensee relationship with Edison, the new American Vitagraph Company acknowledged Edison's patents (making future attempts to avoid court injunctions impossible) and agreed to pay Edison a 10 percent royalty on its exhibition income. This seemed certain to provide Edison with a new source of profits from his licensee. Similar arrangements also may have been made with Paley.

Edison faced many difficulties in the motion-picture field: not only were profits low, and licensees recalcitrant, but Biograph was posing very serious competition. Biograph's profits for the first two months of 1900 were more than Edison's total film-related profits for that entire year. Its spirited legal defense against Edison's patent-infringement suit stood a strong possibility of success, and if it won, Edison's licensees were certain to join the ranks of its competitors. Discouraged, Thomas Edison contemplated selling his business to Biograph. On 12 April, Biograph executive Harry Marvin paid Edison $2,500 as an option for the right to purchase Edison's motion-picture interests for $500,000.³⁰ When the financing fell through, however, Edison withdrew from the arrangement and began to restructure and expand his business—even as Biograph was finding itself in a less favorable commercial position.

The Industry Outside New York

The 35-mm motion-picture industry functioned on two different levels in the late 1890s. Film sales were commonly international in scope even as exhibitions were executed by regionally based companies. New York was clearly the industry's heart, but Chicago and Philadelphia were active centers too. In Philadelphia, Lubin prospered as his cineograph service became a permanent attraction at Bradenburgh's Museum and toured with traveling vaudeville and burlesque companies like Sam Devere's Own Company. Other exhibition outlets included a small, portable theater that opened in October 1899, on the esplanade of Philadelphia's National Export Exposition and remained for a month.³¹ Lubin even began to penetrate the New York market early in 1899, when the cineograph played at Huber's Museum. Yet the threat (and reality) of legal action against theaters employing his service prevented Lubin from establishing a strong presence in New York.

The scale of Lubin's film production may well have rivaled Edison's during this period. Although the Philadelphia producer relied heavily on fight-film reenactments, he made many comedies and actualities (even if they were less prominently advertised). His photographers shot many newsworthy subjects in the Philadelphia area, including the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) parade on 4 September 1899 and the Republican National Convention in mid June of the following year. A fire in Hoboken, New Jersey, involving three ocean liners and the loss of three hundred lives was filmed on 30 June 1900. Lubin, like Biograph and Edison, sent a cameraman to film the Galveston disaster with sweeping panoramas. For Taking out the Dead and Wounded and Scenes of the Wreckage from the Water Front, the photographer introduced large signs that clearly named the ruined businesses

and buildings. Some distant news events, such as the Boxer uprising in China, were reenacted on Lubin's rooftop studio, as with the one-shot Chinese Massacring [sic] Christians and Beheading a Chinese Prisoner (both June 1900).

The Tramp's Dream is a remarkable three-shot subject made late in 1899.³² The opening shot, showing a tramp asleep on the grass, is followed by that of the dream—the tramp graciously received in a parlor by members of well-to-do society. He charms an attractive young lady and enjoys a delicious lunch. The final shot returns to the sleeping tramp as he wakes up and disappointedly realizes that the preceding scene was only a dream. The film's title assisted the spectator in understanding the relationship between shots. This and other films suggest that Lubin's filmmaking activities were much more vital in this period than has been generally recognized.

The situation in Chicago was different from that on the East Coast. For one thing, vaudeville managers had not developed comparable relationships with exhibitors. Kohl, Castle, and Middleton, who controlled many of the major vaudeville houses in Chicago, almost never placed films on their programs. From early 1899 to mid 1901, the average number of advertised exhibitions in Chicago had declined 30 percent from the novelty era, averaging less than two sites per week. Nor was the concept of cinema as a visual newspaper so fully developed, in part because Chicago was not comparable to New York as a news center.³³ The Dewey celebration in New York City, for example, occurred in September 1899, while its Chicago equivalent was not held until 1 May 1900, by which time commemorating Dewey's victory had become a somewhat tiresome ritual. Boat races and visits by foreign dignitaries occurred earlier or more frequently on the East Coast than in the Midwest. Finally, the rivalry between Chicago and New York was particularly strong in the areas of culture and entertainment, and not surprisingly, East Coast exhibitors—with their emphasis on East Coast news—were avoided by Midwestern managers.

William Selig and George Spoor emerged as the principal Chicago-based exhibitors in the period after the Spanish-American War. Like their East Coast counterparts, they abandoned the generic term "wargraph" in late 1898 or early 1899 and took distinctive names for their services. Selig's service was known as the polyscope, Spoor's as the kinodrome. Spoor's kinodrome appeared at two Kohl & Castle's theaters for a week each in September and October 1899. From February to May 1900, it enjoyed almost steady employment at one of four Chicago houses as it showed Méliès's Cinderella.

Most kinodrome screenings occurred outside the city, in the Midwest and the Mississippi Valley. The service briefly appeared on vaudeville programs in New Orleans and St. Louis during February and March 1899, and that October it became a permanent vaudeville attraction at St. Louis' Columbia Theater. Except for the 1901–1902 theatrical season, it remained there into the nickelodeon era, corresponding to the long-term contracts enjoyed by East Coast exhibition services. Spoor's kinodrome appeared at Kansas City's Orpheum Theater in the fall of 1899; a year

later the Orpheum hired it as a permanent attraction. In time the Orpheum circuit would become one of Spoor's key customers. After the 1899–1900 season, the kinodrome was supplanted by the polyscope at many theaters. The precise reasons remain unclear, but Edward Amet ceased his filmmaking activities at about this time, leaving Spoor at a disadvantage because he had no production capability.³⁴

William Selig's Polyscope Company, with its own production capacity, dominated 35-mm exhibition in Chicago and much of the Midwest during the 1900–1901 season and the first part of the 1901–1902 season. Selig's largest customer was J. D. Hopkins, who employed the polyscope at his Chicago vaudeville house in August 1900 and kept it there until late January 1901. Hopkins also hired it for his Grand Opera House in Memphis, Tennessee, where it ran from September through January. To maintain interest toward the end of the run, local views were filmed of Main Street, the riverfront, and the Memphis Bridge. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, they made the polyscope "one of the very popular features of this season's attractions." As was often the case, a film of the local fire department drew the most comment.³⁵ The cameraman then moved on to Louisville, Kentucky, where he filmed Louisville Fire Department, L & N's New Florida Train, and Fourth Avenue, Louisville in January. The polyscope had opened at that city's Temple Theater in mid December, when the local manager supplemented his plays with vaudeville acts provided through J. D. Hopkins; it remained through the end of March. Selig was also active in Milwaukee and the Great Lakes region.

By November 1900, Selig's operations were sufficiently large for him to incorporate the Selig Polyscope Company. His visibility was also such that he attracted Edison's attention and on 5 December 1900 was sued for patent infringement. Selig, who had no intention of being intimidated, acquired the services of the law firm of Banning & Banning. His recent incorporation facilitated this process, and Ephraim and Thomas A. Banning agreed to defend the new corporation until 1 January 1903, in exchange for stock estimated at $12,500. Of a total of 500 shares of stock, they at one point held 100 shares to Selig's 373. The lawyers not only succeeded in deflecting Edison's suits but assumed an influential role in the company.³⁶

The size and scope of Selig's film business is suggested by information relevant to its incorporation. The business, based at 43 Peck Court in Chicago, was generously valued at $50,000, with net profits averaging $350 to $400 a month. Equipment worth $5945 included three regular cameras and six projectors as well as perforators, developing drums, lenses, rheostats, and four hundred lantern-slide negatives. Over a hundred film negatives were valued at $33,065. Two of Selig's trusted employees were John J. Byrnes, who was vice president of the new corporation until the spring of 1901, when he was replaced by William Rattray, and Thomas Nash, who helped evaluate Selig's business in late 1900 and finally replaced Rattray as vice president early in 1903.³⁷ Even at this early date, Nash was probably responsible for the production of many Selig films.

Financial information for December 1900 through June 1901 outlines the economics of Selig's activities:

For the following quarter, finances were noted in a manner that lacks obvious consistency but suggests a surge that made Selig almost the equal of Edison or Lubin:

During the following quarter, Selig claimed an actual net gain of $2,032.72, including $1285 for an increase in materials and $600 for purchase of stock. The cash gain for the quarter, however, was given as only $147.70.³⁸ As with Lubin, virtually all his assets were tied up in the business.

Although Selig's productions from this period have not survived, catalog descriptions and a list of negatives available at the time of incorporation are illuminating. His most important subject was Life of a Fireman, a 450-foot film that was valued at $2500. Designed "to illustrate the entire workings of a model fire department," it consisted of at least three shots:

This picture, in its complete form, shows the firemen sitting in front of a fire house, when suddenly an alarm is sounded. You see the rush and break for the inside of the fire house, to get to their respective places on the apparatus before going to the fire. The next picture shows them leaving the engine house; the mad dash out of doors, and the most realistic fire run ever shown on canvas. Twenty-eight pieces of fire fighting machines madly rushing and plunging down a thoroughfare on the way to the fire (Selig Polyscope Company, 1903 Complete Catalogue of Films and Moving Pictures, p. 11).

Once again, an American producer assumed editorial control to make a more ambitious production with a simple narrative. It was in fact one of the first multi-shot films on this popular subject, antedating James Williamson's Fire! by many months. As was the case with other producers, however, Selig's assumption of editorial responsibility was limited. Other fire subjects on his list (Chicago Fire Run, Fire Engines at Work, and The Fire Run) were apparently only a single shot. In these instances, exhibitors remained free to construct their own narratives, by combining individual films, if they so wished. With all these pictures, the image of the heroic firefighter offered an alternative to the often bitter class conflicts of American life: daring workingmen risk their lives to save innocent children, the property of the wealthy, and society as a whole. With the Chicago fire still a living memory for some, such films must have inspired strong emotions.

Selig also valued his "Stockyards set, complete" at $2500. This was apparently the Stock Yards Series he made for the large meat-packing corporation Armour & Company. This group of approximately sixty individual films, the 1903 catalog indicates, was "made with a Polyscope Camera with the aid of powerful electric lights." Copyrighted by Armour & Company on 3 June 1901, these were sold both in sets and individually. One such set, entitled "Cattle Department," included Entrance to Union Stock Yards, Arrival of Train of Cattle, Bridge of Sighs, Stunning Cattle, Dumping and Lifting Cattle, Sticking Cattle, Koshering Cattle, Dressing Beef, and Cutting Beef. Selig's extensive production capabilities were confirmed by his filming of The Gans-McGovern Fight on 13 December 1900, for which the ring was lit by six hundred arc lamps. But once again, filmmakers had bad luck, and Terry McGovern knocked out Joe Gans after two minutes of the second round.³⁹

Selig, like other prominent 35-mm exhibitors at this time, supplied his customers with images of local interest. Several news films were taken of well-publicized ceremonies in Chicago: President McKinley Laying Corner Stone, shot on 9 October 1899; Dewey Parade, taken on 1 May 1900; and Scenes and Incidents in the G.A.R. Encampment, taken in the last week of August 1900. Other scenes taken in the Midwestern city included Panoramic View of State Street, Chicago Police Parade, and Winter Sports on the Lake. Cook County Democracy Parade, Bryan at Home (shot in Lincoln, Nebraska), and Roosevelt in Minneapolis (taken 17 July 1900) captured politicians and political events that were pertinent to the 1900 election. Floral Parade and Fools Parade, taken at the Milwaukee Carnival, were essentially local views.

Selig, who had been a magician and manager of a minstrel show, made films that revealed his theatrical background. Shooting Craps, Who Said WAtermelon?, Prizefight in Coontown, and A Night in Blackville are examples of the minstrel humor that Selig adapted to film. The last-named

shows a "coon" dance in full swing; all the boys have their best babies; the old fiddler and orchestra are shown seated upon a raised platform; the dance is on. Six coons are shown. A bad coon starts a fight. Razor drawn, girls faint, coon with razor starts to do some fearful execution, when little coon lets fly with a large 45 gun; finale, coon seen jumping through window; big bass viola broken and dance ends in general row. The picture is simply great; one continued round of laughter (1903 Complete Catalogue, p. 4).

These burlesque comedies portrayed African Americans as childlike beings—unsocialized, opportunistic, and easily frightened—and ultimately, as comic counterparts to the white world: Something Good—Negro Kiss was simply labeled "Burlesque on the John Rice and May Irwin Kiss."⁴⁰ Selig magic films were frankly unexceptional. In Hermann Looked Like Me, a magician dressed to look like the Great Hermann makes a litter of rabbits disappear. Rather than work extensively in this genre, Selig acquired a large supply of Méliès subjects. In these and many other instances, he made duplicate negatives and sold prints to independent exhibitors.

Though weak in production, Chicago was already a major supplier of motion-picture goods. Indeed, the role that Chicago assumed in the film industry was not unlike the one it played in the general economic life of the United States: the major distribution center in the Midwest. Thus the Kleine Optical Company, after being threatened with an Edison lawsuit for patent infringement, became a selling agent for Edison films and projectors in June 1899. Sears, Roebuck & Company did a substantial mail-order business in motion-picture equipment and prints. The manager of this department, Å. E. E. Wade, had close ties with William Selig and sold many of his films.⁴¹ John Hardin managed a similar department for the Montgomery Ward Company. In addition, several companies catered exclusively to the "optical trade"—magic-lantern and moving-picture exhibitors (often semiprofessionals). All featured the optigraph projector, manufactured by the Chicago-based Enterprise Optical Company and depending on two improvements patented by Frank McMillan and Alvah C. Roebuck.⁴² These firms also sold Selig films to exhibitors, and many of them were sued by Edison: Sears, Roebuck in April 1900, the Stereopticon and Film Exchange managed by William B. Moore in February 1901, the Chicago Projecting Company and Enterprise Optical Company that September. Unlike many of their New York counterparts, all resisted the suits—the latter two, in fact, used Selig's law firm, Banning & Banning, for their defense.⁴³

To appreciate the importance of the 1898–1899 period for the formation of the early motion-picture industry, one has only to recall that the movie moguls of the studio era would be drawn from those exhibitors and distributors who best exploited the opportunities of the nickelodeon era. Then consider an earlier parallel: those motion-picture entrepreneurs who located permanent venues in vaudeville between 1898 and 1900 would generally go on to own the major production companies of the next ten years. These theaters, which usually wanted new pictures each week, encouraged production and fostered a certain level of filmmaking expertise. Through their weekly exhibition fees, they provided producers with the crucial financial capital that allowed them to expand. Perhaps only the Edison Manufacturing Company (where the affiliated Kinetograph Company played the same role) could have survived without this support. For William Selig, George Spoor, Sigmund Lubin, William Paley, American Vitagraph, and even Biograph, such resources were critical. Despite the diversity of exhibition outlets that existed at the turn of the century, vaudeville clearly had a unique impact on the film industry. In effect, a handful of vaudeville managers, by hiring exhibition firms on a long-term basis, chose the emerging generation of industry leaders.⁴⁴ They ended the turmoil of the mid 1890s, when film companies appeared, achieved prominence, and then disappeared, all within extremely short periods. Uncertain and difficult times were still ahead for all these producer-exhibitors, particularly as the Edison-initiated litigation progressed. But the figures whose activities dominate the remainder of this volume had already come to the fore.