Essanay

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The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was an American film production and film distribution company best known for the Broncho Billy West and a number of Charles Chaplin's films .

history

Essanay was founded in Chicago in 1907 by film pioneer George K. Spoor (he made the first news film in history) and Gilbert M. Anderson , who has been producing for the film companies Selig and Vitagraph Western since 1904 . The name was formed from the initial letters of the names of Spoor and Anderson: S and A . The new company's first production was the comedy An Awful Skate, or The Hobo on Rollers starring Ben Turpin .

The most famous films of the Essanay were the Broncho Billy -Western, which Anderson produced from 1910 with himself in the leading role. The first film in the series was Broncho Billy's Redemption . Because Chicago weather was unpredictable and westerns were rapidly becoming popular, Anderson shot in Colorado and founded Essanay-West Studio in Niles , California . The company's logo was an Indian head with war feathers.

In 1909, Essanay joined the Motion Picture Patents Company studio association at the request of Thomas Alva Edison , which was supposed to drive smaller studios out of the market. The company also formed the distribution company General Film Company . When the Supreme Court ruled the film studios trust illegal in 1917, Essanay collapsed and was dissolved.

In 1916 Gilbert M. Anderson sold his stake in Essanay and resigned from acting to produce plays in New York . Since the success did not materialize, he soon worked again as a producer. In 1948 and 1957, respectively, Spoor and Anderson received an honorary Oscar for their contribution to building up the film industry .

Movies

1,542 Essanay films are still known today

Western film

Gilbert M. Anderson's well over 300 westerns, which Gilbert M. Anderson produced, directed and mostly also wrote, starring himself in the lead roles (from 1910 on almost 150 times as Broncho Billy ) make up the bulk of all Essanay films. Anderson also directed many episodes of the western comedy series Alkali Ike and Slippery Slim with Augustus Carney and Victor Potel in the leading roles. In terms of film history, Anderson's first western for Essanay, The James Boys in Missouri , is the first adaptation of the Jesse James story for the screen. Another historically important western, the Essanay , features the self-playing William F. Cody (though directed by Theodore Wharton ).

In addition to the serious Broncho Billy West, Essanay quickly became known through the two western comedy series Alkali Ike and Slippery Slim . The two main characters in the series were Augustus Carney and Victor Potel, who had previously played the characters Hank and Lank side by side in a number of comedies for the Essanay . Carney's character Alkali Ike was named after a historically voiced prospector. When Carney asked too high a salary, he was fired and Charles Chaplin hired as a replacement.

Slapstick and comedy

Besides westerns, most of the Essanay films were comedies: slapstick films (some of which were directed by Hal Roach ), western comedies, romantic comedies. The company's comedy stars were Ben Turpin , Augustus Carney, Victor Potel, Wallace Beery and Charles Chaplin .

Ben Turpin played for the company from the founding of Essanay until 1909, but remained relatively unknown until he returned and played the sidekick bloggie alongside Wallace Beey in the Sweedie films . He met Charles Chaplin , who introduced him to Mack Sennett . Turpin left Essanay and only became the great slapstick star he is known as to this day. Wallace Beery, who later became known as a character actor, began as a comedian for Essanay . In the Sweedie films, he played a Swedish housekeeper in women's clothes.

The year 1914 became significant for film history. Charles Chaplin left Mack Sennett's Keystone company and signed with Essanay , where the aspiring actor and director was given complete artistic control over his films. His films continued to be produced in Chicago. His first film for the new company His New Job (1915) received a spectacular advertising campaign and was a great success. The two years of very successful collaboration ended in legal disputes in 1916: Chaplin had switched to Mutual , and Essanay brought out Chaplin's Carmen parody Burlesque on Carmen in a version that contained new scenes with Ben Turpin . Chaplin saw his copyright infringement and went to the courts. The matter went to the US Supreme Court , which ruled against Chaplin. The studio hired Max Linder to replace Chaplin, but his films were not a resounding success.

Melodramas and literary adaptations

Essanay also began to produce dramas, crime novels and especially melodramas relatively early . The most important male stars of these films were Francis X. Bushman (more than 100 roles) and Henry B. Walthall , of his greatest role among David Wark Griffith in The Birth of a Nation ( The Birth of a Nation played). The most important dramatic directors in film history were Harry Beaumont and WS Van Dyke . Equally important are a number of literary adaptations of the Essanay , including the first film adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in 1908 , a film adaptation of Goethe's Faust with Bushman as Mephisto, an Edgar Allan Poe biography with Walthall in the title role and one of the first Sherlock Holmes film adaptations of film history. The adaptations of the humorous fables in Modern Slang by George Ade became one of the company's most successful film series.

Documentaries and cartoons

Essanay has produced documentaries, especially in recent years, which presented American and European natural landmarks and cities to the public. The studio pioneered the animation field. Wallace A. Carlson (creator of the comic characters Joe Boko and Dreamy Dud ) and Vernon Howe Bailey (creator of the historically significant sketchbooks of certain cities) were the animation stars of the studio.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in the Internet Movie Database (English)