Al Christie

Alfred Ernest Christie (born November 26, 1881 in London , Ontario , Canada , † April 14, 1951 in Hollywood , California , USA ) was a Canadian director , film producer and screenwriter . As the founder of the successful "Christie Film Company" he was a competitor to Mack Sennetts and Hal Roachs in the 1920s and was involved in a total of around 420 film productions.

Life

Al Christie grew up as a half-orphan after his father, a police officer, died of exhaustion when Al was just six months old.

From 1909 Christie worked for David Horsley's film production company "Centaur Film Company" in Bayonne, New Jersey, which after moving to Hollywood in 1911 called itself " Nestor Motion Picture Company " and in 1912 became part of the newly founded Universal Studios . As head of the respective comedy departments, Christie supervised the production of Mutt and Jeff one- act plays (real-life adaptations of the newspaper strip) between 1911 and 1913 and made numerous short films himself from 1912.

In 1916, Al founded his own film production company called "Christie Film Company" with his brother Charles Christie, which specialized in two-act comedy. Charles took care of the organization, while Al did the creative part. In 1922 the brothers opened the first luxury hotel in Hollywood, Hotel Christie.

The Great Depression led to the closure of the Christie Film Company in 1933 and Al Christie had to sell all of his property to make ends meet. In the following years he was able to re-establish himself in the film business and was involved in other films as a director, producer and screenwriter until the end of the decade.

Christie was married twice and had one child. He died in 1951 after a long illness at the age of 69.

The Christie Comedies

The early stages of the studio were dominated by rather tame situation comedies with neatly dressed actors, of which Know Thy Wife (1918) and Rowdy Ann (1919) are the best known today. From around 1920 slapstick took a larger part in the Christie comedies and the studio entered into direct competition with Sennett and Roach. At the same time Educational was won as a sales partner, which resulted in greater commercial success. From 1927 the films were distributed by Paramount .

The best known today Star of the studio was previously for Keystone active Bobby Vernon , other important names were the always trimmed as an old man Jack Duffy , sailors Starring Billy Dooley, Neal Burns and at Charley Chase reminiscent Jimmie Adams. Typical of the Christie comedies were the subtitles garnished with expressive stick figures, which were drawn by the later comedy director Norman Z. McLeod .

The studio's rarer feature films included the successful Charley's aunt (1925) with Charlie Chaplin's half-brother Syd in the lead role and the missing Tillie's Punctured Romance (1928, not a remake of the 1914 film of the same name) with Louise Fazenda , WC Fields , Chester Conklin , Mack Swain and Babe London . The studio's best-known sound film today is the short film Dangerous Females , which initiated the comeback of Marie Dressler .

Most Christie short films today are lost or only preserved as fragments: In the 1950s, Hollywood Film Enterprises evaluated 108 of them for television, replaced the subtitles with spoken comments and shortened the films to 8 minutes, while the original negatives later were destroyed. Some of the comedies ran in a corresponding form on German television, within the ranks of fathers of clothes and men without nerves .

Awards

A star on the Walk of Fame was dedicated to him.

Web links

• Al Christie in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Al Christie in the database of Find a Grave (English)