Gaston Méliès

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Gaston Méliès (born February 12, 1852 in Paris , † April 9, 1915 in Ajaccio in Corsica ) was a French film producer and director .

Life

Méliès was born the son of a Parisian shoe manufacturer. In 1888 he took over his father's company with his older brother Henri, but a few years later it was no longer competitive. He came into contact with the medium of film through his younger brother, Georges Méliès . He appeared occasionally as an actor in his brother's early films, including Une partie de cartes (1896), and worked for him as a production assistant.

After more and more illegal copies of his films were circulating, especially in the USA, Georges Méliès registered the name of his film company Star Film as a protected trademark . To protect his business interests in the US, he sent Gaston to New York to set up an office there to sell the film copies and to prevent unauthorized distribution. After the system of film distribution replaced copy sales, Gaston Méliès expanded sales to the north in 1908 with a branch in Chicago . He organized film distribution through Max Lewis' Chicago Film Exchange. Due to investor fraud with Lewis, Gaston Méliès lost the Edison distribution license for Star Film in 1909 and the G. Méliès Manufacturing Company became part of the Motion Picture Patents Company . Georges Méliès' films could no longer meet the stylistic demands of the American market.

At the end of 1909, Gaston Méliès began producing his own films based on the American model. In 1910 he founded in Texas City San Antonio a new studio, the "Star Film Ranch". Directed by Gaston Méliès and William Haddock , western films were shot with cameraman William Paley . Méliès also appeared in his films The Immortal Alamo (1911) and The Kiss of Mary Jane (1911). In 1911 he moved the company to Santa Paula , California , but could not stand up to the competition there. In 1913, Méliès traveled to the South Seas with actors and technicians and spent a month filming in Tahiti , where the business of showing films was booming. Without success with the audience, he had to close the Star Film company in the USA that same year. Together with his wife, whom he married in France in 1907, he moved to Corsica in the winter of 1913. He died of mussel poisoning in April 1915 and was buried in Paris a few days later.

literature

  • Jacques Malthête: Biography de Gaston Méliès. In: 1895. Revue de l'Association Française de Recherche sur l'Histoire du Cinéma. No. 7, 1990, ISSN  0769-0959 , pp. 85-90.
  • Stephen Bottomore: Méliès, Gaston. In: Richard Abel (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. Routledge, London et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-77856-5 , p. 418.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Méliès, Gaston
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French film director and producer
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1915
Place of death Ajaccio , in Corsica , France