Tagged: Motion Picture Patents Company

Talking Head

Back in September, a reporter at Cheddar named Antonella Crescimbeni emailed me to ask about the reasons why the movie industry had moved from New Jersey to California. She wanted to interview me for a video—part of the Cheddar Explains series of explainer videos—to learn why the American film industry had migrated from New Jersey to Los Angeles.

We talked over Skype in mid September, and the video was finished and posted to YouTube some time in October. I’m finally getting around to writing about this video.

You can watch the video on How Hollywood Got from New Jersey to Los Angeles. And, yes, that’s me giving an interview as a talking head.

One of the things Ms. Crescimbeni asked me was whether it was true that US filmmakers moved to Hollywood to escape Edison’s patents and to escape to Mexico if Edison’s lawyers sued filmmakers who might be infringing on his motion picture patents. This has been a widely circulated myth about the move to Hollywood that is almost as old as the movie colony itself. Lewis Jacobs wrote in his 1939 book, The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History that “the safest refuge [from Edison’s trust] was in Los Angeles, from which it was only a hop skip and a jump to the Mexican border and escape from injunctions and subpoenas” (85).

It’s funny how those two parts of the story have persisted, although there’s little truth to that. There are two main reasons why filmmaking moved to Southern California. The first was because of the dry and mild climate that allowed for year-round production. The second reason is because there exists a lot of different terrains close together: a filmmaker could shoot films set in a desert, in the mountains, on a beach, in a city, and at sea. In fact, the other members of Edison’s cartel had filmed in Southern California; it wasn’t just the scofflaws that didn’t license Edison motion picture equipment.

For those wondering how Ms. Crescimbeni found me, she said that she found a lesson plan on my website about the Motion Picture Patents Company (sometimes referred to as “The Trust” or “Edison’s Cartel”) and the Independents who defied this patent pool, making films and then ultimately taking over the whole industry once feature films came to be.

The IMP Girl and The Broken Bath

For as long as I can remember, the American film-history canon lists Florence Lawrence as the first movie star and that she was first featured as a star in the 1910 film, The Broken Oath. It’s a great story because it reveals that the established dominant players in the film business were too busy maintaining the status quo in the early 1910s and missed that film audiences wanted more than a generic motion picture. They wanted something different.

Florence Lawrence, in 1908, when she was the "Biograph Girl."

Florence Lawrence, in 1908, when she was the “Biograph Girl.”

Film companies in the nickelodeon era, prior to 1910, would not promote their actors. The film manufacturing companies preferred to sell films as commodities, pricing them by the foot, and didn’t want to promote the actors for fear that they would demand higher salaries.[1] Instead, a foot of film was like a barrel of oil, a bushel of corn, or a pound of cotton.[2]

However, film audiences began to recognize certain actors and developed an affinity with them. One such actor was Florence Lawrence, who appeared in the dozens of films produced by American Mutoscope and Biograph. Audiences clamored for more films with the “Biograph Girl,” although they did not know her name, and pressured theater operators to book her films.[3]

Biograph was part of a dominant film-making cartel in the first decade of the 20th century called the Motion Picture Patents Company, but there were competitors who often broke the law to make films in violation of patent laws. One such intellectual-property scofflaw was Carl Laemmle, who lured the Biograph Girl to this company, Independent Motion Pictures (IMP).

Laemmle didn’t just stick Lawrence in his movies: he used her for the first movie publicity stunt. Laemmle had newspapers report a story that Lawrence, the Biograph Girl, had been killed in a streetcar accident. It was a tragic story. Shortly afterward, Laemmle bought space in those newspapers to report that the rumors of Lawrence’s demise were greatly exaggerated: she was, in fact, alive and well. You can see that in this ad, where they “nail a lie.” Oh, yes, and by the way, she will starring in the upcoming IMP film The Broken Oath.[4]

The IMP Girl stars in The Broken Oath or is it The Broken Bath?

The IMP Girl stars in The Broken Oath or is it The Broken Bath?

The one part of this story that doesn’t make sense to me is the name of the film in the ad. The ad for the 1910 film, where they “nail a lie,” names the film The Broken Bath, not The Broken Oath, as every source I’ve read lists it. That raises a couple of questions:

Is this ad a fake? No, you can see the ad in the March 12, 1910 issue of Moving Picture World on page 365.

Did the name of the film change? Possibly, but in that same issue, on page 400, you can see the film listed as the The Broken Oath. Also, in subsequent issues of Moving Picture World, the film summary describes the film as follows:

To break a secret society oath requires a good deal of nerve, and there are certain situations connected with a sweetheart which also require nerve. Where these two come together it is quite likely to be doubly interesting.[5]

Clearly, the film is about an oath, not a bath. Besides, a “broken bath” makes little sense unless it refers to a broken bath tub.

Did I nail a lie? Or could the name just have a typesetting error?

  1. Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction, 3rd. ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010, pp. 30.  ↩
  2. Film companies were called “film manufacturing companies,” not studios, suggesting that they were similar to a company that manufactures a good like rubber or cotton, not the content on the films.  ↩
  3. Thompson and Bordwell, 30.  ↩
  4. Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915, University of California Press, 1994, pp. 112–13.  ↩
  5. Moving Picture World, 26 March 1910, pp, 467–468.  ↩

Update: There are two “m”s and only one “l” in “Laemmle.” Thanks to Claus R. Kullak for pointing it out in the comments.

ArsTechnica writes about the MPPC

Yesterday, ArsTechnica posted an article about the Motion Picture Patents Company, an early 20th century patent pool and cartel established by Thomas Edison to protect the profits of his and his partners companies. Colorfully called, Thomas Edison’s Plot to Destroy the Movies, the article is an accessible summary of the cartel was formed, how it controlled the film industry at the expense of innovation, and how it was eventually undermined by a group of independent filmmakers, led by Universal’s Carl Lamelle.

ArsTechnica writes about this as a cautionary tale of how large companies who control a media industry, such as Internet access, recorded music, or even the movies, can stand in the way of innovation once they grow so powerful and unchallenged by competition.