Flickering Empire examines early Chicago filmmaking

[s.w.a.c.]

Here's a Movie Morlocks piece on the new book Flickering Empire, by Michael Smith and Adam Selzer, about the history of filmmaking in Chicago in the early decades of the 1900s. Looking forward to picking this up and learning more about Essanay and Selig.

Here's a group photo of the Essanay gang from the book, including Wallace Beery and Francis X. Bushman, among others.



Higher-res version of the photo here.

[s.w.a.c.]

And someone with a sharper eye than I has picked out Ben Turpin, sans moustache, in the back row, far left.

Are there any other "behind the scenes" films from Essanay, apart from Chaplin's His New Job?

[Rollo Treadway]

Are there any other "behind the scenes" films from Essanay, apart from Chaplin's His New Job?

Actor Finney's Finish (1914) directed by E. Mason Hopper and starring Wallace Beery. A Photoplay article (September, 1914) describes the premise:

"... Wallace Beery playing the part of a poor actor who has just been fired from a job in the legitimate and has gone into motion pictures. All sorts of disasters overtake him in "Reginald, the Heart Breaker," where he tries to show them what real acting is, much to the amusement and derision of the rest of the company, which finally decides to get rid of him at any cost.

The scheme they adopt is to chase him so far away from the studio that he will never come back. The unhappy Reginald tumbles all over the props in sight trying to find a way out, with the whole company after him."



http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/wall ... ry_article

And then there's one with the interesting title The Fable of the Film Fed Family (1917) with Rod La Rocque.

[greta de groat]

Bryant Washburn jumped out at me in the row behind Bushman and Ruth Stonehouse with the white blouse in the same row as Bushman.

greta

[R Michael Pyle]

Got this two weeks ago and finished it just a couple of days ago. Superlatively written. Fascinating. Will make many have to re-write and include.

[missdupont]

You can read about Selig's Chicago company in Andy Erish's excellent Selig biography that came out in 2013.

[missdupont]

Wallace Beery is sitting behind Beverly Bayne.

[JFK]

Saturday Book Launch Party at Transistor
Click this link to reach their site with a 21:42 audio interview with authors

Special Saturday Night Event: Flickering Empire, 8:00 p.m. Free, BYOB.

Before there was Hollywood, there was Chicago. This is the launch party for the first book on Chicago’s crucial role in the silent film industry, including a talk with the authors and screening of extremely rare films made in your backyard 100 years ago: two short comedies -- An Awful Skate and The Roller Skate Craze -- that have never been released on video and are not available online, the Charlie Chaplin comedy His New Job, and the 1912 drama From the Submerged, part of which was shot on location in Lincoln Park. Accompanying the films will be a live saxophone score from Chicago saxophonist Labrat.[/color]

About the Book (publisher synopsis)
Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry tells the fascinating but too-little-known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of film production in America in the years prior to the rise of Hollywood (1907-1913). As entertaining as it is informative, the book straddles the worlds of academia and popular non-fiction in its vivid illustration of the rise and fall of the major Chicago movie studios in the mid-silent era (principally Essanay and Selig Polyscope). Colorful, larger-than-life historical figures like Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux and Orson Welles are major players in Flickering Empire, in addition to important but forgotten industry giants like 'Colonel' William Selig, George Spoor and Gilbert 'Broncho Billy' Anderson.

About the Authors
Michael Glover Smith is an independent filmmaker who teaches film history at several Chicago-area colleges. Adam Selzer is a tour guide, and the author of 16 books, roughly an even mix of smart alecky YA fiction and adult non-fiction, including the recent 'Ghosts of Chicago' and 'Museyon Guide to Chicago.' He conducts hundreds of tours per year.

WHERE IS TRANSISTOR?
We're located at 3441 N. Broadway in Chicago's Lakeview East/Boystown neighborhood, just south of Cornelia, just north of Roscoe and just east of Halsted. There is both metered and free residential street parking nearby. If you're on the bus, the CTA 36 will take you almost right to our door. By train, the CTA Brown Line/Red Line stop at Belmont gets you pretty close. The Addison Red Line stop is also a good option.

[Eric Cohen]

The large turn-out, I think due mainly to followers of Adam Selzer and his blog, packed into this little shop last night. We saw lots of Chicago residential streets, nothing identified. There's Lincoln Park indeed in From the Submerged. The bridge that E.H. Calvert and Ruth Stonehouse are on at the beginning was, Adam said, popularly known as Suicide Bridge.
http://www.mysteriouschicagoblog.com/20 ... -park.html" target="_blank
Officially it was called High Bridge and was dismantled in 1919. At the end of the movie, the underside of a different Lincoln Park bridge is used, though it's meant to be the same one. This movie is on youtube.
Looks like actor/director E.H. Calvert bottom row, 2nd from the right. His wife Lillian Drew is to the right of Beery, I'm guess'n.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0237682/bio? ... _ov_bio_sm" target="_blank
http://www.silentfilmstillarchive.com/w ... usband.htm" target="_blank