George Kleine and American Cinema: The Movie Business and Film Culture in the Silent Era 9781838710453, 9781844577699

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Acknowledgments

I owe my deepest gratitude to Jan Olsson, for his extraordinary mentorship over the years, and for his support at every stage of researching and writing this book. This includes incomparable intellectual stimulation as well as practical aid. Specifically, I was extremely fortunate to be drafted by Jan for his research project ‘From Business Commodities to Revered Cultural Heritage: Global Media, Vernacular Strategies, and Cultural Negotiations’, which received funding from the Swedish Research Council from 2010 to 2013, and which afforded me the opportunity to do research on George Kleine under fabulous conditions. I cannot thank series editors Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson enough for their efforts in bringing this book into existence, and for the enthusiasm and encouragement they extended to me from first proposal to final typescript. Likewise, it has been a pleasure and privilege to work with the stellar editors at BFI Publishing/Palgrave, including Jenni Burnell, Jenna Steventon and Lucy Knight (who jointly took over after Jenni in August 2014), and Sophie Contento. I would also like to thank Richard Abel and Kingsley Bolton, who offered crucial support to the project by kindly issuing letters of recommendation for my application for a fellowship at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. This made possible an uninterrupted six-month stint at the Library from September 2012 to March 2013. Charles Musser generously agreed to participate as respondent in a panel I chaired at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Chicago in March 2013. The constructive criticism and intellectual inspiration he provided was immensely valuable to me, and a boon to the panel. I would also like to thank Liz Clarke, for initiating this panel and organising it with me, but also for friendship and good banter, and for carrying out a small but significant research mission in LA on my part in a late phase of the project. Closer to home, friends and co-workers at the Section for Cinema Studies at Stockholm University have made life at Filmhuset a treat. I owe a particularly great deal of gratitude to Marina Dahlquist, colleague extraordinaire. I’ve learned much (and keep learning) from Marina, but I should also specifically mention a symposium on educational cinema that we co-hosted in May 2013, and that influenced the Kleine project in important ways. I’m thankful to Marina for this, and to the participants at the symposium for their much-appreciated input. They included Zoë Druick, Oliver Gaycken, Lee Grieveson, Frank Kessler, Nico de Klerk, Sabine Lenk, Paul S. Moore and Greg Waller. Acknowledgments

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Earlier in 2013, during my prolonged stay in Washington, DC, Oliver Gaycken kindly invited me to give a guest talk on Kleine at the University of Maryland, College Park. I’m grateful to Oliver for this, and for the intelligent questions and criticism he formulated on this occasion. The practical arrangements were handled by Brian Real, to whom I owe thanks for this, but also for inviting me to all kinds of film-related events in the DC area, and for taking me on a memorable tour of some of the excellent breweries located in the same region. The anonymous reviewers of the book proposal offered truly constructive comments and suggestions regarding the book’s structure, scope and focus. As the manuscript began to take shape, Doron Galili’s input helped tremendously. Later, Anitra Grisales provided editing and feedback with a remarkable degree of precision, clarity and insight. I’m equally grateful to the anonymous reader who stepped in later, and who presented deeply knowledgeable and useful criticism that informed the revision phase. In the final stages, Philippa Hudson’s exceptionally skilful copy editing was indispensable in bringing the manuscript to completion. The research for this book involved numerous visits – long and short – to the Library of Congress. I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to the people who work there, in particular the staffs of the Manuscript Division; the Motion Pictures, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division; and the Prints and Photographs Division. Many thanks also to the staff at the John W. Kluge Center, especially Mary Lou Reker, Carolyn Brown, Jason Steinhauer and Travis Hensley, who took such great care of me while there; to the visiting scholars who made the centre such a vibrant scholarly environment; and to Charlotte Hanstad, my research assistant during the last few weeks of the fellowship. I’m also indebted to a number of librarians and archivists in New York City, including the respective staffs of the Rare Books Division at the New York Public Library; the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Museum of Modern Art Library; and the Museum of Modern Art Film Study Center. Thanks also to the reference librarians at the Archibald S. Alexander Library at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. The visits to these libraries and archives would not have been possible without economic backing from several institutions. They include the Swedish Research Council; the John W. Kluge Center; and the Lauritzen Foundation for Film Historical Research. I’m also grateful to the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, both of which sponsored trips to international conferences where I had the opportunity to present my work-inprogress. Whether she travelled with me in person on these voyages or not, I am lucky beyond belief that Caroline was always there, and that she keeps bringing love and laughter into my life every day. No longer do we wonder …

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Introduction

George Kleine (1863–1931) kept most details of his private life out of the public eye. When a reporter from the Cleveland Plain dealer interviewed him in July 1913, Kleine declared that there was ‘nothing interesting, romantic, or sensational’ about him.1 The newspaper nevertheless devoted the first two pages of its Sunday section to this man and his views on the motion picture business. Years earlier, in 1896, Kleine had started selling motion picture films and equipment from his Chicago optical store. This marked the beginning of a career that would come to span roughly the first four decades of American cinema. In 1914, at the peak of this career, a reporter for the New York American dubbed Kleine a ‘moving picture king’.2 Later, in 1923, Louella Parsons went so far as to suggest that Kleine was to the ‘motion picture industry what John D. Rockefeller is to Standard Oil’.3 While we should not take statements like these at face value, they are not completely misleading either. Kleine was a highly influential figure in American cinema throughout the whole silent era.4 Yet his story remains largely untold. Notwithstanding a certain lack of biographical drama and personal flamboyance, Kleine’s career makes up a fascinating story and offers a unique entry point into the rich complexity and wondrous diversity of American cinema’s past. Kleine was born and raised in New York City, learned the optician’s trade in his father’s optical store in Manhattan and moved to Chicago in 1893 to set up his own shop. When motion picture equipment and films became commercially viable in 1896, he added them to the product line. By the time of the nickelodeon boom in 1905 and 1906, thanks to a combination of fortunate circumstances and entrepreneurial prowess, his Kleine Optical Company had become the largest importer and distributor of motion pictures in the United States, and Kleine himself had become a pivotal figure in the American motion picture business. Over the next couple of years, he inaugurated a network of film rental exchanges in key cities across the United States and Canada. In late 1908, the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) was formed in an attempt to assume oligopolistic control of the business through patent rights. Kleine was a founding member of the MPPC, and the largest stockholder in its distribution branch, the General Film Company (GFC, operative from 1910). Parallel to his work within the MPPC, he began to cultivate the market for a new type of motion picture: the multireel feature film. Kleine pioneered this field, most notably through the importation and exploitation of Quo Vadis? (1912), an Italian spectacle he released in the United States in April 1913, which became the most commercially successful and highly Introduction

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acclaimed feature-length motion picture in the United States up until that point. Over the course of a few years in the mid-1910s, the multi-reel feature film became the motion picture business’s key commodity, leading to cataclysmic consequences throughout the industry. Kleine ventured into feature production at this juncture, but his main priority from 1915 to 1919 was to work out a commercially viable model for feature film distribution on a large scale. This led to the formation of the Kleine-Edison Feature Service in 1915, which expanded into the Kleine-Edison-Selig-Essanay Service (K-E-S-E) the following year. K-E-S-E, in turn, morphed into Perfection Pictures in 1917. Just two years later in 1919, however, Kleine abandoned his ambitions to become a leading distributor. Throughout the 1920s, he continued to operate in the commercial motion picture business by making the occasional production, doing small-scale distribution deals, trading in story rights and participating in other relatively minor projects. After 1915, Kleine also increasingly explored the lesser-known paths of American cinema, launching experiments in non-theatrical and educational cinema; developing business models for the reissuing and revival of ‘film classics’; and trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to forge new links between the American and European motion picture markets. He became gradually more vocal in his opposition to the emerging Hollywood film industry – an attitude that was fuelled in part by anti-Semitism, although this was only one of many elements related to the struggle over the social and cultural functions of American cinema in the mid-1910s. Though Kleine’s business strategies and cultural ideals did grow more and more out of step with the times, this is only part of the story. Some of his views, especially when it came to the educational potential of motion pictures, were widely shared. Indeed, Kleine’s and other people’s recognition of their non-monetary value foreshadowed the universal embrace of motion pictures as a revered part of America’s cultural heritage. George Kleine (ca. mid-1920s). Chidnoff Studios rough proof. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

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This book presents a thorough account of George Kleine and his role in American cinema, but it is neither a biography nor an exhaustive chronicling of each and every event in cinema history that he was involved in. Rather, the goal is to join three storylines – a career history, an economic/industrial history and a cultural history – into a unified narrative of how the institution of cinema took shape from its emergence to the end of the silent era. George Kleine offers a model case for exactly this purpose. He was a major presence in the business from its start and he was engaged in all of its branches at one point or another. Furthermore, the turning point in his career coincided with the most crucial upheaval in the history of cinema thus far: the transformation of the American motion picture industry in the 1910s, during which the industry leaders were all but wiped out and replaced by the firms that would eventually make up the core of the Hollywood studio system. At the same time, when Kleine’s career as a motion picture businessman took a turn for the worse, and the film industry transformed, he ventured into the alternative paths of American cinema – the realms of educational and non-theatrical cinema, of remakes and reissues, of independent distribution and foreign importations. Accordingly, his case opens up space for a scholarly exploration of these areas, too. With regard to the economic-industrial history of American cinema, this book suggests that from the appearance of motion pictures in the 1890s, there was a strong pressure, although not a predestinating force, to make use of this new technology primarily as a form of commercial mass entertainment. This was a consequence of an exploding demand for entertainment in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was only through the active labour of real people, however, that a conception of cinema as commercial mass entertainment could become a practical reality. An analysis of the early phases of Kleine’s career will illustrate how this process, defined by the interaction between cultural entrepreneurs and businessmen on the one hand, and wider economic forces on the other, played out in the first ten to fifteen years of American cinema. Cinema was fashioned as commercial mass entertainment from the start, but this did not mean that business practices and industry structures were always the same. In fact, a key argument of this book pivots around the point that a makeover of the movie industry took place in the mid-1910s. This was not merely a case of one set of firms replacing the previous one, or of a new set of business practices evolving out of existing ones, but a fundamental transformation of the conditions of possibility of doing motion picture business. The decisive change occurred when motion pictures began to be made, traded and widely regarded as qualitatively differentiated products rather than as piece goods, which had been the case up until the early 1910s. At this point, and with this change, the motion picture business began to transform into a winner-takes-all economy in which a small number of smash hits generated almost all the revenues, most of which would stream into the hands of a lucky few. The catalyst for this was the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature film, which George Kleine was instrumental in introducing to American audiences. Ironically, the avalanche that he helped set in motion ended up if not burying him, then at least forcing him to the margins of American commercial cinema. The book’s exploration of Kleine’s work in the second half of the 1910s will explain how this came to pass, detailing the actions and events that steered his particular career in a new direction, while also adding Introduction

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specificity to our historical understanding of how the institution that we now refer to as Hollywood emerged. More generally, approaching the economic history of cinema from the perspective of a particular career – reconstructing a sort of first-person account of historical change – makes clear how real people in actual situations both make their own history and struggle to adapt to changing conditions in the face of multiple limits and pressures.5 It is worth repeating that George Kleine is a particularly rewarding case for writing a history of this kind. The sheer longevity and diversity of his career presents an opportunity to gain unique insight into patterns of emergence, stability and change in the motion picture business from its beginnings up until the late 1920s. As the industry was transforming in the 1910s, there was also a cultural repositioning of motion pictures around that same time, including a campaign to classify them as culturally valuable objects – as art, as educational tools and as historical records. George Kleine’s work to promote educational film and to build networks for non-theatrical distribution is a case in point. Present-day cinema scholars, as well as amateur film historians writing during Kleine’s time, have noted his crucial contributions in this area. As this book will show, however, his role in the history of educational and non-theatrical cinema has often been either misunderstood or misleadingly framed. He was not promoting educational film as the future or ideal of commercial theatrical cinema; rather, his work should be addressed as part of a wider endeavour to carve out a non-theatrical film cultural field that was alternative to, and autonomous from, commercial mainstream cinema. From this perspective, Kleine’s efforts indicate a bifurcation of cinema into theatrical and non-theatrical fields, which roughly coincided with the economic-industrial transformation of cinema in the mid-1910s. This bifurcation resulted partly from economic realities, most notably the disproportional profitability of big-budget multi-reel features and the relative unprofitability of other types of film, but it also reflects a cultural negotiation over the status, value and uses of cinema. This negotiation brought together competing conceptions of cinema, different ideas about its social and cultural uses, and different practices of making, spreading and viewing motion pictures that these conceptions and ideas inspired, prescribed or represented. In the period in which Kleine was active, and especially in the tumultuous times of the 1910s, two main conceptions of cinema co-evolved. On the one hand, the longstanding notion of cinema as commercial mass entertainment was further developed. This type of cinema was (and still is) predicated on a large and diverse audience engaging in relatively non-discriminatory and routine consumption of new motion picture releases, primarily for pleasure. Meanwhile, the various efforts to reclassify film as a cultural object in the 1910s (and after), including Kleine’s work with ‘film classics’ and educational movies, rested on an alternative conception of cinema in which motion pictures carried both economic and cultural value, the latter being linked to ideas about film as art, education or historical document, or some combination thereof. The cinema movements that emerged along these lines targeted niche audiences who appreciated films for their cinematic appeal or for their value in terms of cultural uplift or political action. The following table helps to visualise these distinctions in a schematic, somewhat expanded, but not exhaustive, form:

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CULTURAL NEGOTIATIONS OVER AMERICAN CINEMA DURING KLEINE’S CAREER Conception of cinema

Conception of cinema

Commercial mass entertainment

Art, education and historical record

Typical principles and practices

Typical principles and practices

New releases Non-discriminatory consumption Routine novelty; everyday practice Storage cost and risks Box-office value Mass appeal Tradability Infinite reproduction Hits/flops bifurcation Pleasure

Old films (commercially exhausted) Selective consumption Special events Preservationist imperative Artistic, educational and historic value Niche audience appeal Collectors value ‘Unique’ prints Classics/non-classics bifurcation Literacy, uplift and action

This framework can help to contextualise Kleine’s career after 1915 and analyse the dynamic interaction between the commercial mainstream of American cinema and the alternative film cultural practices that developed around the same time. As we will see, there were contradictions (real or imaginary) between competing conceptions, principles and practices, but there was also dialogue and interdependence, borrowing and exchange. Typically, however, the principles and practices listed in the right-hand side of the table were more easily integrated into the conception of cinema as commercial mass entertainment than the other way around. For instance, the notion of film as art was more easily incorporated into commercial cinema than was Kleine’s attempt to establish a non-theatrical cinema on what he called a ‘sound commercial basis’. Such uneven patterns of exchange seem to affirm that the cultural negotiation over American cinema at this juncture took the shape of a hegemonic process. In the context of Kleine’s attempt to launch an alternative non-theatrical cinema that, ideally, would become the dominant film cultural formation, the concept of hegemony can help us untangle the patterns of dominance and subordination, including the necessary appearance of counter-hegemonic cinematic conceptions and formations as well as the limits placed on these by the dominant filmic formations.6

SOURCES, APPROACHES, FRAMEWORKS A comprehensive account of Kleine’s career demonstrates the difficulty and dangers of keeping the ‘economic’ and the ‘cultural’ apart. Indeed, Kleine embodied both the businessman with nothing but profit on his mind and the champion of the loftier values of motion pictures – competing conceptions of cinema collapsing within the Introduction

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figure of one man. The point of this book, then, is not so much to ‘merge’ an economic and a cultural history as to present an account of cinema history – in this case revolving around the figure of George Kleine – that treats both as integrated elements of an indissoluble material social process in which real people make their own history in the face of certain limits and pressures. This keystone assumption is inspired by Raymond Williams’s notion of ‘cultural materialism’ – albeit transferred to a different context and different objects of study. Cultural materialism advocates a kind of cultural studies that deals with people ‘in the flesh’ and with real ‘life-processes’, but Williams adds that culture must also be approached from the point of view of language and narration – in other words, by looking at what people said and what stories they told about each other.7 Indeed, often these are the only available access points we have to the past. In the case of George Kleine, he left behind an abundance of professional and personal correspondence, business records, ledgers, press clippings, contracts and agreements, memos, records of legal proceedings, postcards, receipts, order confirmations and other miscellaneous items. I have used this material – primarily the documents preserved in the George Kleine Papers at the Library of Congress, the largest extant collection of Kleine-related material – and a range of other sources to try to reconstruct what Kleine said, but also what he did and how words, actions and intentions came together at decisive moments in his career.8 Many of the motion pictures that Kleine either produced or distributed are also preserved, primarily in the George Kleine Collection of Early Motion Pictures at the Library of Congress, which consists of about 900 reels of positive and negative nitrate film, or 456 subjects released between 1898 and 1926 and spanning many types and genres.9 This book, however, makes sparse use of motion pictures as source material. Specific films will be explored, but mostly in terms of their production, marketing and exhibition. This aligns with a scholarly shift away from ‘film’ history and towards ‘cinema’ history, or, to clarify, a cinema history that is not film-centred. One formulation along these lines is Richard Maltby’s notion of cinema history as a form of social history that explores how the institution of cinema connects to the everyday life and lived experiences of various audiences.10 Maltby also argues that business history and micro-histories are critical for grounding our generalised knowledge about the institution of cinema in ‘concrete particulars’, and the ‘protagonists of these micro-histories … will be the small businessmen who acted as cultural brokers’.11 I hope my account of George Kleine’s career can make up one of many micro-histories along these lines, offering a small contribution to our shared, general understanding of the social, cultural and economic history of cinema. To my knowledge, this is the first book-length study of George Kleine’s career, but this does not mean that the investigation started from scratch. Kleine was a household name in the earliest surveys of American cinema, which was a logical consequence of a tendency in the accounts to identify skilful inventors and shrewd businessmen as the heroes that made history.12 After the early 1930s, Kleine all but disappeared from the historiography of American cinema. Some studies substituted film artists/geniuses for the inventors and businessmen of the earlier histories; but Kleine was neither an ‘artist’ nor had he produced or distributed any of the ‘masterpieces’ that such histories highlighted.13 There were also the social and cultural

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histories of the 1970s, which shifted the perspective from ‘great men’ to institutional contexts and wider historical and political frameworks, again displacing a person like Kleine to the far margins (if mentioning him at all).14 He reappeared within the more recent context of ‘New Cinema History’.15 A key element with regard to this rediscovery was the archival turn; in many of the new (micro)-histories of early American cinema, either the paper trail or some long-neglected but rediscovered film led back to Kleine in one way or another.16 This work has been of great value for my own research, and we will return to much of it, although in some cases because there are reasons to question or revise earlier studies. Kleine was a businessman, and as should be clear already, one objective of this book is to explore the co-evolution of his career and the business in which he operated. Accordingly, economic issues will feature prominently. Again, this does not mean that the economic is somehow divorced from the cultural, or that a material ‘base’ predetermines the sphere we think of as ‘cultural’. As mentioned earlier, the basic assumption is that the production and reproduction of material existence as well as language and signification are inseparable elements of the same material social process. Not predetermination, then, but overdetermination, in the sense that there are multiple determinants at play in any given historical process, giving rise to the complexities and contradictions that characterise the lived experiences of real people. That said, it would be preposterous to argue that all historical outcomes are equally likely or that all historical determinants are equally important. When it comes to cinema, there are convincing reasons to assign high priority to economic factors. Cinema emerged, and continues to operate within, the context of global capitalism (itself historically elastic), and cannot be properly understood if analysed independently of this context. In commitment to this tenet, my account of George Kleine and American cinema has been informed and inspired by various economic histories of cinema, most importantly Gerben Bakker’s book about the industrialisation of entertainment in the wake of the second industrial revolution.17 During the second half of the nineteenth century (roughly), the United States and other industrialising countries widely adopted a number of important innovations, such as electricity and the combustion engine, as well as communication technologies such as the railroad and the telegraph. This resulted in increased productivity – allowing workers to earn higher wages in shorter time – and in population growth, urbanisation and improved transportation networks, all of which stimulated the demand for entertainment.18 Motion pictures were one of an array of amusements that became commercially viable as a result of this rising demand. Further stimulated by earlier deregulations of entertainment markets, motion pictures quickly developed into the largest entertainment industry.19 In this sense, the emergence of a motion picture industry was a by-product of far-reaching socio-economic transformations. This is an important complement to histories of cinema that nominate hero-inventors, hero-artists or totalising myths about the artistic drive of humankind as the leading causal forces. Moreover, economic histories of cinema pinpoint how motion pictures are traded, what types of commodities they are, how their economic value is determined and how this has changed over time. This helps us understand how cinema has developed as a business activity, but also the ways in which the tradability of motion pictures affects their social and cultural uses.

Introduction

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For instance, as we will see, film culture’s globalising push originates in qualities inherent to motion pictures as a commodity form. The book also draws on economic analyses of American cinema that are based either on an institutional/industrial-organisation model or a political-economy perspective. These are, perhaps, the most influential approaches to the economic and industrial analysis of cinema within mainstream cinema studies, the former often associated with the work of Douglas Gomery, and the latter with Janet Wasko.20 The institutional/industrial-organisation model highlights the scope and size of the economic organisation, and its economic behaviour. The company/corporation is the key unit of analysis, and economies of scale as well as vertical and horizontal integration are key analytical concepts.21 This model and the political-economy approach are both interested in issues of ownership and industry structure, but the latter is more intent on linking this to an analysis of power relations in society at large, not only to understand the system but also to find ways to change it.22 A shared assumption of all the perspectives discussed here (economic history, institutional/industrial-organisation analysis and political economy) is that we need to analyse motion pictures not just, or even primarily, as artistic objects, but as commodities that generate economic profit. This book subscribes to this view, not because movies cannot be (or never are) works of art, but because disregarding their commodity form removes them from their material, cultural and historical contexts in a problematic way. Furthermore, in order to understand George Kleine’s actions as a motion picture businessman, it helps greatly to try to align our outlook with his. Bakker, Gomery, Wasko and other scholars have mapped out the wider economic and industrial contexts that we need to familiarise ourselves with to properly account for Kleine’s role in American cinema, but we still face the challenge of exactly how to assess one particular career history in relation to these wider contexts. With regard to this, one source of inspiration has been Candace Jones’s ‘co-evolutionary’ approach to entrepreneurial careers and institutional frameworks. Jones’s key methodological idea is that we can unpack economic and industrial change by tracing how entrepreneurial choice and institutional rules interplay.23 If nothing else, this allows for an inclusion of the entrepreneur as an analytical unit, which complements Gomery’s focus on firms and Wasko’s interests in power relations and ownership. Taking entrepreneurs into account is important for Bakker, too. He notes that although economic forces drive cinema history, only the active work of ‘smart entrepreneurs’ could turn an optical gadget into the basis of a well-oiled industry.24 Bakker suggests that while there may be certain conditions at hand that allow for economic rewards, it is a combination of industry structure, entrepreneurial discovery, consumer tastes and a range of other factors that decide how or if these rewards are realised.25 This is reminiscent of the more general framework for understanding economic change that economist Douglass North has developed, according to which analysis should focus on the interplay between people’s intentions and belief systems, the institutional matrix and the perceived reality of the political-economic system.26 Intentionality, belief systems and learning are key to this kind of analysis, which implies that career histories of the kind I am presenting in this book may have a special role to play in terms of our wider understanding of historical change – in this case, within American cinema before 1930.

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If there is one institutional ‘rule’ that entrepreneurs as well as firms constantly brush up against, it is uncertainty. As Michael Pokorny and John Sedgwick, two economic historians of cinema, note, ‘The key to understanding Hollywood is to understand how it deals, and has dealt, with the risks born of uncertainty.’27 I agree, but as my analysis of Kleine’s career and the film industry at large will make clear, this applies to pre-Hollywood cinema, too, although the specific environment of risk and uncertainty was different. Neither Kleine nor anyone else could predict the future with any certainty, which reflected both an entrepreneurial and a human condition. Indeed, people’s struggle to come to terms with the constant uncertainty of the environment can be seen as the underlying force that drives any process of economic change.28 But the problems of uncertainty that Kleine faced were also quite specific to the movie business, and, arguably, more severe than in many other industries, mainly because movies are ‘experience goods’ of a kind whose value and quality can only be assessed through the act of consumption.29 Before a film is released, no one can know whether consumers will enjoy it or not. This ‘fundamental’ uncertainty of the motion picture economy is often summarised in the so-called Goldman Rule (after Hollywood screenwriter William Goldman), ‘Nobody knows anything.’30 The Goldman Rule will be a recurring motif in the book, especially in Chapters 3 and 4. Pokorny and Sedgwick argue that the Goldman Rule has been confirmed, prompting them to ask why a few large firms have nevertheless managed to dominate the international motion picture industry for almost a century; the article was aptly subtitled ‘Somebody Must Know Something’.31 The proof they were referring to came from economist Arthur De Vany, who, alone and sometimes with co-authors, had been testing the validity of the Goldman Rule by analysing profitability data and mapping revenue distributions in the movie economy. De Vany’s findings are summarised in a book titled Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry32 With regard to the Goldman Rule, De Vany shows that economic optimising in the movie business is impossible, not because agents are irrational, but because information is delayed and erratic, and because the variance of probable outcomes is infinite.33 Even more importantly for my purposes, however, De Vany’s analysis also made clear the extent to which extreme events define the motion picture economy. Simply put, a few super-hits generate most of the profits – this is the winner-takes-all economy that I mentioned earlier. In economics speak, this winner-takes-all economy is evident in a revenue distribution that is ‘kurtotic’ (highly skewed) instead of Gaussian (bell-shaped). Accordingly, De Vany labelled the movie economy a ‘kurtocracy’, as opposed to a mediocracy.34 The data he used stemmed from a later period than the one I discuss in this book, but the general results and economic concepts have been useful all the same, especially in Chapters 3 and 4, in which I argue that the challenges Kleine faced in his career during the second half of the 1910s was caused precisely by the increasingly kurtotic character of the motion picture business. That said, the political implications of De Vany’s findings are contested. De Vany argues that market concentration is an irrelevant factor in a kurtotic industry characterised by wild uncertainty, since market concentration will always, by necessity, be high at any given point. This is obviously accurate in theory – if it is a winner-takes-all-economy, any given snapshot is bound to identify one happy winner – but this does not explain why the winners have been more or less the same select few for decades. This has led scholars working in a Marxist vein Introduction

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(such as Toby Miller and the other authors of Global Hollywood) to discount economists like De Vany as Hollywood apologists whose ‘bourgeois business history’ ends up legitimising the enormous power of a few dominant corporations.35 Regardless of this particular accusation, Miller et al. make a good case for a critical stance towards Hollywood, but the notion of kurtocracy is nevertheless useful in an analysis of Kleine’s career in the mid-1910s and the film industrial transformations in which he was entangled at this juncture.

HISTORIOGRAPHIC CONSIDERATIONS: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN AMERICAN CINEMA BEFORE 1930 Kleine’s story spans the entire silent era, but much of this book will zoom in on the mid-1910s. These were the years when the movie business began to morph from a mediocracy into a kurtocracy – which it essentially remains; and these were the years when American cinema first clearly split up into dominant and alternative film cultural formations, according to patterns and processes that have kept repeating themselves to this day (albeit with significant differences in significantly different historical contexts). But this statement raises concerns about the historiographic temporalities at play. For one, the implicated links between American cinema in the 1910s and the present-day situation may seem to collapse the distance of a hundred years in a way that threatens to render the account ahistorical, subtract from its historical specificity or inflect it with too much ‘presentism’. This point is well taken, but it cannot be completely out of place to acknowledge certain continuities and correspondences between past and present. As one historian put it, knowledge about what happened later is actually a great asset for the historian, and there is good reason to use it from time to time.36 Applied to cinema in the 1910s, the privilege of hindsight allows us to trace many familiar elements of contemporary cinema back to changes that occurred in this period (in addition to the ones briefly mentioned above): narrative feature-length motion pictures became the standard commodity and format of film artistic expression; movie stars became the most important way to differentiate and market films, giving rise to the star system; production companies began to cluster in Southern California, and ‘Hollywood’ emerged; the mode of production was standardised by advancing the division of labour and the use of continuity scripts; and motion pictures began to garner serious attention from the newspaper press.37 This was also when the so-called ‘classical Hollywood style’ was codified and became the stylistic norm for narrative film-making, as analysed in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson’s book The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960.38 This mode of cinematic storytelling emphasises narrative unity, clarity, and character-driven and psychologically motivated action, and utilises a range of devices, most notably continuity editing, to achieve these effects.39 While the persistence and dominance of this style paradigm is contested, much mainstream film-making still either broadly adheres to it, or draws on its conventions, sometimes in a self-reflexive manner.40 These links between past and present also indicate why the 1910s has been of special interest to many cinema historians. For some time, this strand of scholarship pivoted around the notion of ‘transitional cinema’, or a ‘transitional period’. These

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terms originated in scholarly enquiries in the 1970s and 80s regarding stylistic changes in American cinema. On the one hand, there was the re-evaluation of ‘early cinema’ that, according to film studies legend, began in Brighton in 1978 at a famous conference organised by FIAF (the International Federation of Film Archives). On the other hand, there was Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson’s Classical Hollywood Cinema, which included the idea of a transitional period leading up to the consolidation and dominance of the Hollywood style around 1917. Charlie Keil retained the term ‘transition’, and produced an account of film style and film-making from 1907 to 1913, making a case for transitional cinema in this period as a ‘finished type’ rather than a mere precursor to or embryonic form of classical cinema.41 A few years later, in 2004, Keil co-edited a volume with Shelley Stamp – American Cinema’s Transitional Era – in which the term ‘transitional era’ had been extended and expanded to form the basis of a research programme that included not only issues of style, but also, as the subtitle made clear, ‘audiences’, ‘institutions’ and ‘practices’.42 By this point, however, the term ‘transition’ itself had come under increased scrutiny, either for being too imprecise or for harbouring a teleological slant.43 In spite of this terminological crisis, the scope and diversity of the essays in Keil and Stamp’s volume and the topics they cover demonstrated that in the period under investigation, a variety of drastic changes occurred on a number of levels. Film style, industry structure, modes of production, business and marketing practices, audience composition, movie-theatre architecture and size, the cultural status of motion pictures – just about everything seemed to have been in flux.44 Recently, however, ‘institutionalisation’ rather than ‘transition’ has become the preferred word to describe how one type of cinema metamorphosed into a different one. Instead of early cinema ‘transitioning’ into classical Hollywood, there is a process of ‘institutionalisation’ through which cinema acquires a degree of stability, specificity and legitimacy, but not necessarily by moving towards a predestined goal (classical Hollywood cinema), as the term transition supposedly implied. An influential version of the institutionalisation model is the ‘second birth of cinema’ idea that André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion have promulgated (together and separately) in a string of articles, conference papers and books.45 According to Gaudreault and Marion, this ‘second birth’ was a gradual process through which cinema established its identity, uniqueness, singularity and medium specificity, which was then institutionally recognised and legitimised after 1910.46 It is not entirely clear from Gaudreault and Marion’s account how this happened and what historical forces were in play, or, for that matter, how they would define the key terms ‘institution’ and ‘medium’. Their basic argument is that a ‘medium’ appears, emerges and is constituted; the authors stress that there is a corrective dimension to this theory in the way it debunks the mythology of cinema’s magical emergence at an exact moment in all its glorious (or not so glorious) dimensions.47 It is unclear whether anyone subscribes to the view Gaudreault and Marion wish to debunk. We may also ask why they retain and reapply to a later date the notion of ‘birth’, with its problematic connotations of a tightly circumscribed moment. One reason would be that the point is not so much to analyse historical change, but to prove that the ‘institution’ of cinema (the offspring resulting from the ‘second birth’) was different from what preceded it. In this sense, it seems that a crucial point is to reformulate an idea that underpinned much of post-Brighton film historiography: that there is a paradigmatic difference between what Gaudreault refers to as ‘so-called early Introduction

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cinema’48 and ‘cinema’ in its later, ‘institutionalised’ constitution (circa 1915). A selective genealogy of this idea includes Noël Burch’s writings on what he calls the ‘Primitive Mode of Representation’ and the ‘Institutional Mode of Representation’;49 criticism against Burch levelled by Thompson and Bordwell, who advocated their own model of ‘non-linear’ historiography;50 and Tom Gunning’s writings on the notion of a ‘cinema of attractions’ which substituted for Burch’s potentially pejorative ‘primitive’ cinema, but kept the idea of paradigmatic difference between one historically dominant mode of representation (attractions) and another (‘narrative integration’), plotted along the lines of representation, spectator address and modes of exhibition.51 In spite of significant differences between the various approaches mentioned here, they all helped establish and disseminate a scholarly conviction that cinema of the earliest days was somehow radically and essentially different. This legitimised and made possible new approaches to early cinema, and opened up the field for new discoveries, not least pertaining to the strongly intermedial character of early cinema, as studied by Gaudreault, Rick Altman and others52 Nevertheless, ideas about early cinema’s essential alterity are highly problematic. Jonathan Auerbach has argued that theories of early cinema’s paradigmatic difference risk perpetuating a kind of inverted teleology. Early cinema is cut off from its future (Hollywood cinema), and just as teleological histories of American cinema tended to read early cinema exclusively in terms of sowing the seeds of Hollywood, there is a tendency to see early cinema purely as the extension of what was already there, indicating that there was nothing new to cinema at all.53 My account of George Kleine’s career raises similar doubts, mostly in the light of the economic history of cinema. For instance, and as will be discussed further in Chapter 1, as an entertainment product, motion pictures represented something radically new, different and – from a market perspective – superior to live amusements such as vaudeville. Furthermore, what I would like to bring into view by an account of Kleine’s career is not so much what distinguishes early cinema from the later ‘institution’ of cinema but the process of institutionalisation. As the book will show, this process was predicated on a conception of cinema as commercial mass entertainment, and the gradual realisation of this conception, which means that its roots stretch back to the earliest days of cinema, or further, to the pre-cinematic phases of the second industrial revolution. A history of American cinema along these lines does not quite square with either the conventional tripartite periodisation of the silent era into an ‘early’, ‘transitional’ and ‘institutional’ phase,54 or the theories of historical continuity and change that inform the scheme – especially the notion of historical change as radical rupture and paradigmatic shift. On the one hand, this may merely reflect a focus on the economic rather than the stylistic history of cinema. On the other hand, and with somewhat deeper implications, this book represents an attempt to at least begin to reconstruct a material, social process by delving deep into the specific career of one specific man – George Kleine. From this vantage point, historical change unfolds neither as radical break or rupture, nor as smooth, unavoidable, linear transition towards a predetermined goal, but as a progression through combinations of old and new that give rise to tensions, contradictions and complex, real-life situations. This is not particularly mysterious; after all, most of the present is made up of the past, yet some things are different – sometimes very different. I have lifted this formulation about present and

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past from a book about the ideas of Karl Marx,55 but the point is not to make a case for Marxism, but for realism, and to suggest that from a realist perspective, ‘paradigm accounts’ of American cinema history appear as quite implausible, and not particularly useful for understanding the process of historical change.56 These criticisms should give the reader a sense of the general historiographic orientation of my account of George Kleine and American cinema. Hopefully, they will also prime the reader to discover how this account resonates with (rather then sets out to refute) much of the previous scholarship on early American cinema. If earlier scholarship has shown that American cinema had coalesced into an enduring institution around 1915, I suggest that there is specificity to add to our understanding of the process of institutionalisation that led up to this. This is precisely what the chapters that follow aim for, primarily by mapping out how a conception of cinema as commercial mass entertainment and mass cultural practice was gradually realised, and how this was connected to the concomitant development of alternative conceptions of cinema. This process – not to speak of the even more general process of institutionalisation – cannot be reduced to any single event, moment or turning point, or explained by reference to a singular, momentous cause. But a close examination of George Kleine’s career allows us to pinpoint some of the key events, to add to our shared knowledge of the wider process and to discover that nothing at all would have happened unless real people in real situations had taken action.

CHAPTER SUMMARIES The first chapter recounts how Kleine got his start in the motion picture business and how his career developed up until the formation of the MPPC and the other ‘programme’ companies, which supplied movie theatres with standardised film programmes on a predictable schedule and at fixed prices. It is an account of entrepreneurial discovery and the realisation of opportunities, but also of how entrepreneurial strategies bumped up against the limits of the institutional arrangements. The shift from an open business with low barriers of entry to a relatively closed business that took place over this period makes it very suitable for an analysis of how a career history can yield insight into patterns of industry emergence, stability and change. For Kleine, the early and relatively open phase included the halcyon days – especially 1906–8, when he reaped the rewards of the nickelodeon boom. Chapter 1 also maps the key events in a gradual process according to which motion pictures became mass entertainment and subject to habitual cultural practices, arguing that there was an immediate push in this direction, and immediate attempts to realise this conception of cinema. To a degree, this runs counter to a tendency in previous scholarship to conceive of early American cinema as a diverse film culture of limitless possible futures that was curtailed by a monolithic conception of movies as mass entertainment when Hollywood emerged around 1915. The rise of Hollywood and the roots of a new industry structure are key themes in the three chapters that follow, beginning with the analysis of the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature film in Chapter 2. Kleine reinvented his career through the importation and exploitation of European multi-reel feature films in 1913 and 1914. These films opened up a new field in the motion picture business in the Introduction

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United States, and a parallel track for Kleine, who could now expand beyond the rather strict parameters of his MPPC membership. A case study of the circulation of Kleine’s features demonstrates that there were, indeed, disproportional profits to be made in the feature field, but even at this early stage, there were signs that only the occasional film generated substantial profits. The case study also shows that the exhibition contexts for multi-reel feature films were much more diverse than previously assumed. Diversity also characterised the early discourses on the feature. Initially, there was great uncertainty about the long-term implications and impact of the multi-reeler and how this format should – or should not – be accommodated. Punditry was one thing, however, and business practices another, and before long, multi-reel features had become the standard commodity. The chapter explores how this drastically changed the conditions of doing motion picture business, especially in light of a completely new environment of risk and uncertainty. The new, longer and increasingly expensive product format gave rise to a new set of problems, and the solution was a range of new business practices and – ultimately – a new industry structure. But this, the chapter suggests, was only because cinema had already been established as mass entertainment and as an everyday cultural practice (as explored in Chapter 1). The development of the movie industry in the 1910s, then, resulted from the attempts to sustain this form of cinema in the face of a new risk environment created by the multi-reel feature. Chapters 3 and 4 detail this process at the level of the firm and the individual decision-maker. First, I chronicle Kleine’s attempts during the second half of the 1910s to establish a viable production-distribution combine for the multi-reel feature era, first through the Kleine-Edison Feature Service, then through K-E-S-E, and finally through Perfection Pictures. Kleine’s case demonstrates the necessity, but also the great difficulty, of establishing a business organisation for motion picture mass production that would also offer some degree of product innovation and diversity. He accurately identified a number of ways in which the industry was changing (the problem of fundamental uncertainty, the kurtotic character of the motion picture business in the feature era, the apparent correlation between big spending and big income), but failed to act on this knowledge in a way that might have ensured longterm profitability. There were many reasons for this, some of which were beyond Kleine’s control, but his adherence to a conservative business policy made matters even worse. This becomes clear in the analysis in Chapter 4 of his campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’ in the motion picture industry in 1917–18. A close look at this campaign shows how the industry was beginning to transform into a kurtocracy, but also explains why Kleine would not become one of the kurtocrats. In combination, Chapters 1 to 4 evoke the image of an industrial transformation that simultaneously amounted to a major rupture and a continuation of earlier practices. It was, indeed, an extreme makeover in the sense that one industry structure de facto replaced the previous one. At the same time, this was merely a new phase in a long process of establishing cinema as mass entertainment and everyday practice. The explanation, these chapters suggest, lies in how a new commodity – the multi-reel feature film – fitted into this longer history of cinema as routinised mass practice. Chapter 5 shifts focus to Kleine’s work outside the commercial mainstream of the motion picture business, dealing primarily with his efforts to promote educational films and to cultivate a non-theatrical market. This aspect of Kleine’s career dated back

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to his distribution of various types of non-fiction motion pictures of American as well as European make, but gained new currency around 1910 through the issuing of a famous catalogue of educational films, and through his (and others’) increasingly vocal advocacy of the educational use of motion pictures. In critical dialogue with previous research on this facet of Kleine’s career, the chapter argues that these efforts signalled a relegation of educational films to an alternative film cultural sphere, rather than an attempt to promote them as the future of mainstream cinema. In the 1920s, this bifurcation appeared more clearly, and Kleine’s commitment to educational film morphed into an interest in developing a viable infrastructure for non-theatrical cinema. The chapter analyses his attempts to establish a nationwide network of ‘institutional’ film exchanges located at state universities around the United States, for the purpose of distributing motion pictures to schools, universities, churches, community associations, workplaces, women’s clubs and other miscellaneous groups. Kleine never accomplished his goal of establishing non-theatrical distribution on a ‘sound commercial basis’, but his project offers an instructive illustration of the general ambition around this time to institutionalise non-theatrical cinema. It also exemplifies a vision of the non-theatrical field as a potential platform for film cultural elevation and refinement. Kleine’s vision along such lines was informed by his aversion to Hollywood, which grew more acute as the 1920s progressed. He was highly critical of Hollywood on a number of counts (partly because of his anti-Semitism, although he never aired these views in public), and he launched a conception of a non-theatrical cinema as an alternative film cultural formation to Hollywood. He even argued that in due time this alternative formation could become dominant. Kleine’s attitude towards Hollywood, and his dislike of the films produced there, was couched in a culturally and politically conservative outlook on the world. But his belief that cinema was yet to find its ‘proper’ public had affinities with other alternative or oppositional formations (from the historical avant-garde to the national cinemas of the 1920s and onwards), particularly the idea that a new and more refined public for cinema would somehow appear if a special, non-theatrical exhibition context was cultivated. In this regard, Kleine’s anti-Hollywood discourse and practices can help illuminate some general patterns of how the commercial mainstream of cinema – epitomised by Hollywood and the practices scrutinised in Chapters 1 to 4 – interacts with alternative and oppositional film cultural formations. Taken together, these chapters present a thorough account of a fascinating and important figure in American cinema, whose career constitutes a great story in itself. I also hope that for anyone interested in the history of American cinema’s silent era, this book offers a broad overview of the period and its major developments – as seen through the prism of Kleine’s career. As such, it will cover some familiar territory, but also offer a new perspective on the silent era, especially by integrating the economic and industrial history of commercial mainstream cinema in the United States with lesser-known historical trajectories. Finally, for cinema historians, other scholars and general readers with a special interest in early American cinema, this book will encourage some new ways of thinking about American cinema in the 1910s, and, more generally, about the complex interactions between economic and cultural change that have shaped American cinema and its historic development. These are the main optics available for different readers. And with ‘optics’ – in the more literal and scientific sense of the word – the story begins. Introduction

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1 From the Optical Store to the MPPC

George Kleine said that he ‘came by [his] interest in pictures logically’.1 He was referring to how playing around in his father’s optical store in Manhattan aroused a curiosity in the technical and scientific aspects of vision, optics and optical goods. He spent many of his childhood after-school hours in his father’s store, deriving a ‘juvenile delight in playing with magic lanterns, microscopes, and electric batteries’.2 Charles B. Kleine, a German immigrant,3 had started out in 1855 as an apprentice to the renowned Benjamin Pike Jr. Pike taught Charles to build microscopes and stereopticons, and he introduced him to all things pertaining to optical projection, including the various methods magic-lantern operators would deploy to produce ‘motion effects’.4 Charles passed the trade on within the family, and George began to work as an apprentice in the store after graduating from the College of the City of New York in 1882.5 Kleine’s interest in the technical aspects of motion pictures persisted throughout his career. One indication of this is an article he published in the Film Index in 1910 titled ‘Progress in Optical Projection in the Last Fifty Years’, in which he traced the origins of motion pictures back to the screen practices of lantern slides and stereopticon images that he claimed his father and Pike Jr had developed.6 By 1916, Kleine’s technical expertise had become part of his legacy as a motion picture pioneer; Louella Parsons, for example, spoke of his ‘rare technical mind’ and his pursuit of ‘perfecting moving picture machines’.7 But Kleine was also, as Benjamin Hampton recounts, one of the first ‘experienced, solidly established businessmen to recognize the commercial and social importance of living pictures’, and it is first and foremost as a businessman that we will get to know Kleine in the following pages. This chapter traces his career from its origins in the optical store to the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company, as it co-evolved with the development of the motion picture business in the United States up until 1910. This phase of Kleine’s career unfolded alongside two major developments within the burgeoning American film business, in which he played his own small part. First, there was a shift from a relatively open market to a relatively closed one. As a technology, motion pictures had been around for a while when Kleine and others began to discover their commercial potential. But when they did, around 1896, barriers to entry into the business were low, and demand for amusements was high, which meant that there were plenty of profit opportunities to realise. Almost immediately, however, some agents – the Edison Company in particular – worked hard to close the market by means of patent protection, litigation and licensing, and with

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the formation of the MPPC in 1909 these decade-long efforts came to a successful, but highly temporary, conclusion. The industry structure epitomised by the MPPC collapsed within a few years. A business history of early cinema in these terms will be familiar to many readers, and, perhaps, appealing in the sense that it is in rough agreement with the widespread notion of early cinema’s ‘otherness’ compared to a later, more ‘institutionalised’, and more standardised American cinema. But a second story about the early motion picture business undermines the notion of paradigmatic difference, and poses a challenge to views of early cinema as a sphere of infinite possible futures. This somewhat more dismal story instead suggests that there is an underlying consistency and continuity in the economic history of American cinema – stretching back to a time before motion pictures were a commercial reality – regarding how movies came to be established as commercial mass entertainment, and how moviegoing became an everyday practice of popular culture rather than a haphazard attraction, a diversion for the elite or a technological apparatus of interest for select groups of specialists. The emergence of movies was a demand-driven process instigated by the second industrial revolution – people had more time and more money and wanted to spend these resources on entertainment, and cinema developed in response to this. Motion pictures were one of many new commercial amusements that appeared in the late nineteenth century (including amusement parks, the circus, ‘cheap’/family vaudeville, arcades, skating rinks, dime museums, phonograph parlours, billiard rooms and burlesque houses),8 and there was a heightened presence of old ones (theatre, literature, music). But motion pictures had advantages compared to these forms of live entertainment: they were cheaper, infinitely reproducible at low marginal cost and they were products that could be traded.9 This is not to say that cinema was predetermined to become a particular cultural form and institution with just one purpose. Entertainment was only one of many possible uses for motion pictures, and only one of many conceptions of cinema’s social function in general. Furthermore, if motion pictures were to become a functioning medium for mass entertainment, people had to work to make this happen. A wider economic transformation may have created a demand for entertainment, but someone had to discover and cater to it, as well as set up some form of enduring system for the production and circulation of motion picture entertainment. This is where George Kleine came in. His role might have been small in the larger scheme of things, but he was nonetheless one of the people who went to work precisely to figure out, experiment with and develop the various elements that such systems were built on, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Thus, an analysis of Kleine’s career will generate new knowledge about the larger issue of how movies were established as commercial mass entertainment within the context of modern, industrial capitalism, as well as how and why change occurs in the motion picture business.10

THE KLEINE OPTICAL COMPANY TAKES OFF Before the motion picture business could change at all, however, it had to emerge. This occurred when a new technology was incorporated in a variety of ways into already existing cultural as well as business practices. George Kleine’s entry into motion From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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pictures is a case in point. In 1893, he left New York City for Chicago to open an optical store with his older brother, Oscar Bruno Kleine (1860–1911).11 They arrived in the midst of a colossal urban expansion. One historian notes that Chicago’s population grew from around thirty thousand in 1850 to over a million in 1890.12 ‘O. B. and G. Kleine, Opticians’ set up shop at 76 Washington Street to manufacture and deal in eyeglasses and spectacles and to sell various other optical goods, including magic lanterns and stereopticons ‘of every grade’.13 I have been unable to establish exactly when and why the brothers went their separate ways, but by 1898, Oscar B. Kleine was running the Arcade Optical Company in Cleveland.14 By this time, George Kleine had been in the movie business for two years, and the store had moved to 126 State Street. In August 1896, he had started marketing Amet’s Magniscope, selling the machine outright for $250.15 A year later, in 1897, the Kleine Optical Company was formally incorporated in Illinois16 with head offices in Chicago and a branch office in New York City. The Kleine Optical Co. sold stereopticons, magic lanterns and lantern slides – just as the Kleine brothers’ opticians store had done before it – but the sales of motion picture equipment and motion pictures would soon dwarf these business areas. The Magniscope – built by Edward Amet, financed by George K. Spoor (who would later co-found the Essanay Company together with Gilbert M. ‘Broncho Billy’ Anderson) and marketed by Kleine – was one of many projectors for Edison gauge film that hit the market in 1896–7, as mechanics and entrepreneurs tried to get in on the action that this new field of amusement offered.17 Edison, the alleged inventor of motion pictures who held several patents relating to motion picture technology, responded by launching a series of patent-infringement lawsuits. Exactly how this affected Kleine, and exactly when he switched from marketing Amet’s Magniscope and other machines to Edison equipment, is difficult to determine. Kleine himself claimed that he travelled to Orange, New Jersey, as early as 1897 to place an order for an Edison Projecting Kinetoscope to put on display in his Chicago store.18 Charles Musser suggests that Edison threatened Kleine with a lawsuit, which resulted in Kleine becoming a selling agent for Edison films and projectors in June 1899.19 Patrick Loughney, for his part, writes that the deal between Edison and Kleine in 1899 meant that Kleine became the exclusive sales agent in the Midwest for Edison motion pictures and projectors, which kept him out of the ‘tangle of Edison’s lawsuits, which by then were seriously limiting the business activities of Kleine’s Chicago-area competitors’.20 Either way, Kleine ended up in a fortunate and strategic position. Edison was the dominant firm in the motion picture business, virtually monopolising it for a brief period in 1901 and 1902,21 and Kleine became their biggest customer. It was also significant that he was working out of Chicago. Although New York City was the centre of the motion picture business, Chicago was already becoming an important hub for the retail and distribution of motion pictures and motion picture machinery.22 At this point, the Windy City was the main distribution centre in the Midwest for the general economy, and came to serve the same function in the film industry in its early stages.23 With advanced networks of distribution already in place, it made sense that motion pictures would be produced in New York but distributed from Chicago. This persisted into the 1910s,24 and as the importance of the distribution branch of the business increased, so did Chicago’s significance in the motion picture economy.25 18

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21 November 1896

19 September 1896

8 July 1899

16 November 1901

Advertisements in the New York Clipper for O. B. and G. Kleine, opticians, and the Kleine Optical Co., 1896–1901. 24 August 1901

From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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Kleine Optical Co. horse and wagon. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Records preserved in the George Kleine Papers at the Library of Congress give detailed figures of Kleine’s monthly purchases of ‘films and merchandise’ from the Edison Manufacturing Co. from June 1899 to 1904.26 These numbers give an idea about the growth of Kleine’s business in this period and of the motion picture business in general. In 1899, monthly purchases increased from a modest $39.90 in June to about $200 per month towards the end of year, adding up to a grand total of $890.07 for the seven months Kleine and Edison were in business this year (roughly $25,800 in 2013 USD expressed in terms of purchase power according to the Consumer Price Index).27 The grand total value of Kleine’s purchases from the Edison Mfg. Co. in 1900 was $7,451.07 ($213,000 in 2013 USD). This represented an increase of almost 390 per cent.28 In 1901, Kleine’s yearly purchases from Edison increased to a grand total of $32,271.62 ($912,000 in 2013 USD), a growth of another 330 per cent. Yearly purchases dropped to $26,113.70 in 1902 ($729,000 in 2013 USD), but then shot up to $38,973.76 in 1903 ($1,060,000 in 2013 USD). In 1904, Kleine’s purchases decreased again to $20,673.26 ($558,000 in 2013 USD), partly for reasons we will return to shortly. The 1902–3 pattern is interesting with regard to the scholarly debate over the relative popularity (or unpopularity) of motion pictures at precisely this juncture. This debate famously revolved around the so-called ‘chaser theory’, which may have originated in Robert Grau’s 1914 survey history of American cinema, The Theatre of Science.29 The theory stated that after an initial period of novelty and success, motion pictures became quite unpopular with audiences, and were mainly used by vaudeville managers (vaudeville houses were the most regular venue for the exhibition of motion pictures at this time)30 as ‘chasers’, meaning they were used to ‘chase’ the audience out of the auditorium and make room for the next group of customers. Supposedly, the monotony and oversupply of actualities (non-fiction films), and the lack of new and exciting types of films, had caused audiences to tire of movies. This, the theory implied, would explain the surge in fictional film-making that began around 1903. In 1979, Robert C. Allen challenged the ‘chaser theory’, based on new primary sources and within what Jeffrey Klenotic later labelled a ‘discourse of 20

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corrective revisionism’.31 Debates ensued, culminating in an exchange between Allen and Charlie Musser a few years later.32 Musser contended that motion pictures had, in fact, been used as ‘chasers’ for a period, but that the unpopularity of movies was caused primarily by the crippling patent wars. Already in 1979, Musser had argued that the decline in popular interest in motion pictures in 1901–2 was due to the Edison Co.’s virtual monopolisation of the business and the resulting lack of product innovation.33 What does the data on Kleine’s purchases from Edison add to this issue? Let us first put the figures into some perspective: Musser has shown that for the calendar year 1903, Kleine’s purchases amounted to approximately 30 per cent of the Edison Co.’s total film sales.34 In other words, he was a significant customer. Moreover, the Edison Mfg. Co. was the leading American motion picture firm (although this began to unravel in 1904, as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company as well as foreign firms, especially Pathé, presented increasingly strong competition). Accordingly, the figures should give a good indication about trends in the motion picture business in general. It is unclear, however, what exactly the decline in purchase volume in 1902 tells us. It could be the case that the market for projectors and other equipment, consisting mainly of vaudeville houses and itinerant exhibitors, was saturated; but it could also be that motion pictures were becoming less popular; or a combination of both.

MOVIES OR MACHINERY? DISCOVERIES OF REEL VALUE We might have learned more had the figures distinguished between money spent on films versus merchandise; what this does reflect, however, is that the business behaved as if the central product was motion picture equipment rather than motion pictures. As Howard T. Lewis points out in one of the earliest studies of the American motion picture industry, during the initial phases of the business, the dominant companies were manufacturers of film equipment.35 And as later historians pointed out, these firms branched out to produce movies in order to sell their machines.36 For manufacturers of equipment, film content itself was unimportant as long as machines were sold. On the exhibition side, the significant unit was the show, not the individual motion picture, and shows that included motion picture entertainment were generally multimedial and diverse, mixing various forms of entertainment and varying greatly between one venue and the next.37 But as Max Alvarez notes in his account of the origins of film renting (distribution through rental rather than sale), even at this early stage ‘exchange men’ like Kleine would have been aware of the potential profitability of the film reel and not just the equipment.38 Take, for example, the remarkable popularity and success of The Great Train Robbery (Edison Mfg. Co., 1903). There is no documentation of exact sales figures, but if Kleine’s recollections are accurate, this film was ‘sold actively for two years after [it was] issued’,39 and in 1903–4 Kleine sold over two hundred prints of the film to customers across the whole country – his greatest ‘commercial achievement’ up to that point.40 If, as Musser argues, fierce competition through product innovation drove the development of the business,41 and if, as Alvarez claims, early exchange men like Kleine were sensitive to the profitability of the From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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reel,42 then it seems problematic to approach the economic history of American cinema in terms of a hardware/software split, as in Candace Jones’s distinction between a ‘technology-period’ [sic] (1895–1910) and a ‘content-period’ [sic] (1911–20).43 In Jones’s account, business strategies and legitimising tactics pivoted around hardware and patent issues in the former period, but more around content in the latter. This is accurate to the extent that the firms that attempted to control and dominate the emerging motion picture business – most notably the Edison Mfg. Co. and its main American competitor the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. – did so by patenting hardware. This strategy hinged on the belief that the key commodities of the business consisted of cameras and projectors rather than film reels. Nevertheless, it appears that as early as 1902–3, in order to sustain the audience’s interest, innovation had to occur through the improvement of motion picture content rather than through the perfection of the technical apparatuses. One interpretation of this is that a shift between technology and content periods started earlier and came about more gradually than is sometimes assumed, dating back (at least) to developments in filmic storytelling around 1903. The shifting discourse on moving pictures in the Kleine Optical Co. sales catalogues lends some support for this. In the 1902 catalogue, there is an almost seamless relationship between lantern slides and motion pictures. Slides and films are listed alongside each other, grouped according to topic. For instance, p. 108 lists a number of Edison pictures that are ‘appropriate for use’ with slides depicting scenes from the Boer War listed on the previous page.44 Kimberly E. Beil analyses another of Kleine’s sales catalogues and notes that the medium of film is introduced to the reader as an extension of the magic-lantern technology (although the material differences are emphasised), with descriptions and depictions of motion pictures as a series of still photographs.45 Beil’s discussion concerns the Kleine Optical Co. catalogue issued in November 1905, but her point applies to the following description in the 1903 catalogue as well: ‘The optical principle of the moving picture machine is practically the same as that of the magic lantern, the only difference being that the pictures appear on a flexible transparent film, passing the lenses in rapid succession.’46 Similar to the 1902 catalogue referenced earlier, the 1903 catalogue groups slides and films by topic (the Bible, travel lectures, etc.). Furthermore, motion picture equipment and motion picture films are pitched to the customer as one unit rather than as separate products.47 The catalogue suggests that those already equipped with a projector allow the company to select which films to send, or to simply sign up for a standing order of the most recent Edison releases: ‘There is constant pressure for new subjects, and to satisfy these demands we receive from the Edison Manufacturing Co. earliest copies of every new film issued by them. These we ship to exhibitors who have standing orders with us.’48 By the time the 1904 catalogue was issued, the discourse had changed drastically. This catalogue offered a genre typology as well as a brief history of motion pictures, both of which emphasised that ‘story films’ were the most popular products: Films may be divided into five classes according to the subject: 1. Story. 2. Comic. 3. Mysterious. 4. Scenic. 5. Personalities. The order indicates their popularity. Under story films we include three subdivisions: (a) Historical; (b) Dramatic; (c) Narrative. … The public taste has undergone a change that is radical since moving pictures were first exhibited to the

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public. In 1896 all films were of short length, running from 50 to 60 feet. The subjects did not involve elaborate posing or preparation, and scenic films were very much in evidence. The public preference has changed, until to-day the most popular films are those whose length is 100 to 1,000 feet, involving tedious and expensive preparation before the moving picture negative can be made. We have known a film to require a year’s preparation which would consume about 14 minutes on the curtain. Films made from actual events are not as popular as those which are photographed from a scene prepared for the camera.49

By November 1905 this history had expanded further, making it clear that at this juncture, motion pictures were afforded not only the kind of material or technological autonomy that Beil references, but also a degree of cultural and artistic autonomy. The following condensed version of the Kleine Optical Co.’s history of cinema should make this clear: The character of the moving picture exhibitions which are given for the entertainment of the public has undergone a very material evolution since the days of the first exhibitions in 1896. At that time all moving picture films varied very little in length and were approximately from 50 to 60 feet. … The number of subjects that were available was small and their variety limited. … As the art of making moving pictures developed, the number of subjects that were available increased, and there was a gradual development from the picturing of a limited number of sceneries into the invention of story films. … During 1898 and 1899 a film 100 feet in length was considered a comparatively long film. There was a constant resistance on the part of exhibitors to the purchase of these films, as it was considered more desirable to have a greater number of subjects rather than fewer subjects of greater length. The evolution of public taste, however, forced the exhibitor to recognize the availability of longer subjects and the average length of films sold became gradually greater, until at the present time the most popular films on the market are such subjects as ‘The Lost Child,’ 538 feet; ‘The Great Train Robbery,’ 740 feet; ‘Personal,’ 371 feet; ‘The Strike,’ 440 feet. … There has been also a marked change in the character of the subjects which are most popular. During the earlier years of the moving picture industry fire runs, railroad trains and panoramas taken from a moving train were among the most popular. These have lost their interest for the general public, and several of the most beautiful panoramas as well as scenes of travel that have been made recently are being rejected in favor of the story film which has been posed for the purpose of animated photography.50

Before moving on to discuss the equally ‘radical’ progress in the manufacturing of motion picture machines, the catalogue also noted with interest that the ‘chase’ film had found particular favour with audiences, which had resulted in a production cycle.51 If there was a shift from a ‘technology-period’ to a ‘content-period’, this was well under way long before 1910 (Jones’s suggested breaking point), as indicated by the centrality of the ‘story film’ in 1903. More to the point, however, the whole notion of such a shift seems misleading, as a certain tension between technology and content had been present from the emergence of cinema, manifesting itself in a struggle between those who tried to derive value from hardware and those who invested in software. This has implications for this chapter’s story of how motion pictures were established as mass phenomenon and everyday cultural practice. A motion picture

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projector was a durable good, so the customer would not return for a repeat purchase for quite some time, and although it was not a very expensive machine, the market was relatively restricted. In comparison, the market for motion pictures was virtually limitless, both in terms of customer base and the potential to encourage repetitive as well as herd-like patterns of consumption. This was the real discovery at the heart of Kleine’s astonishing sales of The Great Train Robbery in 1903 and 1904.

THE RIFT BETWEEN KLEINE AND EDISON The increasing importance of narrative films influenced the relationship between Kleine and the Edison Mfg. Co., which took a sharp turn in 1904. Charles Musser suggests that the Edison Co. resisted a full commitment to story films mainly because it was more expensive to produce elaborate narrative pictures than to shoot actualities or ‘dupe’ (duplicate) films made by foreign competitors such as Pathé.52 The popularity of The Great Train Robbery and similar films should have influenced Edison’s strategies, but apparently, patent protection and equipment sales remained top priority. Kleine saw things differently, which supports Alvarez’s claim that exchange men had a greater awareness of reel value. The correspondence between Kleine and Edison’s vice president and general manager, William E. Gilmore, regarding films from the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (informally called the St Louis World’s Fair) illustrates the opposite viewpoints – Gilmore was only interested if the Edison Co. was granted exclusive rights, and if they could sell at a relatively high price per foot, whereas Kleine predicted that there would be a huge public interest in these films.53 He wanted in on the action, even if it meant that he had to buy the films from the Biograph Co., Edison’s strongest competitor among the American firms. ‘It would be foolish … to refuse the ham because we cannot have the entire pig,’ Kleine argued, but to no avail.54

Kleine starts selling Pathé and Biograph motion pictures. Trade press advertisement for the Kleine Optical Co. From the New York Clipper, 6 August 1904

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Identifying an increasing demand for story films and the growing popularity of motion pictures produced by Edison’s competitors, but unable to answer adequately to these demands with Edison product, Kleine started selling Biograph and Pathé pictures in 1904.55 This was publicly advertised in the 6 and 13 August 1904 issues of the New York Clipper.56Gilmore made it clear to Kleine that he would not retain the special treatment he had received in relation to other ‘pushers’ if he started selling Biograph and Pathé pictures – he would lose his present discount as well as the assignment as ‘General Western Selling Agent’.57 Kleine reminded Gilmore that he was Edison’s most loyal and largest customer and assured him that his deal with Biograph and Pathé would not eat into his sales of Edison products. Gilmore maintained that Kleine’s active advertising of the competition was a slap in the face, not least in light of how the Edison Co. had given Kleine special preference.58 The difference of opinions was irreconcilable, and on 29 September 1904 – in spite of Kleine’s guarantee of minimum purchases of $150,000 over five years59 – Gilmore notified him that all previous discounts had been discontinued and that the Edison Mfg. Co. was planning to open its own Chicago branch.60 Kleine explained to his customers that under these conditions, he could no longer supply them with Edison products, lamenting, ‘It would be folly to deny that I feel strongly the injustice done to us.’61 But he also stressed that he had other products of equal or even higher quality to offer.62 Kleine and his fellow exchange men served a retail function in the motion picture business, whereas Edison was in manufacturing. Technically, these branches were independent of each other, and in principle, the struggle for industry control was fought between manufacturers. But the rift between Kleine and Edison demonstrates how the patent wars rippled across the entire business. Aside from the direct effects on Kleine, his business was indirectly dependent on Edison’s failure to control the industry at this juncture. To put it more clearly, Kleine could only keep his warehouses stocked and his distribution system up and running as long as Edison’s attempt to close the market failed. Luckily for Kleine, the Edison executives appear to have committed a fatal misjudgment, underestimating the degree to which audiences were increasingly demanding more, newer and better motion pictures – in other words, how motion pictures were becoming a mass phenomenon and everyday practice – and failing to predict how this would affect the whole business in the long run. Alternatively, the Edison people believed that they would gradually expand their mass-production capacity enough to meet escalating demand. If the Edison Co. did indeed work to boost the output of film, the key strategy was to ‘dupe’ foreign films, especially of the Pathé brand. The most immediate and crucial outcome of this, however, was that Pathé Frères entered the American market directly (instead of through sales agents), by setting up a branch office in New York City in October 1904.63 Either way, there was a widening gap between supply and demand that the Edison Co. itself had helped cause. This created an array of opportunities for entrepreneurs to seize, and Pathé was the most successful in doing so; this was to be expected, since the company had already developed massproduction capacities on a scale unheard of among US manufacturers. For a brief period following its full entry into the US market in 1904, Pathé was the dominant motion picture company – globally and in the United States.64 But minor players, too – like George Kleine – could also reap the benefits of a widening gap between supply and demand and take advantage of the opportunities this presented. From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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FURTHER EXPANSION: KLEINE STARTS IMPORTING Kleine started marketing Biograph and Pathé films in the autumn of 1904, and he struck a deal with Méliès around the same time. A sales catalogue issued by the Kleine Optical Co. in October 1904 listed subjects from these three firms, and also included a warning to exhibitors about duped films, as well as an analysis of the business that concluded that no ‘one house’ could supply the whole market (two not-so-subtle swipes at Edison – habitual dupers with ambitions to monopolise the business).65 When American Vitagraph boosted its fiction-film production and started selling prints to renters in September 1905,66 Kleine also added this product to his service. The Kleine Optical Co.’s purchases of motion pictures and merchandise from Vitagraph, American Mutoscope and Biograph, Pathé and Méliès from September/October 1904 until December 1907 give an indication of how much business expanded during this period. Purchases from Pathé alone amounted to over $167,000 (equivalent of a purchase power in 2013 of over $4 million USD), roughly $40,000 more than Kleine’s total purchases from Edison up until the termination of the agreement in 1904.67 He spent an additional $163,000 on films and merchandise from the other three companies: Vitagraph (approximately $74,000), Biograph ($61,000) and Méliès ($28,000). Purchases from Pathé just about doubled yearly (from $24,000 in 1905 to $47,000 in 1906 to $89,000 in 1907), whereas purchases from the other three were relatively consistent throughout the period. With regard to the yearly increase of Kleine’s total purchases from these companies over the period, the growth between 1904 and 1905 was roughly 60 per cent (from $36,000 to $58,000), another 90 per cent between 1905 and 1906 (to $109,000), and yet another 35 per cent between 1906 and 1907 (to $147,000). Remarkably, this was only a part of Kleine’s total business. In 1904 – following the rupture with Edison – he started importing motion pictures from Europe, and gradually became the exclusive sales agent in the United States for a growing number of manufacturers in the United Kingdom, France and Italy. In addition to films by the four companies discussed above, the Kleine Optical Co.’s November 1905 catalogue listed motion pictures made by the following manufacturers: Paley & Steiner (New York); the English Biograph Co. (London); the German Biograph Co. (Berlin); The French Biograph Co. (Paris); Hepworth; Warwick; Gaumont; Urban; Williamson; Clarendon; and Paul (the last seven all supplying Kleine from London).68 The catalogue also listed Edison films that Kleine had acquired before the dispute. The real explosion of the importation side of his business appears to have begun in early 1907. Richard Abel and Charles Musser alike note that the flooding of the American market with new motion picture subjects in 1907 was due to increased importations rather than increased domestic production, and although firms such as the Miles Bros. and Williams, Brown and Earle were active importers, Kleine was responsible for a considerable amount of the influx of European pictures.69 By February 1908, Kleine handled the output of at least thirteen European manufacturers; an ad appearing in Show World featured the logotypes of Gaumont, Urban-Eclipse, Lux, Ambrosio, Warwick and eight other companies, and declared that the Kleine Optical Co. controlled ‘for America the entire output of films made by the most celebrated European factories’.70 This solidified Kleine’s position as a leading supplier of motion

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Trade press advertisement for the Kleine Optical Co. From Show World (ca. 1908). Copy in the George Kleine Papers, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division

pictures in North America. Louis Rosenbluh, an executive for William Fox’s Greater New York Film Rental Company (and later with the Fox Film Corporation), subsequently testified that ‘[Kleine] was ready to supply almost any demand. … He had any number [of films] on hand.’71 At the end of 1899, Kleine had purchased motion picture equipment and films for a couple of hundred dollars per month; by 1907, the operation had turned into a million-dollar business.72

THE NICKELODEON MASS AUDIENCE AND KLEINE’S ‘GOLDEN YEARS’ We must stop here to consider how the rapid growth in Kleine’s business relates to the larger development of the film business over the same period. I have suggested already that what enabled Kleine and others who possessed a degree of entrepreneurial prowess to thrive in the business was a substantial gap between supply and demand that they could exploit, in spite of Edison’s attempts to prevent it. But if Edison’s role explains the supply side of the situation, what explains the demand? It is an From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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undeniable fact that within ten years of the commercial debut of motion pictures, film viewing was becoming a cultural practice that an increasingly greater number of people engaged in collectively and on a regular basis. Paul S. Moore notes that this was a gradual development, not a single event: ‘The mass market for cinema is not simply an empirical fact – there is no quantified threshold or proportion of the population that signifies a mass practice.’73 Accordingly, it is difficult to determine exactly where the development begins and ends, but in another article, Moore offers one starting point, by suggesting that when motion pictures appeared, a mass public for them was already present in the form of a readership for daily newspapers.74 The ‘readership’ (and, in extension, the notion of a mass public for cinema) represented an idea about collectivity, enabled by material forms of connectivity – namely, the electricity and communications networks that had been established during the nineteenth century and that connected a diverse and dispersed American population to urban modernity.75 There was also a preconstituted, concrete audience for motion pictures, in the form of the patrons of other kinds of amusement. Indeed, after an initial phase of what Richard Abel calls ‘novelty era programming’ (during which motion pictures were presented as an exclusive attraction in a variety of venues), and parallel to itinerant exhibition, motion pictures were typically integrated into variety shows, most commonly either ‘high-class’ or ‘family’ vaudeville.76 The intermedial contexts of motion pictures in the earliest years does not mean that there was nothing new or different about them, as the most extreme claims about early cinema’s radical otherness seem to imply.77 In fact, motion pictures were a substitute for rather than an extension of already existing cheap amusements, and it was their essential difference from other amusements that explains the rapid development of a movie mass culture. As Gerben Bakker points out, if there was one novelty that motion pictures brought about, it was that they turned entertainment into a commodity.78 Though vaudeville was standardised to an extent, through a system of booking centres, travelling talent and theatre circuits, a live performance still remained a service and not a product that could be traded. Furthermore, in contrast to many other products (such as bread and butter), motion pictures were not used up as they were consumed, and one person’s consumption of them did not prevent other people from consuming the same product – they were what economists call ‘non-rival’ goods. A specific print was subject to wear and tear, but its marginal cost was minuscule compared to the fixed costs of production as well as the marginal cost of, for example, a live performance. These properties meant that the potential market size and the possibility for market integration – nationally and internationally – were significantly larger for motion pictures than for live entertainment. The market for live entertainment was nationally integrated to a degree, but the maximum spectator hours per live act could only expand so much; with motion pictures, the potential number of performances increased to infinity.79 These inherent characteristics did not mean that a global mass market for movies was immediately realised, or guaranteed, only that the incentives were there from the start. Motion pictures were routinely included on vaudeville bills, but aside from this, and for most people around the country, film exhibition was a haphazard occurrence for several years after the commercial debut in 1896. It is at least conceivable that this situation might have persisted, with the majority of people consuming motion picture

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attractions in unpredictable patterns and at irregular intervals, and a few wealthy people enjoying them as luxury home entertainment.80 If there was, in principle, a preconstituted mass audience for motion pictures, it could only be reached if films became as regularly and predictably available as the daily paper. This is exactly what began to happen when nickelodeon theatres started to mushroom in 1905. Nickelodeons were not the first venues to offer only motion picture entertainment, nor were all nickelodeon theatres exactly the same in terms of size, location, clientele and programming. But it was the first example of a relatively standardised model for motion picture exhibition on a mass scale, and as such it offered the predictability that is key to forming a mass market.81 As the story goes, it began when an entrepreneur named Harry Davis decided to refurbish a downtown Pittsburgh storefront into a modest, small venue for the presentation of moving picture shows. This venue, called the Nickelodeon, opened its doors in June 1905 and, as the name implied, the price of admission was five cents (a ‘nickel’). Supposedly, the ‘Davis idea’ caught on with amazing force and swiftness. Within months, thousands of similar venues had opened all across the United States.82 This was a turning point. The appearance of permanent movie theatres in 1905 marked the beginning of a reliable system of distribution and retail that motion pictures needed to capture a large market.83 Seen from a slightly different perspective, nickelodeons institutionalised a conception of motion pictures as a ‘routine novelty’, and going to see them could become an everyday cultural practice for masses of people.84 Or, as Paul Moore puts it, with the rapid, albeit geographically somewhat uneven, spread of nickelodeon movie theatres in North America in 1906–7, the ‘cultural practice of “going to the movies”’ emerged.85 In contrast, before this ‘grand opening’ of the movie theatre, and the gradual capturing of a mass market for movies, people viewed motion pictures in a variety of places, spaces and situations, including summer parks, seasonal fairs, in conjunction with religious or civic events, in educational and medical institutions, in vaudeville houses or wherever an itinerant exhibitor would show up – to name a few of the exhibition sites that did not disappear, but were overshadowed by the nickel theatre.86 Richard Abel notes that it is not immediately clear why Davis’s nickelodeon had such an impact, as similar ideas had been tested several times before.87 Given the unique characteristics of motion pictures as business commodities, and the advantage this gave them as substitutes for live entertainment, it is surprising that it took so long to establish a standardised exhibition model. Abel attributes their ultimate success to several factors that came together in 1905, including the increased popularity of motion pictures in vaudeville shows, a growing supply of films and a boom in the number of rental exchanges.88 Abel argues that the increase of the supply of motion pictures was primarily a result of Pathé’s expansion in the US market around this time. As nickel theatres mushroomed, demand for motion pictures exploded. Not only did the number of venues for film exhibition multiply to unprecedented numbers, the balance between live and motion picture entertainment was reversed compared to vaudeville houses, as nickelodeon programmes usually consisted of motion pictures and an occasional live act – if any.89 The appearance of film rental exchanges preceded the nickelodeon boom, and in the wake of the ‘nickel madness’ of 1905–6, the functions they performed within the From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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industry structure became even more crucial. Simply put, for supply and demand to dovetail, someone had to make sure that nickelodeons received the pictures they wanted in an efficient, timely and reliable manner. Entrepreneurs were quick to note the potential profit; thus, the field of film distribution expanded through new market entries and by additions of new branches to already established exchanges.90 In the process, distribution became a more specialised arm of the business. When the picture business first emerged, many manufacturing firms took on various functions at once, but at least some concentrated on manufacturing and left sales and distribution to others. This opened a space in the movie business for someone like Kleine to emerge in the first place. But starting in 1905, specialisation along the chain of production intensified, and it became increasingly common for distribution and manufacturing to be handled by separate companies.91 Moreover, in the nickelodeon era, a well-operated distribution organisation, especially if it had national reach, became an increasingly valuable asset. As distribution became a stronger link in the ‘value chain’ of the motion picture business, more of the overall profits were channelled to this branch.92 All of this spelled very good news for George Kleine. He was a distribution veteran, ran a tight operation and was strategically located in Chicago, the nascent hub of motion picture distribution in the United States.93 We have seen how Kleine, after the Edison rift in 1904, began purchasing more motion pictures from an increasing number of producers, including Pathé, Biograph, Vitagraph, Méliès (all either American firms or with American branch offices) and a host of European firms. Simultaneously, he was opening new branch offices around the United States and Canada. The first branches were established in 1906, and by 1907, Kleine operated out of the headquarters in Chicago and New York City as well as newly added offices in Denver, Des Moines, Toronto and Montreal (the main office in Canada).94 A year later, he had added St Louis, Indianapolis, Birmingham and Seattle to a distribution network of an increasingly national scope (known under the trade name the ‘Kosmik Film Service’, to indicate ‘vastness, universality, comprehensiveness’).95 Two new Canadian branches, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and St John, New Brunswick, opened later in 1908.96 This period might have been the most prosperous of Kleine’s career – thanks to the enormous demand for motion pictures and his astute catering to it. Indeed, already in August 1909, Kleine himself argued that the ‘golden period’ of the motion picture business had lasted from November 1906 to February 1908, and he also predicted – a bit prematurely and pessimistically, perhaps – that such golden days would never come again.97

MOTION PICTURES AS MASS PHENOMENON In these golden years, the preconstituted mass public for cinema that Paul S. Moore suggests was present from its inception (see above) was realised in the form of an actual mass audience for movies. Charles Musser has suggested that 1907 – a ‘key turning point’ in the history of American cinema – was defined by concentration, competition and a move towards big business in distribution as well as exhibition, and that by 1908, cinema had become ‘mass entertainment’.98 A closer look reveals that what he is more precisely talking about is ‘mass communication’, drawing on a

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definition of this as a system in which professional communicators use mechanical media to rapidly and continuously disseminate products to large and diverse audiences, with the goal of influencing and aligning these audiences’ interpretations with the communicators’ intentions.99 This is another factor in this chapter’s account of how motion pictures became a form of commercial mass entertainment, and how moviegoing became a mass culture practised on an everyday basis, but to grasp this process in more specific terms, it seems useful to make a rough distinction between ‘mass entertainment’, ‘mass culture’ and ‘mass communication’. In this context, ‘mass entertainment’ implies a certain dominant conception of cinema’s preferred social function; ‘mass culture’ refers to the manners, customs, behaviours and practices people develop in order to use cinema in this way; and ‘mass communication’ signals an industrial and economic arrangement that secures the stability of these practices. These general descriptions of the terms jointly illustrate a certain condition, and hint at the various elements involved in the process leading up to it. The broad distinction between terms may also help explain why people arrive at different conclusions regarding when cinema turned into a mass phenomenon. As noted, for Musser, 1908 is the cut-off year. In Bakker’s economic history, and Moore’s research on film exhibition, the mushrooming of permanent movie theatres in 1905–6 is the decisive step. Meanwhile, in much scholarship on early cinema, there is a close association between the terms ‘mass culture’ and ‘Hollywood’. In these accounts, early cinema was popular culture rather than mass culture, in the ways it drew on popular, working-class traditions rather than bourgeois cultural categories and hierarchies. For example, Miriam Hansen made the case that nickelodeons functioned as an alternative public sphere that offered possibilities for different and distinct audiences (immigrant and working-class, in particular), which were suppressed by the inauguration of classical Hollywood’s ideal mode of spectatorship (immersion in the film ‘text’, standardisation and ‘de-realisation’ of previously locally specific exhibition spaces) as a dominant norm in the mid-1910s.100 Rob King offers a variation on a similar theme in his book on the Keystone Company, in which he argues that changes in Keystone’s operations and internal organisation as well as its filmic output can be understood in terms of a shift from popular, working-class culture to commodified and (self-purportedly) classless mass culture.101 In other words, as American cinema was institutionalised around 1915 – epitomised by Hollywood’s emergence – difference, diversity and class interest dissolved into the universalised category of the consumer.102 A distinction between the openness of early cinema and later, institutionalised cinema has also underpinned accounts of the struggles over cinema’s social and cultural uses. A case in point is Lee Grieveson’s analysis of how powerful forces successfully sought to define motion pictures as ‘harmless entertainment’, crowding out alternative conceptions of cinema and depoliticising it along the way, a process that culminated in 1915, the year when the Supreme Court famously defined the motion picture as a ‘business, pure and simple’, denying it the status of free speech and hence First Amendment protection.103 We are not forced to take these important scholarly works as further investment in a notion of early cinema’s radical ‘otherness’ compared to other ‘paradigms’ and periods. Instead, we could consider how their main conclusions resonate with an From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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account of the longer history of how motion pictures were established as a mass phenomenon – in terms of economical-industrial arrangements (‘mass communication’), cultural practices (‘mass culture’) or conceptions of the medium’s preferred social use (‘mass entertainment’). With regards to the latter, I have mentioned already how the second industrial revolution brought about higher disposable incomes and more leisure time, as well as urbanisation and improved transportation networks, all of which fuelled an exploding demand for entertainment.104 Contrary to popular understanding, ‘entertainment’ is not a feature of a medium itself or an inherent characteristic of some types of content but not others.105 Rather, it is an experience of pleasure, joy, fun – of having a good time – that people actively seek out, very often by using media – such as motion pictures. Assuming that repetition is ultimately boring, a key element of the motion picture entertainment experience was novelty. In other words, an important incentive for people to keep returning to the movie theatre was that new motion pictures, or at least pictures they had not already seen, were on display.106 Hence, audiences and cultural entrepreneurs alike had an interest in the production of a continuous stream of new entertainment products – establishing entertainment as ‘routine novelty’. Motion pictures were particularly well suited for this task, since they were relatively cheap, tradable and could be easily mass reproduced.107 The above tells us two things about how motion pictures developed into a mass phenomenon. First, a preferred social use (entertainment) was closely linked to the cultural practices that emerged (moviegoing as everyday activity, motion pictures as ‘routine novelty’). In the words of two economic historians of cinema, ‘pleasure appears to be at the core of what audiences most enjoyed about the experience of film-going’, and this became key to how the ‘systems of provision’ of motion pictures were designed.108 Second, the adoption of motion pictures primarily as entertainment was neither an invention of the 1910s nor much of a surprise. Socioeconomic preconditions as well as inherent characteristics of motion pictures as a commodity exerted strong pressure in this direction. But why would the second industrial revolution stimulate a demand for entertainment in the first place? People could have chosen to work an extra hour, or to spend their leisure time learning to play an instrument, meeting friends or joining a club. This is where we reach the limits of conventional economic analysis, which, within its framework of rational actors, can only tell us the obvious: people’s marginal utility of entertainment was generally higher than that of, for example, joining a club. In other words, the immediate gratifications of having a good time at the movies were valued higher than the rewards associated with other experiences. Some cinema histories suggest that this was a logical extension of human nature and humankind’s ‘timeless desire for fun’, to use Steven Ross’s formulation.109 But there is also the possibility – following a type of Frankfurt School logic – that the propensity to seek out the instant pleasures of amusement media was somehow inflicted on people (which, in the case of motion pictures, allegedly led to the curtailment of other potential uses of the medium, including political, educational or scientific applications). This could be the case, but if so, people’s preferences had to have been primed along these lines before motion pictures actually appeared on the scene.

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ATTEMPTS TO CLOSE THE MARKET: PREAMBLES TO THE MPPC Either way, when motion pictures did appear, they were cheap, fun and relatively readily available. By 1908, broadly following the process sketched in this chapter, cinema had turned increasingly into a machine of mass entertainment, and more and more people could access it on an everyday basis. The motion picture industry nevertheless remained in a state of unrest, and a clear, robust industry structure had not yet emerged. There was still a gap between supply and demand, in spite of the influx of Pathé films and increased production by American firms. If the motion picture market had been behaving more like a perfect market, market entry would have solved this problem, but on the level of manufacturing and production, the Edison Co. was still policing the borders and working to erect the highest possible barriers to entry, primarily through patent protection and by relentlessly suing for any alleged infringements. The scarcity of pictures created incentives for distributors and exhibitors to make the most of the reels they had, which included illicit or, at least, questionable business methods, such as the notorious practices of sub-renting and ‘bicycling’ (renting a print for exclusive use in a specific theatre, but then either rerenting it to other exhibitors without the distributor’s permission, or running the print in several theatres, bicycle boys transporting the print from venue to venue).110 Meanwhile, outside pressures on the motion picture business had intensified, detectable in negative as well as positive reform discourses. The former insisted on regulation of both movie content and moviegoing conditions, and the latter advocated a reframing of film culture along the lines of moral and cultural ‘uplift’, in contrast to mere profit-seeking.111 The imbalance of supply and demand, and the calls for regulation and ‘uplift’ provided an ostensible logic for the next phase of the motion picture industry, during which the leading firms, led on by the Edison Mfg. Co., ramped up their efforts to close the motion picture market. This was clearly motivated by self-interest, but the official line was that closing the market was the only way to eliminate detrimental business practices, secure the supply of motion pictures and improve the standing of the motion picture at large. A closed market was never completely achieved, but the efforts to get there did result in the formation of the MPPC in December 1908 (operative from January 1909), and its distribution branch, the General Film Company, in 1910, which had an immense impact on industry structure and specific business practices. Indeed, this was the most substantial reorganisation of the motion picture business up to this point, and also a critical moment in George Kleine’s career, which warrants a quite detailed investigation in the pages that follow. We will learn that Kleine played a key role in the formation of the patents group, and that he had already planned and designed the General Film Co. in 1908. But we will also learn that circumstances forced him in this direction; ultimately, his contributions to a closed motion picture market worked against his own interests. Kleine’s paradoxical position and actions point to a larger contradiction at play at this juncture, as the push towards motion picture mass culture – from which he had made his fortune – clashed with the leading firms’ attempts to shut out competition. In this way, the two larger issues that have been in focus throughout this chapter come together in the account of Kleine and the MPPC.

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PERSPECTIVES ON THE MPPC Various stories were told about the so-called ‘Trust’ prior to a scholarly re-evaluation starting in the 1970s. The first was the MPPC’s own account, as it emerges from early mission statements and later hearings in the District Court of the United States, after the government had brought suit against the Trust due to suspected violations of the Sherman Act.112 According to this version, the MPPC was founded in order to establish and uphold fair and sound business practices, and to uplift the motion picture to some standard of moral and cultural decency. At the time, even after the courts in 1915 reached the conclusion that the MPPC was indeed guilty of an attempt to monopolise the motion picture industry, many trade papers corroborated this version. As Motography put it in an editorial comment about the court ruling, ‘[The MPPC] has served its purpose, and we believe a useful one.’113 In later histories, this benevolent attitude was replaced by a much more hostile tone, at times turning into pure villainisation. Robert Anderson writes that this transformed the MPPC’s legacy into one of ‘conservatism, collusion, and repression’.114 From the same perspective, and in support of this legacy, it was argued that movie production was relocated from New York to the Los Angeles area because independent companies were forced to flee from the reach of the Trust’s patent lawyers. Later on, such ridiculous myths were debunked.115 More generally, the Trust’s reputation for inertia and conservatism came under scrutiny, as part of a re-evaluation of its role in cinema history that started with a 1971 article by Jeanne Thomas and continued with Robert Anderson’s work on the MPPC in the 1970s.116 Anderson showed that the MPPC did, indeed, bring about many improvements, widely acknowledged in 1915, but forgotten in the 1920s, when the Hollywood studios set out to expropriate all credit for progress in American cinema.117 Anderson also argued that the MPPC, contrary to accepted wisdom, laid the foundation for Hollywood by interlocking the branches of production and distribution.118 As far as the Trust’s reputation for inertia was concerned, Anderson argued that this did not apply at all with regard to the move westward and the development of a star system, but he admitted that the MPPC did fail to see the significance of the multi-reel feature film.119 Later research by Michael Quinn on film distribution in the early feature era showed that this last point was also debatable. According to Quinn, the MPPC’s problems with the multi-reel feature did not stem from a lack of trying – its manufacturers all produced features, and General Film experimented with different types of release methods for them. Rather, the problem was that features were incompatible with the system of production, distribution and exhibition that the MPPC had inaugurated – the so-called ‘programme cinema’ (which I will explain in more detail in the next chapter).120 Scott Curtis offers another perspective on the demise of the MPPC, arguing that internal tensions and conflicts between the members, in some cases dating back several years, resurfaced with renewed strength when the industry began to transform in the early 1910s, and that this made it easier to disband than to adapt to the new environment.121

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KLEINE, THE MPPC AND THE ORIGINS OF THE GENERAL FILM CO. Kleine’s role in how the MPPC came into existence and how it fell apart is fairly well documented by Anderson and Curtis, but there are a few revisions to make, and some details to add. The general background was the patent wars that had plagued the American motion picture business since 1897.122 There were several patents relevant to these struggles, but put simply, Edison owned an important camera patent, which, if valid, would render almost every camera used for motion picture production an infringement.123 During a ten-year period, there was a series of lawsuits and test cases, some leading to settlements, some to decisions and others to the reversal of previous decisions. Some patents were split, while others were reissued. In short, the motion picture business was in a state of great uncertainty, especially since these were not mere technical or legal matters, but were intimately connected with issues of economic power, industry structure, and systems of production and distribution. Would Edison’s patents hold, and if so, what would be the exact consequences? No one knew for certain. Meanwhile, George Kleine’s business was booming. As already mentioned, these were his ‘golden days’. Therefore, when a Biograph employee named Frank Marion approached him in late 1906 about starting a new film production company, Kleine was quite keen on seizing the opportunity. In January 1907, he wrote to Marion, In general I believe that there are good profits in the film making business; I have reasons to think that even Selig is selling from fifty to sixty prints of every film that he makes regardless of its quality, during the first week of its existence.124

He added, however, that if they were to set up a new firm, they had to move cautiously at first, and, either way, wait until the Edison case was settled.125 The case in question concerned Edison’s camera patent, and involved a lawsuit against Biograph for supposed infringement, a decision to be handed down in March. In the meantime, Kleine and Marion proceeded with the plans to get into domestic production. They discussed including a third person who could contribute technical knowhow. The choice fell on Samuel Long, who worked at the Biograph plant.126 On 15 February 1907, they arrived at an agreement regarding the incorporation of Kalem (K as in Kleine, L as in Long and M as in Marion). The capital stock would be $10,000, half of which was to be paid immediately, Marion to put up 60 per cent, and Kleine and Long each fronted 20 per cent.127 Later historians have suggested that Kleine ‘bankrolled’ Kalem.128 This is true, but his investment of goodwill was much more important than the $1,000 of hard cash he put into the firm. More specifically, Kleine made two major commitments that enabled the formation of Kalem. First, he guaranteed Kalem’s payments to Eastman-Kodak for film stock. Furthermore, he had the Kleine Optical Co. place large orders of Kalem prints before any were actually made.129 This gave the business a running start.130 Kalem became a quite successful production company over the next few years, acclaimed for ambitious location shooting and artistically illustrated intertitles.131 The firm was also involved in a famous lawsuit in 1909 concerning its film adaptation of Ben-Hur (a popular stage play based on Lew Wallace’s

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novel). This case determined that motion pictures could be defined as ‘dramatic productions’, which completely changed film’s copyright status, and hence had great repercussions throughout the industry.132 At this point, however, Kleine’s brief involvement with Kalem was already over, for reasons we will return to. While Kalem was setting up shop, the Edison camera patent lawsuit was finally settled in March 1907 in favour of Edison (a reversal of the earlier decision of the lower courts).133 Kleine immediately wrote to Edison’s general manager, William Gilmore, to ‘extend congratulations’, and to enquire about Edison’s plans. He did not mention Kalem, but made the following statement: ‘I am considering going into film making; consider me an applicant for a license if you decide to issue them.’134 In the weeks that followed, the manufacturers that were already active on the American market began negotiating with Edison in order to obtain a licence to stay in business. Kleine was very active in this process. He met with Gilmore on 26 April and 3 May 1907, when they began working on a general licensing scheme. According to this deal, the validity of Edison’s patents would be acknowledged and a uniform price scale established; Edison licensees would agree not to sell motion pictures at lower prices than stipulated on this scale.135 After the meetings with Gilmore, Kleine discussed these general principles with William T. ‘Pop’ Rock and J. Stuart Blackton of Vitagraph, and later with Jacques Berst at Pathé. On 5 May 1907, Kleine wrote to Gilmore that everyone agreed with the broad lines suggested.136 Berst was not ‘enthusiastic’ but Pathé would join if others did137 Kleine argued that most manufacturers, including Selig, Lubin, Méliès and the Miles Bros., would, indeed, join the licensing group.138 Biograph was ‘not considered’ at this point.139 Kleine himself was ‘heartily in favor’.140 This letter also included a formal request that Edison accept the scheme under discussion.141 More meetings followed, after which Vitagraph, Pathé and Selig all agreed to join the group.142 At this point, a disagreement between the Edison executives and Kleine arose. Edison’s representative William Pelzer concurred with most of Kleine’s letter of 11 May except for one point. In Kleine’s scheme, all applicants would be granted a licence, but Pelzer wanted to confine the proposition to existing manufacturers. As Pelzer put it, ‘It seems to me that one of the strong features of the proposed arrangement is to preserve the business of present manufacturers and not to throw the field open to all competitors.’143 Edison clearly wanted to close the motion picture market, whereas Kleine’s working assumption was that the field would remain open for new firms, even though they would have to acquire a licence from Edison to enter the business. What happened over the following summer months is a bit murky. We know that Kleine proposed holding a meeting in New York City on 29 May, and that he offered to treat the interested parties to dinner on the same date to establish a good mood.144 Much later, Kleine claimed that he had brought Mr Berst of Pathé, Messrs Rock, Smith and Blackton of Vitagraph, and Messrs Alex Moore and William Pelzer of Edison together for ‘the first time in history’ in June 1907 at a club in New York City (probably the Republican Club on 54 and 56 West 40th Street, where Kleine usually stayed when he was in Manhattan).145 Perhaps this was the event originally scheduled to take place on 29 May. We also know that there was a dispute between Edison and Vitagraph in mid-June, when Edison took Vitagraph to court for suspected infringement, in spite of the ongoing negotiations.146 By late July there was still no

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deal. Kleine wrote to Pelzer again, arguing that new film companies were popping up left and right, and that the sooner they realise the plans, the better.147 After this, Kleine seems to have been out of the loop, and negotiations continued without his involvement throughout the autumn of 1907 and in early 1908.148 In January 1908, Kleine wrote to Alex Moore at the Edison Co. to enquire whether licence discussions had advanced to the stage where they would have something to say regarding imports, and offered to travel to New York to discuss the matter.149 Moore advised against the New York trip, suggesting that they should meet at the upcoming United Film Service Protective Association (UFSPA) convention in Buffalo instead.150 At this meeting, held 8–10 February 1908, the Association of Edison Licensees (AEL) was officially formed, and licences were granted to Essanay, Gaston Méliès, Kalem, Lubin, Pathé, Selig and Vitagraph.151 The UFSPA was renamed the FSA (the Film Service Association), and ratified its ideals, hereby accepting the AEL terms.152 Before the Buffalo convention, Kleine had already met with Gilmore and Pelzer and offered to drop his European manufacturers except for the ones that he was already importing when the decision in the Court of Appeals was handed down in March 1907 (in effect, Gaumont, Urban-Eclipse and Theo Pathé). Alternatively, he could keep all the European manufacturers, but limit the number of weekly reels actually released.153 In Buffalo, Kleine met with Gilmore and Frank Dyer (another Edison representative) and repeated the offer, but was still not included in the AEL at this point.154 A few days after the Buffalo convention, a final meeting between Kleine and Edison took place at Gilmore’s offices. Blackton, Rock, Méliès and Berst were also present. Kleine was asked to repeat his offer yet again, but according to his version, it was clear that the counterparties were resistant to any imports. Berst (of Pathé) especially was unwilling to accept the inclusion of Gaumont under any circumstances.155 A week later, Kleine wrote to Edison to officially declare that he would not comply with the demands that he stop importing films.156 Apparently, in the struggle between those who wanted to close the market and those who wanted to keep it open, importation of foreign films had become the sticking point. Many years later, Kleine argued that the main reason that he was excluded from the licence group was that Pathé would not accept his affiliation with foreign manufacturers.157 This harmonises with Scott Curtis’s analysis. According to Curtis, Edison’s sidestepping of Kleine in 1907 had its roots in the old Edison/Kleine rift of 1904, but he also points out that the agreement between Edison and Pathé to use the licensing system to freeze out foreign competition made Kleine’s presence problematic.158 This echoes Richard Abel’s earlier account of the same events. Abel notes that Kleine was ‘excluded from the ranks’ in spite of having ‘brokered the original organization’, and argues that this was because he was the only major importer of foreign films, hence a potential threat to the plans of Edison and Pathé – the former key rivals – to divide the American market between them.159 As Abel also notes, Kleine’s strategic response was to team up with Biograph.160 Biograph had also been left out of the Edison licence agreement, or had chosen to stay out of it. Instead, Biograph purchased the patent for the Latham loop (a necessary projector part) from the Latham family in February 1908.161 This patent became the basis for Biograph’s own licensing combination, of which Kleine became a part on 18 February 1908.162 In a circular to his customers, Kleine argued that the whole From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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situation was unfortunate, and mostly blamed Pathé, who ‘would not play if the other foreign manufacturers were admitted under the same terms’.163 He added that members of the FSA would be prohibited from dealing with Kleine, beginning on 2 March: ‘We will therefore be forced, much against our will, to enter into active business competition with pretty nearly every friend we have in the business.’164 These events set off the first ‘war’ in American cinema between licensed and nonlicensed factions (the latter were often referred to as the Independents). As has been documented by other scholars, Kleine became the most vocal voice of the Independents, launching a propaganda assault against the Trust in the trade press.165 Edison countered by bringing the Kleine Optical Co., Kleine the individual and a significant number of the Kleine Optical Co.’s customers to court.166 Moreover, Kleine was forced to withdraw from Kalem. On 26 February 1908, Frank Marion wrote to Kleine to let him know that William T. Rock had called upon Marion, ‘and registered his demand that we immediately get rid of our honored president at which we laughed’.167 Kleine immediately sent his letter of resignation to Kalem, suggesting to Marion and Long that this would give them more leverage in negotiations with Edison.168 ‘I have of course understood that our final dealings with Kalem would have to stop today and have pointed to this as one of the humors of a very much mixed situation,’ Kleine added.169 Resigning as president did not suffice, and a month later, the option of selling his share was on the table. The first offer suggested that he would sell them back for the same amount he had put in, $1,000, but Kleine declared that he would ‘not dream’ of accepting that for his investment in Kalem.170 Kleine explained that from April 1907 to 1 March 1908, the Kleine Optical Co. had bought prints from Kalem to a value of $64,814.44, purchases significantly influenced by his personal connection with Kalem. In Kleine’s view, he had made much more money for the other stockholders than they had made for him. In light of this, he was considering asking $5,000 for his one-fifth interest, with an option to buy back if that became possible.171 Two days later, Long telegraphed Kleine to accept the $5,000 offer, and with this, Kleine was out of Kalem.172 Shortly thereafter, on 9 April 1908, Frank Marion notified the Edison Co. that Kalem had severed all ties with Kleine.173 The ‘war’ between the Edison licensee group and the Biograph group only lasted for a few months before there were moves to bring the two factions together. Charlie Musser has shown that although some voices in the trade regarded the rivalry as a positive thing, almost everyone in the film business, including the two main combatants, had reasons to be displeased with the constant legal and commercial fighting.174 André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning write that the compromise between Edison and Biograph that was eventually reached was ‘probably brokered by’ George Kleine.175 Others – not least Kleine himself – have been more assertive, and there is some evidence to support this notion. But Kleine’s reputation and role as a peace broker should not overshadow his primary motivation: to finally bring himself into the Edison licence group. This may seem counterintuitive given his public lambasting of the Trust in the spring of 1908, but at least one scholar has suggested that Edison’s litigation against Kleine and his customers was a much more serious threat than Kleine would ever have admitted in public, and that his fear of losing the legal battle prompted him to initiate talks with Edison.176 Either way, if we are to believe Kleine, he organised a ‘secret meeting’ in New York City in June 1908 (again probably at the

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Republican Club) between Frank Dyer, representing the Edison group, Messrs Harry Marvin and J. J. Kennedy, representing Biograph, and himself.177 Accounts of what happened next differ, but point to the following chronology:178 On 11 July 1908, Edison’s Frank L. Dyer lunched with Harry N. Marvin and Jeremiah J. Kennedy of Biograph to discuss terms. A week later, Kleine met with Dyer in New York. By the end of July, the Edison people had outlined the terms, summarised in a document titled ‘Proposed Scheme’.179 The scheme’s second clause specified that Kleine would be recognised as a licensee, but that the limit to his importations would be 5,000 feet of new subjects weekly.180 In Kleine’s copy of the document, the marginalia mentioned a possible licence to manufacture (in addition to, or instead of, importing), but it appears he planned to suggest that a manufacturing licence be ‘held dormant’. Kleine also jotted down the phrase ‘rental branches’ next to the clause that dealt with his status, without specifying exactly what he wanted to discuss in regard to these. The different manufacturers demanded significant changes, and negotiations dragged on until the end of the year.181 As far as Kleine was concerned, history repeated itself. After having performed his role as liaison, he was out of the loop again. He did receive a licence in December 1908, at which point the importation cap had been lowered to 3,000 feet weekly – two reels from Gaumont and one reel from UrbanEclipse.182 This was obviously not to Kleine’s satisfaction, but once it was settled that he would be part of the group, it appears he tried to make the best of the situation. In mid-December 1908, he dictated a letter to Frank Dyer in which he spoke of the importance of being on friendly terms with certain newspapers when ‘the first wild yell of protest against the octopus [the MPPC] goes up’.183 For unknown reasons, this letter was not sent. Later, Kleine added the following marginalia: ‘We met in N.Y. and signed Patents Co. license Dec 18/08 – operative Jan 1/1909. Reference to “yell of protest” … anticipated what happened.’184 As mentioned earlier, Robert Anderson made the case that the most significant achievement of the Trust was the interlocking of the branches of production and distribution. This was accomplished when General Film, the MPPC’s distribution branch, began operations in April 1910. Its chief architect was George Kleine. This becomes clear from a revision of some errors in Anderson’s account of the formation of the MPPC. According to Anderson, ‘Biograph and Edison board members met behind closed doors in May 1908 to discuss the feasibility of creating a “Plan to Reorganize the Motion Picture Business of the United States.”’185 The ‘Plan’ that Anderson is talking about refers to another document kept in the Kleine Papers in Washington. Unfortunately, Anderson has got the plans and schemes mixed up,186 which renders his account inaccurate. This document did not, as Anderson writes, present a ‘set of guidelines for the yet-to-be-named Motion Picture Patents Company’,187 or a ‘blueprint’ for it.188 In reality, this was a rough draft of a plan to establish General Film – although at this stage, the suggested distribution organisation was called Corporation ‘X’. This is quite clear from the document itself, including the sections that Anderson has included in his chapter: ‘The business of Corporation “X” will be the renting of films, sale of machines and other items usual in the trade. Manufacturers will sell exclusively to Corporation “X.”’189 There is also strong evidence to suggest that this document was authored by George Kleine, and not the result of some clandestine meetings of Edison and Biograph board members, especially if we From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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look closer at some of the sections that Anderson has omitted from the quotation. For instance, the final clause of the four-page plan states that ‘George Kleine [is] to receive bonus of 3% of the capital stock of Corporation “X” for promoting this proposition.’190 Another part of the plan was to establish not one, but two executive offices – one in New York and one in Chicago, the latter to handle the territory ‘West and Southwest of Pittsburgh’.191 Each executive office would have its own ‘executive committee’, and the plan suggested that the executive committee of the Chicago office should consist of one representative each for Essanay, Selig and Kleine.192 There was also an addendum to the document that specifies the exact terms under which the Kleine Optical Co. ‘will become a party to a movement such as is indicated herewith’.193 These terms demanded that the patent issues would be settled in a way that satisfied Biograph; that Kleine could carry all his European manufacturers into the agreement; and that Corporation ‘X’ would purchase the rental business of the Kleine Optical Co., these offices to continue as rental branches within the new Corporation ‘X’194 When the General Film Co. was established in 1910 as the distribution branch of the MPPC, it did, indeed, buy Kleine’s film rental exchanges. Why would the ‘board members’ of Edison and Biograph have gone to these lengths to look after Kleine’s interests during the supposed secret meetings of May 1908? ‘A Plan’ indicates that Kleine had already outlined the basic architecture for General Film in May 1908. Five years later, when the government had brought suit against the MPPC et al., Edison’s Frank L. Dyer gave the impression during the hearings that the GFC was his brainchild. This enraged Kleine, who promptly wrote to ‘Laemmle Replies: “Alas, Poor Kleine, I Knew Him Well”’: publicity material issued by Carl Laemmle. Copy in the George Kleine Papers, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division

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his attorney Henry Melville to explain that, as a matter of fact, he had presented the plans for a distribution corporation to Kennedy and Marvin of Biograph in 1908. He had also identified other inconsistencies and errors in Dyer’s testimony. For instance, Kleine made clear that when the MPPC was formed in late 1908, he had not voluntarily accepted to limit his imports – he was forced to, acting under the assumption that Biograph would have joined the MPPC anyway, leaving him an isolated combatant.195 This seems to encapsulate Kleine’s predicament in 1907–8 fairly well: he did not have much to gain from a closed market, but still he had little choice but to try to join the licence group at the best terms possible. Furthermore, when the MPPC finally became reality, Kleine had to explain how his membership squared with the views he had so vehemently expressed during his days as an Independent. At the height of his battle with Edison, in March 1908, Kleine had written to several Chicago newspapers asking for fair treatment and a chance to reply to Edison’s ‘garbled and one-sided accounts’. In this letter, Kleine – correctly, it seems – made the case that what was going on was a commercial rather than a legal struggle: Under cover of an alleged patent which was declared invalid by the United States circuit court of appeals on March 10th, 1902 … a combination has been formed under which seven manufacturers of moving picture films … is attempting to restrict the trade by limiting the output, maintenance of uniform prices, etc.196

Similarly, in an affidavit to the United States District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, Kleine argued that the patents were de facto used as a cover ‘shielding it [the licence group] against attack as an illegal combination in restraint of trade’.197 If Kleine’s other statements are accurate, he wrote this affidavit while in the midst of negotiating his own and Biograph’s way into the very same licence group, and less than a year after he had written to the Chicago press about the Edison licensees’ attempts to restrict trade, he had himself joined the exact same type of combination. In the process of doing so, however, he gained a certain reputation as a peace broker, and helped establish an image of the MPPC as a guarantor of order and progress. This was not universally accepted, but widely shared, and lingered on for quite some time, before the vilification of the MPPC set in. For instance, several years after the MPPC had both come and gone, ‘The Film daily Question Box’ quizzed readers about the old days: ‘Can you name the most important factor in bringing chaotic conditions in the industry under discipline at the end of the first famous patents war?’198 The answer: ‘George Kleine.’

CONCLUSION This chapter has shown that reality was a bit more complicated. Kleine exerted considerable influence in the sequence of events that led up to the MPPC, but his actions also signal his entrapment in a tension field between two somewhat contradictory forces: (a) the efforts to close the motion picture business; and (b) the push towards a motion picture mass culture. The latter emanated from a booming demand for entertainment in the second half of the nineteenth century, and was From the Optical Store to the MPPC

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further enabled by the unique qualities of motion pictures (compared to live entertainment), especially the ways they turned entertainment into a tradable commodity that was easily and cheaply reproducible for a globally integrated mass market. Also, as experience goods subject to non-rival consumption, there was a strong incentive to promote novelty, and luckily for producers, novelty was also an important aspect of the entertainment experience – to be entertained, audiences demanded a constant flow of new and exciting pictures. Producers’ and consumers’ mutual interest in novelty was a key condition of possibility for the establishment of film culture as an everyday practice, as routine novelty. The actualisation of this possibility was a gradual process. A decisive step was reached around 1903, when Kleine and others who were engaged in the retail functions of the business began to discover that in terms of mass markets, the central commodity was motion pictures, not motion picture machinery. Another crucial step in the process was the creation of a functioning infrastructure for the distribution of motion pictures to mass audiences. This was accomplished in 1905– 6, when permanent movie theatres (nickelodeons) and nationwide networks of rental exchanges (such as the one Kleine operated) were established. In the years that followed, the film business expanded drastically, as various firms and individuals tried to cater to the growing demand for motion picture entertainment, seizing upon the profit opportunities this entailed. Kleine’s strategy to satisfy what seemed to be an insatiable demand was to increase his importation of foreign films. His business grew into a million-dollar operation, and he would remember these as his golden years. The large influx of foreign films indicates that domestic output was either too low or of inferior quality, or, as was most likely the case – both. This was an effect of chaos and conflict within the American motion picture business, manifested most clearly in constant litigation. The main problem was the Edison Co.’s ambition to use its patent rights to close and control the whole business. These ambitions ran counter to the push for motion picture mass culture (as summarised above) and also reflected competing ideas of what the industry’s basic commodity really was – hardware or software. With the formation of the MPPC in December 1908, an oligopolistic closure of the film business was finally achieved, but the victory was only partial, and highly temporary. Stifled competition and too much standardisation left the field open for innovations and new profit opportunities. Kleine had found his way into the MPPC era, but one such innovation – the multi-reel feature film – would allow him to find his way out. He had been instrumental in bringing the MPPC and the GFC into existence, and worked hard to bring himself into the arrangement, albeit more because of enforced circumstances than of his own volition. With his introduction of multi-reel feature films to American audiences in 1913 and 1914 – the subject of the next chapter – Kleine would also be instrumental in bringing the MPPC down.

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2 The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

The previous chapter detailed how Kleine brought himself into the MPPC. This one will explore how he got out, and in the process helped bring the MPPC down and remodel the motion picture industry. The key event in this story was the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature film in the period 1913–15. The formation of the MPPC and the reign of ‘programme cinema’ in the United States for a few years in the late 1900s and early 1910s put an end to Kleine’s ‘golden days’ in the motion picture business. As a licensed member and, indeed, one of the architects of the Patents Company and General Film, Kleine remained at the centre of the industry, but his expansion had come to a halt. These very limitations, however, and the mounting uncertainty regarding the legal status of the MPPC, encouraged Kleine, and other entrepreneurs, to discover, explore and develop new and alternative profit opportunities. In this sense, and seemingly paradoxically, market restrictions and an economic environment of increasing uncertainty stimulated product innovation in the motion picture business. In Kleine’s specific case, thanks to his active search as well as a stroke of luck, opportunity knocked in the form of a mammoth film titled Quo Vadis?. Kleine suspected that this eight-reel film had enormous commercial potential, but he had to figure out how to capture as much of its value as possible without violating MPPC terms. The chapter recounts how he successfully negotiated his way through this. The MPPC had little choice but to license Quo Vadis?, and also ended up allowing Kleine to exploit the film more or less as he saw fit. This indicates that very long films were a mismatch to the norms of distribution and exhibition of the time, but as this chapter will show, it was also the result of a grave misjudgment. The MPPC predicted that multi-reel features of the magnitude of Quo Vadis? would only appear two or three times per year. Instead, they became the business’ most important commodity. Multi-reel features became the norm, and a ‘quality race’ that pushed budgets increasingly higher set American cinema on a path towards becoming a winner-takes-all system, nourished by the profits of a few smash hits, and dominated by the few firms that developed the capabilities required to produce such hits with some consistency. This chapter’s main aim is to analyse this turning point in American cinema, approaching the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature as a multifaceted and uneven process, and suggesting that three levels must be taken into account: (a) business strategies, decision-making and action; (b) cultural practices; and (c) discursive negotiations. With regard to the latter, public discourse on the early feature contained The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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a variety of viewpoints, but few imagined that longer films would eliminate the variety programmes of short films that were standard in nickelodeons. Instead, ‘gradation’ (of film length, genre, venue, audience, mode of exhibition) was the dominant trope. In terms of business, the success of films like Quo Vadis? demonstrated the disproportionally high profits that could be made from expensive and elaborate multi-reel feature films. With this, the quality race was under way. Exhibitors, too, became of aware of the profit potential of features, as well as the reshaping of demand that was taking place. Large audiences wanted features, regardless of what exhibitors thought about the issue. As this chapter will address in detail, this resulted in a process of trial and error when it came to feature film exhibition, reflecting the search for the best methods to realise the commercial value of multi-reel features. If discourses on the multi-reel feature on the verge of its breakthrough were confused and resulted in imaginary solutions (gradation) to real contradictions (a new format vs. old business and cultural practices), exhibitors and other entrepreneurs did what they could to adapt to changing conditions. The result was a diverse range of business methods and cultural practices. In sum, then, there was the crude force of economic incentives, but also the unevenness and diversity of the actual situation, as the multi-reel feature broke through and became cinema’s key commodity in the mid-1910s. The chapter traces this process, how it would eventually transform the motion picture business to its core, and how Kleine’s exploitation of multi-reel features brought him to the high points of his career.

‘PROGRAMME CINEMA’ The Motion Picture Patents Company and its distribution organisation the General Film Company were instrumental in standardising the motion picture business in a number of ways. By 1909, the standard length of a film reel had been established at 1,000 feet (about fifteen minutes of projection time, depending on the speed of projection), and most subjects occupied a full reel, although sometimes, it would include two or more shorter subjects.1 Nickelodeon shows were localised in a number of ways, especially when it came to sound practices and the presence of live performers (local singers and the like),2 but there was also a degree of standardisation. Usually, these venues offered a varied programme of one-reelers, including, for example, a comedy, dramatic pictures and a newsreel. Many nickelodeons also featured some live entertainment, most often illustrated song performances.3 Shows ran continuously in a loop, from morning to evening, thus accommodating the needs of drop-in patrons. The programme was changed at least two or three times a week, but often on a daily basis, persuading customers to return day after day to their local nickel theatre or to the downtown venue conveniently located on the way to or from their workplace. Exhibitors received their reels from rental exchanges, most of which had specialised in distribution, leaving production and exhibition to other firms, entrepreneurs and showmen. Rental exchanges, in turn, leased reels from manufacturers (outright sale of films was discontinued within the MPPC structure). Exchanges licensed by the MPPC were limited to the output of the ten producers that were part of the MPPC group; these films were put out according to a set schedule that determined the total number

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of reels to be released each week and on which days of the week the different producers’ films would come out. For instance, from 31 July 1911 (when the output of licensed films was raised to thirty-six reels per week), the two weekly Gaumont reels that George Kleine imported and released came out on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and his Urban-Eclipse reel on Wednesdays.4 The rental price exchanges paid to manufacturers were based on film length and age; thus, the list price of a brand-new release could be thirteen cents per foot, or eleven cents per foot for a standing order, the price dropping to nine cents per foot after two months, seven cents after four months, and five cents after six months.5 Licence fees and royalties were also built into the system to compensate the patent holders. When it began operations in 1910, the General Film Co. purchased and took over most of the licensed exchanges, forging closer ties between production and distribution within the MPPC system.6 Only exhibitors and exchanges that had paid for and received a licence from the MPPC were allowed to deal with motion pictures put out by the MPPC manufacturers. To the extent that the people who set up the MPPC strived to monopolise the business, they were banking on the assumption that no exhibitor could do without films from the licensed manufacturers, and, accordingly, that all exchanges and exhibitors would eventually be hooked into the system. In turn, this hinged on whether the MPPC would be able to successfully prevent competing firms from manufacturing new motion pictures. The ultimate trump card was the MPPC’s exclusive deal with Eastman-Kodak, the all-but-monopolistic manufacturer of raw film stock in the US. This obstruction to non-licensed film production was removed in February 1911, when Eastman began selling raw film to Independent producers (although on slightly less favourable terms than those enjoyed by MPPC manufacturers).7 But at this point, and in spite of the various MPPC tactics, the Independent market was already flourishing. The nickelodeon boom had created such an overwhelming demand that the field opened up for new firms. To some extent, the MPPC manufacturers had themselves to blame. As Charles Musser has pointed out, as the nickelodeon era began, moviegoing was turning into mass culture, but production remained at cotton-industry levels – only Pathé and Vitagraph seem to have realised that they could ramp up their output drastically.8 Linking back to the previous chapter, it could be added that Kleine drew the same conclusion, and acted by increasing imports to a mass scale. All the same, by the time the MPPC was established, there were so many active producers that exhibitors who for one reason or another did not want to associate themselves with the Trust had no major problem finding a film supply elsewhere. In this sense, the MPPC never monopolised the film industry. Its competitors, however, still ended up adopting the Trust’s system and practices; in 1910, they formed their own distribution combination, known as the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company, just one month after the GFC had started operating. The Sales Co. had not been operating very long before an internal power struggle split it into two. The result was Universal, led by Carl Laemmle, and Mutual, led by Harry Aitken.9 At this point, there were three ‘programme companies’, all ascribing to the same goal: to supply exhibitors with an ample, reliable and predictable supply of one-reel motion pictures. There was no monopoly, but a few firms dominated the business; all three of them adhered to the standardised practices of ‘programme cinema’ as described above, the main difference being that one The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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programme company catered to licensed theatres and the other to Independent theatres. Competition in this system was limited, at least compared to an imagined perfect market, and in this sense the industry was an oligopoly, but the competition between the Trust and the Independents was fierce, and there was also some internal competition between manufacturers within the respective programme companies.10 George Kleine did not thrive in programme cinema to the same degree that he had during the halcyon days of the nickelodeon boom. He had sold his exchanges in Des Moines, Indianapolis, Birmingham (Alabama) and Seattle, and his part interest in exchanges in Texas, California, Missouri and Michigan in 1909, as the other MPPC manufacturers had intimated that Kleine’s network of exchanges gave him an unfair advantage.11 The remaining rental exchanges were sold to the General Film Co. in mid1910 in return for cash and a considerable share of the GFC’s preferred stock, and with this, Kleine (temporarily) exited the active sides of distribution. The entry for Kleine in the Encyclopedia of Early Cinema states that General Film paid him $2 million for his exchanges, but this seems to be grossly exaggerated.12 Evidence in the George Kleine Papers indicates that he received approximately $200,000 for his exchanges in Chicago, New York, Boston and Denver ($143,000 in cash, $57,000 in preferred stock), and an additional $110,000 (one-third in stock, the rest in cash) for his five Canadian exchanges.13 The shares of preferred stock that came into his possession amounted to roughly 12 per cent,14 and he also owned 10 per cent of the common stock (which had been equally divided between the ten MPPC members). This made Kleine the single largest GFC shareholder, but he was nowhere near acquiring a ‘majority’ of the stock, as some accounts erroneously state.15 When it came to importations, the MPPC scheme limited Kleine’s releases to three reels per week – one from Urban-Eclipse and two from Gaumont. The relative size of the MPPC members is better measured in terms of their respective total sale of footage, rather than the number of reels released per week. Figures for the fiscal year 1913 are fairly representative, and reveal that of the 96,774,514 feet of film General Film leased out this year, Kleine supplied 3,402,544 feet, or roughly 3.5 per cent.16 KLEINE AND QUO VADIS?: FINDING A MARKET FOR FEATURES IN ‘PROGRAMME CINEMA’ In 1912, Kleine replaced Gaumont with Cines, chiefly because of Gaumont’s plans to establish their own plant in the United States in order to exploit their Chronophone technology for talking pictures, clashing with Kleine’s interests – and with the Trust’s.17 The switch to Cines proved fortunate and significant, since it was through his dealings with this Italian manufacturer that Kleine came to enter the emerging field of multi-reel feature films. It is possible that the rigidity of programme cinema in general, and the restrictions that the MPPC placed on Kleine, would have pushed him towards multi-reel features either way, but the shift to Cines was serendipitous in the sense that it later allowed him to place one of the first breakaway multi-reel hits, Quo Vadis?, on the American market. Quo Vadis? was based on Henryk Sienkiewicz’s historical novel of the same name, set in Nero’s Rome and featuring a pro-Christian theme. There had also been popular stage productions of Quo Vadis? before Cines

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produced the film version. Some would later argue that Quo Vadis? was the mother of all ‘spectacle films’.18 The term stemmed from such films’ spectacular mass scenes, the epic scope of their subject matter, their elaborate special-effects scenes (volcanic eruptions and such), and their great length and cost. They were a kind of proto-blockbuster (although the term was not used at the time) – lavish, big-budget productions with some expectations of significant box-office returns.19 But they were also artistically acclaimed, mainly because they had their roots in European high-cultural traditions.20 They made frequent use of famous authors and revered literary source material, they paid attention to historical detail, and they centred on classical, historical or religious themes and motifs. Kleine first heard of Quo Vadis? in July 1912, and was informed a few months later, via a cable, that the film was completed, at which point he made sure that Cines would ship a print and postpone the publishing of a European release date until he could investigate the practicalities and possibilities of an American release.21 He received a sample print of Quo Vadis? in January 1913,22 and decided to purchase a negative and the exclusive rights for the United States and Canada. Price negotiations ensued; Cines asked for 50,000 francs (approximately $10,000),23 citing the major profits that dante’s Inferno (Milano, 1911) had raked in. But Kleine deemed this price ‘excessive under present conditions’, arguing that competition on the multi-reel feature market had stiffened considerably since the release of dante’s Inferno, which had met virtually no competition in its niche.24 He did end up paying around 50,000 francs for the film, but it turned out to be worth the price.25 Having procured the picture, Kleine faced the challenge of coming up with a release method that would maximise its commercial potential while complying with the MPPC’s rules and regulations. As a first step, he secured the MPPC’s licensing of the film. On 25 February 1913, he wrote to MPPC attorney George F. Scull, and argued that since the MPPC had recently licensed The Prisoner of Zenda (Famous Players, 1912), it made sense to grant a licence to Quo Vadis?, too – otherwise unlicensed manufacturers would have an unfair advantage compared to their licensed counterparts.26 Kleine also emphasised that it was the MPPC alone, regardless of the opinions of the individual manufacturers, that had the authority to license pictures longer than 1,500 feet. This was important for Kleine in light of the kerfuffle that had ensued a few years earlier when he purchased the Johnson–Ketchel prizefight films and sold the state rights. The practice had been permitted in that instance, but was immediately banned following the outrage it caused among the other manufacturers.27 Scull replied that the MPPC and its president Harry Marvin’s inclination was not to extend the MPPC licensing-system restrictions, but rather ‘open them up’ whenever possible, though Kleine should write to Marvin and make the matter official.28 Kleine abided, and did indeed receive a licence for the picture.29 In his letter to Scull, Kleine also asked for advice regarding the handling of Quo Vadis?, given the ‘manifold conditions of license from the Patents Co., expressed and implied’.30 Kleine was convinced that Quo Vadis? represented the highest achievement in cinematography thus far in the history of motion pictures, but he confessed that he was ‘puzzled to find a method of squaring the best results with Patents Company rules’.31 A regular release was out of the question, due to the film’s high cost and great length.32 When Quo Vadis? was delivered to Kleine in early 1913, it was over 8,000 feet The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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long, which he claimed was ‘longer than any film that has yet been released in this country’, while also again emphasising that it was ‘beyond question the best product of the cinematographic art that has yet been made’.33 Kleine realised that ‘[u]nless the film is seriously cut it cannot be used in many of the exclusive motion picture theatres’,34 and it appears that his preferred plan from the outset was to target large, prestigious legitimate theatres rather than movie houses. As he explained to Scull, the film’s superior ‘quality’ made it suitable for ‘exploitation in theatres of the highest class’ – referring to legitimate theatres that usually did not screen motion pictures – and at advanced admission prices.35 As we will see shortly, Kleine did exactly this, and with such spectacular success that some people believed he invented the very idea of this kind of release method.36 There were precedents, however, and while I have found no evidence to confirm it, it is likely that Kleine made note of, for example, dante’s Inferno’s successful run in dramatic theatres in 1911 and the sixteen-week run of Paul J. Rainey’s African Hunt (Jungle Film Co., 1912) at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City starting in April 1912.37 Even if this was the plan Kleine had in mind for Quo Vadis? all along, he outlined some alternatives, seemingly to appease the MPPC group and to make sure it did not appear as if he was deliberately ignoring MPPC rules and regulations. On 1 March 1913, he wrote to the Patents Co. and outlined various ideas on how to release Quo Vadis?, submitting these to the MPPC ‘for [its] opinion as to whether any or all of them are permissible under the terms of my license of June 6th, 1912’.38 The plan Kleine outlined suggested that the US rights and positive prints could be sold to a prominent person or firm within the theatrical field who could place the film in dramatic theatres. If permissible, Kleine would reserve a small territory, such as the Chicago area, for himself. After a specified time period, say one year, they could cut the picture down to the longest possible length that would be viable in ‘motion picture theaters of the highest grade, seating 500 or more’ – about four to five reels – and then lease the film exclusively to licensed exchanges or to the exchange that offered the best price. After this stage, or parallel to it, they could also issue a two- to three-reel version of the film to be used in ‘small picture theaters’, which would also be leased either to licensed exchanges or to the highest bidder.39 Other documents make clear that at this stage, he also toyed with the idea of a serial release for picture theatres, dividing the film into two or three sections, ‘each part to be run upon different days and forming a separate program in moving picture houses’.40 Neither the shorter nor the serial version was ever realised. Most details about how the MPPC directors and manufacturers responded to Kleine’s plans and suggestions regarding Quo Vadis? are unknown, but we do know that a preview screening was arranged at the MPPC offices on Fifth Avenue in New York on two consecutive evenings, 13 and 14 March 1913.41 On 18 March 1913, Kleine telegraphed the main office in Chicago, instructing his staff to set up the darkroom for a preview screening there too.42 He stated in this telegram that the MPPC manufacturers as well as the National Board of Censorship had dubbed Quo Vadis? the ‘greatest film yet made’, and that he would ‘probably hold it for percentage’ (i.e. receive compensation through a percentage cut of revenues rather than through flat-rate rentals or an outright sale).43 Thus, at this point, it was clear that Kleine would have relative freedom when it came to release methods. Several years later,

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Kleine claimed that though it was not his original plan, he had offered to let the General Film Co. put the film out as a special release, not because he wanted to, but because he felt that the ‘ethics of the situation demanded it’.44 If such an offer was, in fact, ever made, we have reason to doubt its sincerity. In his correspondence with Scull, Kleine declared that ‘[i]n any event, I will not dispose of this film for a mess of pottage even if I have to keep it in pickle indefinitely.’45 Luckily for Kleine, after having paid due diligence to the MPPC, he was free to proceed with the original plan, and place Quo Vadis? in high-class dramatic theatres. The licensing of Quo Vadis?, and Kleine’s carte blanche when it came to release methods, allowed him to continue operations as a licensed importer while simultaneously sidestepping the MPPC system – a quite remarkable feat at first glance. (So remarkable, in fact, that it appears to have led some historians to wrongly assume that Kleine released Quo Vadis? ‘without the Trust’s consent’.46) As noted earlier, however, previous licensing of multi-reel features released by non-MPPC manufacturers left little choice but to license the film. But the MPPC executives could have made release through General Film a condition for issuing the licence. Perhaps they were too busy handling the anti-trust lawsuit that the US government had initiated against them the previous year to worry about whatever Kleine may or may not have been doing outside the MPPC framework. A complementary explanation is that the MPPC and the General Film Co. were, indeed, at a loss to figure out how to release motion pictures of the length and cost of Quo Vadis?. Kleine later said that the preview screenings at the MPPC in March 1913 had proved what no one believed to be possible – that a single motion picture could rivet the audience’s attention for over two hours straight. Motography’s ‘Goat Man’, present at one of these screenings, concurred: If we are waiting for a film to lift us from a possible rut, it is here. If you are interested in motion pictures you will sit for two and a half hours, much as I sat, riveted to your seat, forgetting time, and awake to a realization that it was all too short.47

The General Film Co. nonetheless declined to put out Quo Vadis?, assuming that none of their customers had the capacity to project such a long film and hence would not rent it.48 This rejection does not mean that the MPPC or its manufacturers were somehow opposed to multi-reel feature films, but rather that it was a gradual – and ultimately unsuccessful – process for the MPPC to adjust its release methods and business practices to handle the new and longer format. An MPPC memo from the summer of 1913 demonstrates how, at this point, the Patents Co. tried to accommodate pictures of varying cost, length and type by distinguishing between four categories of motion pictures, each with its own preferred release method. The first category was the ‘regular service’, at this juncture consisting of forty-two reels – thirty one-reelers and six two-reelers. The target customers for the regular service were smaller movie theatres of the nickelodeon type. The second category was also made up of one-reel and two-reel pictures (eight and two respectively), but of a kind that had some sort of special appeal, or had been unusually costly to produce. This was labelled the ‘special exclusive service’. The third category included ‘feature films’ of between two and five reels. Such films were to be made available to exhibitors at regular intervals, weekly or The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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biweekly. The preferable length was four to five reels, as this would allow exhibitors to raise admission prices, but the memo also acknowledged that films any longer than this would be difficult for most picture theatres to handle without abandoning their usual methods of exhibition. Finally, a fourth category included the two or perhaps three ‘masterpieces’ of six to ten reels – ‘of the type of Quo Vadis?’, as the memo put it – that would be submitted to General Film every year. Quo Vadis? also set the standard for the suggested release method: ‘We propose to handle them [the “masterpieces”] only in a few legitimate theatres, or in very large motion picture houses, on a percentage basis, and with long runs if possible, and only a few copies will be necessary.’49 If the MPPC misjudged the situation, it had little to do with some sort of ideologically motivated resistance to multi-reel features, but rather with a titanic underestimation in the prediction of the yearly occurrence of ‘masterpieces’. Meanwhile, the MPPC did its best to provide an improved service to its presumed core customers – the small-time exhibitors – while at the same time including longer films in the release schedule and making sure that manufacturers were compensated for the extra production costs. This final issue is what had made Kleine’s release of Quo Vadis? pose such a conundrum in the first place – the film had potentially extraordinary commercial value, but its production costs had also been extraordinary. In the MPPC system, there was no direct (or at least a very weak) connection between production cost and rental price. This made it difficult for manufacturers, or, in this case, an importer, to cover the cost of more expensive pictures. This, more than anything else, is what would eventually kill off the MPPC and the notion of ‘programme cinema’. As we have seen, the first step for Kleine had always been a release in legitimate theatres under some sort of agreement with theatrical interests, and this is exactly what happened. According to Kleine’s later recollection, after the preview screening for the MPPC and GFC, he showed the film to Sam Harris, who immediately booked it for the Astor Theatre on Broadway, one of the venues he and his associate George Cohan operated.50 Quo Vadis? opened at the Astor on 21 April 1913, where it ran for a recordbreaking twenty-two weeks, at what appears to have been capacity audiences. Forty per cent of the profits flowed back to Kleine.51 Aiming to repeat the success elsewhere across the US and Canada, Kleine hired Cohan and Harris as booking agents, Cohan and Harris to be paid 15 per cent ‘of the total sum received by Mr. Kleine, as his share of the receipts derived from the presentation’ of Quo Vadis? (i.e. not 15 per cent of the ‘box-office income’ as Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale claim).52 The plan was to set up a number of roadshow companies to tour the United States with the picture, targeting large dramatic houses in major cities. Roadshow distribution meant that a film would be booked by a specific theatre in a specific town for a protracted and well-advertised run, after which the film would move on to the next town and the next theatre. The method was borrowed from the theatre business. As Edison and MPPC representative Frank L. Dyer explained it in 1913, ‘With the more important pictures … the booking is precisely the same as the booking of a regular dramatic performance, dates being arranged in advance, and advertised by the theatres exactly as they might advertise a regular road show.’53 The reliance on theatrical models aligned with Kleine’s policy ‘to remove every moving picture angle and prejudice from distribution [sic]’ of Quo Vadis?.54 Many years later, Kleine claimed that this was also manifested in the form of specific rules that he and Cohan and Harris had agreed on, including a mandatory

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minimum admission price of twenty-five cents, a limitation to two shows per day and venue, and reserved seats only,55 but I have found no contractual evidence of such rules. Either way, after the first period of roadshowing, Quo Vadis? was subject to a wide range of exhibition practices.

EARLY DISCOURSES ON THE MULTI-REEL FEATURE FILM: THE TREE OF KINEMATOGRAPHY Before we go into details about the circulation of Quo Vadis?, and Kleine’s importation and exploitation of subsequent Italian spectacle films, we should note that the picture appeared in the US at a moment when the role of the multi-reel feature in American cinema was the topic of much debate. In this context, Quo Vadis? was almost immediately perceived as a landmark motion picture and a film of great historical impact. For instance, Edison’s Horace G. Plimpton argued in July 1914 that the ‘ball started rolling’ when Quo Vadis? hit it big in mid-1913, and that the ‘country went rapidly feature crazy’ in the wake of this film.56 Plimpton might have been right that its success marked a moment when the domestic production of multi-reel features, as well as programming of full-length shows built around features, began to increase rapidly, but there were predecessors to Quo Vadis?, and other myths of origin. One story nominated P. Pliny Craft as the ‘father of the feature’; Craft had produced and distributed the three-reel Western/biopic Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East (Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill Film Company, 1910) and was also responsible for bringing dante’s Inferno to the United States in 1911.57 According to Moving Picture World’s profile on Craft, a key source of inspiration had been Johnson–Jeffries Fight (J & J Company, 1910), indicating that prizefight pictures could be seen as a kind of proto-feature format.58 Frank E. Woods, an influential critic at dramatic Mirror and occasional writer for other trade papers, also singled out prizefight pictures as important proto-features, but added that Vitagraph had ‘experimented’ with Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1910) in three reels, released serially, one reel at a time.59 W. Stephen Bush, another leading trade press pundit, argued that the ‘origin of the feature [dated] back to 1911’.60 As far as Frank L. Dyer (then president of General Film) could recall, American production companies began to make feature films in 1912.61 These and other similar accounts make clear that the multi-reel feature had no one specific point of origin, but was rather the ongoing discovery, development and integration of a new format. This process was spearheaded in the early 1910s by European manufacturers (especially in Denmark, Italy and France), but American producers caught on fairly quickly.62 Eileen Bowser has shown that as early as 1910–11, the trade press made frequent calls for longer films, motivated by a sense that certain themes and narratives could not be properly developed within the limits of the 1,000-foot reel (about fifteen minutes of projection time).63 Moreover, already in June 1911 Moving Picture World predicted that within two or three years, the multi-reel film would be the rule rather than the exception.64 Nevertheless, by 1914, discourses on the multi-reel feature were still mixed. Even among those who were most strongly convinced of the merits of longer feature films, there was a sense that feature cinema would not completely do The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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away with the variety programme, but that some theatres would offer features while others would run a mixed programme of short films. Employing metaphors typical of the time, Stephen Bush at Moving Picture World made the case that multi-reel features and one-reelers were not rivals: I hope that nothing in this article will be construed as a plea either against the single reel or against the charm of variety. Different theaters will have different audiences. … There will be a healthy growth in every part of the great Tree of Kinematography and the little branches will be as much part of the tree as the larger ones.65

Several models of gradation had been in sway before Bush presented his ‘Tree of Kinematography’, each one offering its own scheme of how the type of theatre, motion picture, audience and level of admission price interacted to form different grades or classes of moviegoing. In 1913, Frank Woods (at this point heading the Mirror’s motion picture department), claimed that Biograph’s Lee Dougherty had argued as early as five or six years earlier that ‘natural evolution’ would result in ‘at least three distinct divisions’, separating five-cent houses from ten- to twenty-cent houses and the even more expensive movie theatres for big features.66 Some months before Woods’s article appeared, William Fox had suggested that four different types of venues for motion picture exhibition existed already, each offering a distinct type of show at a certain admission price: (a) five-cent houses (or ‘nickelettes’ as Fox called them); (b) picture theatres charging ten cents or more; (c) combination houses that charged ten to fifty cents for a movie and vaudeville show; and (d) more expensive vaudeville theatres that offered a reel or two of motion picture between the live acts, all at ticket prices ranging from twenty-five cents to one dollar.67 Other gradation schemes were predicated on genre. Philadelphia motion picture producer Siegmund Lubin’s prediction is a case in point: ‘Before long we shall have picture houses devoted to different lines. … Some will show comedy, some melodrama, some farce, some spectacular, though we shall always have variety houses with a mixture of them all.’68 Some genre-based taxonomies treated the multi-reel feature as a genre in itself, comparable to comedy or melodrama.69 John J. Coleman (of Gene Gauntier Feature Players) represented yet another approach to the issue, advocating a two-grade scale based on seating capacity. In this scheme, theatres with a thousand-plus capacity should show a single-reel comedy, a two-reel drama and a three-reel drama, all interspersed with ‘high-class’ music. Smaller theatres should mix one-reelers, tworeelers and ‘appropriate’ music, Coleman argued.70 He also predicted the demise of pictures longer than three reels. Stephen Bush’s ideas regarding gradation fluctuated over time, but one of his more elaborated models included three classes of venues: (a) the ‘first class picture house’, offering flawless projection quality, large seating capacity, a maximum degree of comfort and safety, and top-notch feature films supplied from outside the programme companies’ ‘time-table system’; (b) a less luxurious version of the ‘first class house’, offering shorter programmes that combined feature films of four to five reels and single-reel subjects; and (c) a more modest type of theatre, offering short but good and varied programmes of one-reelers.71 Epes Winthrop Sargent, Bush’s colleague at World, proposed a distinction between the ‘locality house’ and the ‘feature house’, although he subdivided the latter class, arguing

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that different types of feature houses would show different types of features (‘sensational’, ‘classical’ and so on).72 In all of these gradation models, admission price was a function of the types of films shown and/or the convenience and class of the venue. Some industry insiders, such as Biograph’s Harry Marvin, believed that the ‘accommodations’ were more important than the films with regard to admission price. Marvin claimed that one could catch the same picture at a five-, ten- or fifty-cent house, but that the new or newly revamped theatres were vastly superior to nickelodeons when it came to conveniences. This, rather than any specific film, was what people were willing to pay extra for. In Marvin’s own words, Theatre managers have been warranted in spending large sums of money in equipping very fine theatres, to which they are compelled to ask a higher price of admission, and they produce there an exhibition which is attractive to well-to-do people, and is freely patronized by them, and where they pay a price of admission considerably more than the original five cent price.73

As Marvin made explicit, high-priced movie theatres catered primarily to ‘well-to-do’ people – in other words, the higher classes. Or so it was perceived. In this discourse, the films and venue determined the price of admission, and the price scale determined the audiences. With specific regard to multi-reel feature programmes c. 1913–14, the pervasive belief was that just as Marvin’s high-class ‘accommodations’ catered to the higher classes of society, so did the high-class feature programme. For instance, William Selig argued that the ‘worth-while photo-drama’ of six to ten reels would only be screened in special theatres, appealing ‘only to those who have the leisure and inclination to view photo-plays of great length’.74 Stephen Bush was more direct with regards to who these people were: the ‘refined and cultured portions of the American public’.75 Conversely, the short-film variety show was assumed to appeal primarily to the lower classes. An editorial in Reel Life stated that the multi-reel feature would never draw large crowds in ‘tenement districts’, whereas the ‘Broadway Crowd’ was much more likely to appreciate the dramatic ‘food for thought’ that high-quality features offered.76 Under the veil of anonymity, at least one manufacturer went on record using a more blunt term than ‘tenement’ audience, arguing that since there would always be poor people, there would always be an audience for the small-time picture house.77 These debates reflected a real, material, economic dilemma – how to widen the audience base without alienating already existing and loyal audiences? Arguably, the ‘solution’ lay in the obfuscation of class and other differences throughout the system (exhibition, film style, marketing) via an appeal to the mass, not specific classes. When multi-reel features appeared, however, the discursive negotiations around them instead made difference visible, as evident in the various schemes of gradation of audiences and venues. It was openly acknowledged that a chief merit of the multi-reel feature film was its potential to attract a new and higher class of patronage. In July 1914, for example, Jesse Lasky declared that ‘within their short year of existence’, the features had ‘accomplished what the one-reel subjects failed to attain in 15 years, namely attracting the classes’.78 Similarly, an ‘anonymous manufacturer’ was heard saying, ‘The features have brought to the box offices people The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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who we could not reach with small subjects.’79 William L. Sherry, a renowned feature film exchange man based in New York City, argued, ‘The big feature has done more to increase the high-class patronage of the motion picture theatre than any other single agency.’80 Or, in the words of Emanuel Mandelbaum, president of the World Film Corporation and ‘film idealist’, according to the Mirror, ‘The feature film is capable of wonderful things. Our greatest field of patronage is yet untouched. We are every day reaching more and more people who have in the past never thought of motion pictures, except with disdain.’81 As all of these examples show, if there was one recurring motif in the discourse on gradation and features, it was Bush’s concept of a ‘Tree of Kinematography’. All models and predictions envisioned the ongoing developments in the motion picture business in terms of growth, and assumed that this would allow for the accommodation of all sanctionable elements and expressions of film culture – variety programmes as well as multi-reel features; comedy as well as drama; small and modest as well as large and lavish movie theatres; ‘tenement’ as well as ‘high-class’ audiences. All the same, as Michael Quinn points out in an article about film distribution and the transition to the feature era, the discourse on gradation can also be construed as evidence of a clash between fundamentally irreconcilable models of cinema.82 The clash was, indeed, irreconcilable in the sense that the new and longer format could not be directly and easily inserted into the modes of distribution and exhibition that had been built to fit the one-reel standard and the variety programme at movie theatres.

EXHIBITOR RESPONSES TO THE MULTI-REEL FEATURE The trade press discourse reflects various imaginary solutions to this real contradiction, whereas exhibitors found themselves in the midst of an actual process of trial and error. For them, the most immediate difference between booking programme service for one-reelers and booking a multi-reel feature film (supplied either by a programme company or through a specialised feature film exchange) was that the longer film was much more expensive than the regular service. There were many local variations when it came to the rental price of features, but the sources suggest that around 1913–14 the normal price for multi-reel films ranged from twenty-five to fifty dollars for the first day of the booking period, dropping gradually for consecutive days.83 In comparison, General Film’s regular service for a full week cost only around forty-five dollars (although this, too, was subject to local variations).84 The challenge for exhibitors, then, was how to increase the revenues enough to cover the extra cost of booking a multi-reel feature film. The answer was to play the film at advanced prices, but to justify this, exhibitors had to convince their audiences that they were in for a special treat. Various forms of publicity were supposed to take care of this, but placing ads in the paper or spending money on posters or other forms of publicity did not make sense if the exhibitor only booked the feature for a one-night stand. In other words, the daily programme change, customary in many movie theatres, was a poor match for longer feature films. For these pictures, it was necessary to build an audience over a protracted run, and to use relatively elaborate marketing schemes to try to boost the audience’s willingness

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to pay. In many cases, this was easier said than done. Some nickelodeons catered primarily to a transient audience, downtown dwellers who preferred to drop in during lunch hour, between shopping stops or waiting for the train; features were a hard sell for these patrons. Many nickel theatres also had a severely limited seating capacity, which made it imperative to fill and empty the house as many times per day as possible – more than a long feature programme would allow. As one exhibitor present at the International Motion Picture Association’s convention in 1914 put it, ‘Someone with a large seating capacity can handle it, but the small man can’t.’85 It was also commonly argued that shifting from a varied programme to a feature show involved an economic risk; while the damage caused by one mediocre single-reel subject could be offset by the merits of the next one on the programme, one abysmal multi-reel feature would ruin the whole show.86 As Stephen Bush put it, ‘Poor clothes look worse on large men.’87 In sum, the multi-reel feature posed a serious challenge to the nickelodeon mode of exhibition, with its short variety programme running in a continuous loop, its low admission prices, its daily change of programme and its catering to drop-in customers. Indeed, Michael Quinn’s research indicates that the ushering in of feature cinema threatened to render the mode of exhibition that was typical of small-time exhibitors obsolete.88 At the time, however, the trade papers filled up with inspiring stories of how the smallest of exhibitors in the remotest of locations had boosted their business by shifting to multi-reel feature programmes, thanks to a combination of clever publicity work and increased admission prices. As an editorial in Motography suggested, features presented exhibitors with ‘a chance to make more noise, do more pretentious advertising, and attract bigger crowds’.89 Whether the examples singled out in the trade press were typical or exceptional – and whether even these small-time exhibitors were able to turn a profit in the slightly longer, medium and long run – is debatable. Ben Singer’s research suggests that this was rarely the case; he demonstrates in some detail how small-time exhibitors in the mid-1910s really had few viable options to survive.90 The underlying problem must have been that a full-scale refashioning of the demand curve was taking place. Otherwise, it would have been a viable option for exhibitors who had difficulties making money showing multi-reel features – due to limited seating capacity or other factors – to simply stick to a mixed programme of one-reelers. But trade press pundits and other commentators obviously had a hard time fathoming the extent to which audience tastes and preferences were changing, and hence the forces of creative destruction this would unleash. Thus, they subscribed to schemes of gradation and trees of kinematography, where the demand for short-film variety programmes and the exhibitors who supplied them remained constant. Exhibitors, on the other hand, seemed quite aware of what was going on. Take Harry Marsey, for instance, who ran the Happy Hour Theatre, a 340-seat motion picture theatre in Buffalo, NY. Marsey personally did not like long features, but he found it necessary to make them available to his costumers. Testifying in the USA vs. MPPC hearings in 1913, Marsey stated that They [customers] want to see features or productions produced in more than one reel. It is a case where everybody is doing it, and we had to do it too. I, personally, do not favor it. [Attorney’s question:] But you find it necessary to show them? [Answer:] Exactly.91

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Similarly, William F. Kertscher, proprietor of two Brooklyn theatres with fewer than three hundred seats each and one open-air venue, admitted that ‘special features’ were a ‘very important’ part of his show: ‘[Attorney’s question:] It is one of the things which particularly helps you draw your customers? [Answer:] It does.’92 Another small-time exhibitor, Joseph P. Morgan, manager of the Princess Theatre in Washington, DC, was asked to specify why features were an important part of his programme, to which he responded, ‘Really, I couldn’t tell you; the people, perhaps, like it.’93 The testimony by these and numerous other exhibitors contradicts a long-held view that multi-reel features emerged and developed in tandem with so-called ‘picture palaces’, and that the exhibition of features was mostly confined to these larger and more lavish venues. At least in the early feature period, and at least for a brief time, multi-reel features would appear in a wide variety of venues and in various kinds of shows.

THE MULTI-REEL FEATURE’S CHALLENGE TO THE ‘FOOTAGE BASIS’ RELEASE SYSTEM The increasingly common multi-reel feature film put pressure not only on the nickelodeon-style exhibition format, but also called into question the dominant distribution methods. More specifically, multi-reel pictures presented a problem for the so-called ‘footage basis’ release system that the MPPC and General Film had spearheaded and that other programme companies had adopted.94 To release a film on ‘footage basis’ meant that the exchange paid the manufacturer an agreed ‘footage price’ – that is, a specified price per foot of film. The exact footage price could vary, depending on the type of motion picture, its age or other factors that were worked out on a case-by-case basis, but most releases followed a standardised price scale according to which the release date was the decisive factor. The important point here is that manufacturers would basically receive the same price per foot of film regardless of the negative cost (defined as the sum of all costs necessary for the production of the negative, such as salaries for actors and crew, the cost of film stock, props, sets, transportation, etc.). There was obviously a disincentive to improve film quality built into this system. General Film’s president, Frank L. Dyer, acknowledged this, and added that the tendency among MPPC members to look after their individual interests rather than the group’s greatly exacerbated the problem. No one wanted to give any of the other members ‘unfair’ advantages, Dyer argued, and as a result, we have never been able to agree upon any plan by which films could be sold on merit and as a result a remarkably good film sells but little better than a poor one. A manufacturer can benefit himself only by making his average high.95

Kleine alluded to the same destructive, but self-imposed, mechanism when he admitted to an associate in Europe in 1911 that his sales of Gaumont and Eclipse films were due to the ‘pressure’ of the ‘system in force’, rather than true demand. In theory, then, quality was irrelevant, but Kleine wrote that he nevertheless felt that he was ‘under moral obligation to offer the best that is available’.96 For manufacturers, the ‘system’ also meant that the profit of any given film equalled the footage price multiplied by the

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length of the film and the number of prints sold/leased, minus the negative cost and the costs of prints and advertising. Assuming normal sales volumes, this meant that if a film’s negative cost crept above a certain limit, it would be inescapably unprofitable.97 This would, indeed, have been the fate of most multi-reel features had they been released on a ‘footage basis’. Instead, such films received special handling, usually through either roadshow distribution (see above) or state-rights sales (selling someone exclusive distribution rights within a specific territory, usually one or several states, hence the name). In this way, an alternative and more open market for feature films began to prosper alongside programme distribution based on footage. It is important to stress that programme companies such as General Film were not strictly confined to programme distribution. To be sure, a great majority of the films put out through General Film up until 1912–13 were released on a footage basis, and it is equally the case that this system exerted a downward pressure on production costs among the programme company manufacturers. Once in a while, these manufacturers produced or procured a special feature of extraordinary production cost. In those cases, General Film would pay the manufacturer the negative cost, ‘over and above the footage price’, or – as in the case of Kalem’s From the Manger to the Cross (1912) – release the film by selling state rights to various local and regional distributors.98 Michael Quinn’s research shows that later in 1913, as costly multi-reel features became increasingly common, the programme companies set up special branches for feature film distribution. Moreover, as a response to new release methods such as roadshowing and state-rights distribution, feature distribution was relatively stabilised and standardised along the lines of a feature programme distribution that shared some characteristics with the earlier one-reel programme service. The formation of Paramount in 1914 and the distinctive strategies that this company developed are a crucial case in point.99 Before a move towards standardisation occurred, however, the field of distribution passed through an experimental phase, during which new market entrants were also welcomed, although many of these exited as quickly as they had entered.

THE EARLY MULTI-REEL FEATURE: CIRCULATION AND EXHIBITION CONTEXTS Throughout this early phase, many people remained convinced that the feature represented a fad rather than a fundamental transformation of the film industry, likening their sudden and widespread popularity to a ‘craze’ or some virulent disease. As a writer for the Mutual company’s house publication Reel Life quipped: From what I hear in various quarters the fell disease of ‘Feeturitis,’ found in the case of practically every Italian film maker, is assuming a virulent form and shows signs of developing into a constitutional inability to make a film less than 4,000 feet in length.100

According to the same writer, features should really be called ‘feet-ures’, since the main point of making such films seemed to be to use up as many feet of film stock as possible.101 These commentators had no way of knowing whether the feature was a fad or if it would survive as an important format and commodity. Later film historians, of course, learned the outcome. The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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Nonetheless, the ‘feature craze’ trope reappeared in some cinema histories, not to suggest the ephemerality of a fad but to underscore how swift and radical change occurred in the wake of the feature. Ben Singer argues that this is indicative of a tendency to overestimate the ‘speed and decisiveness’ of the transition from the single-reel standard to feature film dominance.102 There are some debatable issues with Singer’s own research on the early feature (as Richard Abel has pointed out),103 but an analysis of Kleine’s distribution of Italian multi-reel features in the mid-1910s supports the basic tenets of Singer’s claim, demonstrating that in the early feature era, experimentation, diversity and uneven developments were typical with regard to distribution methods as well as exhibition formats. As Singer argues, the feature was obviously not a passing fad, but neither was its rise to dominance as swift and decisive as has often been suggested.104 To this I would add that an undifferentiated notion of ‘the feature’ is also somewhat historiographically misleading, as there were many types of features and many modes of feature production, distribution, exhibition and reception. The circulation of the features Kleine imported in 1913 and 1914 illustrates some of this diversity. As outlined earlier, Quo Vadis? was first placed in the Astor Theatre, a Broadway house, at advanced prices. Encouraged by the film’s astonishing success there, Kleine sent out additional prints for roadshow exploitation in other towns and cities. Quo Vadis? opened at McVicker’s theatre in Chicago on 5 May 1913, and the ad in the Chicago Tribune stated that critics had ‘taxed the English language’ in their praise of the film.105 There were two performances daily, the matinee costing twenty-five Poster for Quo Vadis at McVicker’s Theatre. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

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cents to attend, the evening show twenty-five and fifty cents.106 A week later, the film began playing at the Garrick Theatre in Philadelphia. On 8 July, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the film had entered its ninth consecutive week at the Garrick the day before, and that the upcoming 100th performance would be celebrated by handing out souvenirs.107 Next up was the Hippodrome in Cleveland, which appeared to have been an even more successful engagement. According to Kleine’s recollections, Quo Vadis? grossed $37,000 here in five weeks, 50 per cent of which he, Cohan and Harris received.108 An ad claimed that over 28,000 people had seen the film at the Hippodrome in only seven days.109 Engagements followed at the Salt Lake Theatre in Salt Lake City, at the Nixon in Pittsburgh, at the Alhambra and Bronx Theatre in New York City, at the Tulane Theatre and the Crescent in New Orleans, at the Columbia in Washington, DC, and in a range of other venues.110 These were mostly legitimate theatres or opera houses, but within a few months, Quo Vadis? was also playing motion picture theatres, vaudeville houses and other types of exhibition spaces.111 Of the twenty-two roadshow companies that Kleine and Cohan and Harris had set up, twenty-one had made a profit by early October.112 At this point, these companies had received gross receipts of nearly $269,000. The net profit after all general and publicity expenses had been deducted was just over $110,000.113 The Astor engagement had already covered production costs as well as the necessary costs of putting the film on the market.114 Quo Vadis? was heavily advertised in the trade and newspaper press. In the newspapers, the successful run was used as a selling point in itself, as in the Sterling Advocate advertisement referenced above. Another recurring marketing component was the crediting of George Kleine rather than Italian production company Cines, a prime case of the appropriation of a foreign cultural object for another national context, as Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King have pointed out.115 Poster for The Last Days of Pompeii. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

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Equally common were references to the massive scale of the film in several registers – its great length, cost, cast and its spectacular mass scenes were frequently mentioned. A central function of the marketing campaign was to single out Quo Vadis? as a unique motion picture. Differentiation of specific films was nothing new, but it was strictly speaking an unnecessary element in ‘programme cinema’, since movie theatres’ programmes changed so frequently. The opposite was true for costly multi-reel features: these films had to build a mass audience over a protracted run in order to turn a profit. Hence, marketing and other forms of publicity that helped differentiate movies became a necessary, but far from sufficient, condition of doing profitable motion picture business. In Kleine’s case, an escalation of the promotion of individual, ‘unique’ films started when he replaced Gaumont with Cines. The first few Cines films that he released early in 1912 (e.g. Brutus, Josephine and Madame Roland) were onereelers, but nevertheless advertised in much the same way as later multi-reel features such as Quo Vadis?. In October 1913, while the exploitation of Quo Vadis? was still ongoing, Kleine placed another spectacle film from Italy on the American market: Ambrosio’s The Last days of Pompeii (1913). The roadshow method used for Quo Vadis? was chosen for the

Trade press advertisement for Josephine. From Moving Picture World, 20 April 1912

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release of Pompeii, too, but instead of building buzz one engagement at a time, Kleine opted for more of a blitz-style opening, possibly with the hope of quickly capitalising further on the interest that Quo Vadis? had already generated. Kleine and his family had sailed to Paris in June, but on 6 October the headquarters sent him this message by telegram: ‘Rapidly covering country with Pompeii agents. […] Will have dozen going twentieth.’116 One of these roadshow agents placed the film at the American Theatre in Spokane, WA, on 12 October 1913.117 On the same date, Pompeii opened in Waukesha, Wisconsin; at the Warrington Theatre in Oak Park; at the Grand Theatre in Atlanta, GA; at the Hamilton Theatre in Yonkers, NJ; at the 86th Street Theatre in New York City; and at the De Luxe picture house in Chicago. In other words, seven roadshow companies were operating at this time, with more to follow.118 As indicated, in contrast to the Quo Vadis? strategy, with Pompeii the plan was to target not only legitimate houses, but picture theatres, too. In fact, the strategy was to place the film in any good house that would take it. A memo made clear that the intention was to set up twenty-two companies to cover different territories, each to include an ‘Advance Agent’ and a manager who would try to make deals with the best houses in their respective areas, at varying prices, depending on conditions. The companies would not offer any equipment, so the target customers were stage theatres that already had access to motion picture equipment; where such venues did not exist, regular movie theatres were used.119 In comparison, the Quo Vadis? roadshow set-up had been more standardised. As Kleine later put it, I standardized these [Quo Vadis?] road shows, which in each case consisted of two projecting machines, two props, an advance man, one Company manager. No music expense was involved except one organist. None of the theatres which we played were equipped with projectors, but some of them had organs. Small organs were rented in towns in which the theatres were not equipped.120

By mid-October, Kleine’s people had placed Pompeii at the Bijou in New York with the explicit hope that a successful New York run would boost demand in other parts of the country. For the same purpose, the Ziegfeld in Chicago had also been leased for late October. In addition, Pompeii was playing a number of ‘picture houses’ in the Chicago area.121 Roadshow companies covered wide areas of North America, from Washington and Oregon in the Pacific Northwest to Georgia in the South, from Colorado to Eastern Canada, from the Dakotas to Louisiana, through the Midwest and across the East Coast.122 Several additional openings were planned for the week of 19 October, including the Broadway in Denver, the Grand Opera House in Rockford, IL, the Columbia Theatre in Indianapolis, the Auditorium in Cleveland, OH, the Mankato, an opera house in Mankato, MN, and the Jefferson Theatre in Roanoke, VA. With even more openings scheduled for 26 October, most of the country would be covered.123 Around this time, things started to go wrong. On 21 October, Frank McCarahan, left in charge of the roadshow operation in Kleine’s absence, reported to Kleine in Paris that everyone spoke well of Pompeii, but that unusually stormy weather was keeping people away from the theatres.124 Around the same time, Klaw & Erlanger, an important theatrical concern that had recently ventured into the multi-reel feature film market, decided to ‘ban’ Quo Vadis? and Pompeii from their theatre circuit, in order The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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Roadshow distribution of Quo Vadis in Salt Lake City, Utah. From Motion Picture News, 4 October 1913

to protect territory for roadshown feature films of their own brand, which forced Kleine to target less lucrative small-time vaudeville houses.125 A couple of weeks later, McCarahan expressed his concern over a ‘competing’ version of the film, a Pasquali picture that had the same title and theme but was shorter and cheaper to book.126 In the same memo, McCarahan explained that receipts were increasing thanks to a concentration on movie houses rather than large dramatic theatres and the like, but this presented new problems. Crucially, most movie-house managers would only book the film for a flat rental rate, whereas the roadshow companies were trying to get them to share the receipts on a percentage basis.127 At this point, the operation was running at a loss, but McCarahan was optimistic; with twenty companies up and actively running, the situation could turn around.128 Another two weeks later, McCarahan admitted that making a profit from Pompeii had ‘developed into a pretty hard game’.129 By 18 December 1913, there were still thirty-three prints of Quo Vadis? in circulation, and thirty-eight prints of Pompeii in use.130 Competing versions of the Pompeii picture had been cited earlier as an explanation for the film’s limited success, but there was also a problem with the release plan. In particular, engagements at theatres or opera houses in small towns were very unprofitable, and on 24 December, a memo made clear that ‘these theatre engagements in small towns should never be booked again with attractions such as any of ours’.131 After the The Last days of Pompeii experience, Kleine set up branch exchanges around the United States and Canada to promote his line of multi-reel feature films, now designated ‘George Kleine Attractions’.132 With this, the brief experiment in roadshowing was over.133 A string of imported spectacle pictures followed – including Antony and Cleopatra (Cines, 1913), Spartacus (Pasquali, 1913) and Julius Caesar (Cines, 1914) – but none were nearly as successful as Quo Vadis?.134 By 30 June 1919, Kleine’s gross collections for The Last days of Pompeii amounted to roughly $164,000. After subtracting the 62

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distribution fee (a 25 per cent ‘special rate’ in this case, lower than the normal 30 or 35 per cent), the remaining $123,000 was not enough to cover expenses, which amounted to $129,000 – and these expenses did not include the negative cost. Antony and Cleopatra had earned Kleine about $19,000 in net profits by the same date, which was better than Pompeii, but still not a ‘triumph’ on the scale of Quo Vadis?, as suggested in David Robinson’s history of early cinema.135 Spartacus more or less broke even. Julius Caesar netted over $22,000, which may be considered fairly good given a negative cost of only $15,000, but a disappointment in relation to Kleine’s expectations. He considered Julius Caesar a masterpiece surpassing even Quo Vadis?, and set out to exploit it accordingly,136 but this was beset with problems from the start. Kleine had hoped that Julius Caesar would premiere on the opening night of the Candler Theatre, a lavish new motion picture (and dramatic) house on 42nd Street just west of Broadway that Kleine, Sam Harris and Sol Bloom had jointly planned, paid for and now owned (Kleine had invested $80,000 and owned 60 per cent), but Cines failed to deliver the film on time for the opening on 7 May 1914.137 The Candler opened with Antony and Cleopatra instead.138 Further delays followed, and Julius Caesar was not released until November. It made a profit, and had a long career, but did not live up to Kleine’s expectations from a financial perspective. Trade press advertisement for George Kleine Attractions. From Motion Picture News, 17 January 1914

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The features that Kleine imported and marketed in this period made up a production cycle of sorts, but as just described, there were also many differences when it came to budgeting, distribution methods and financial results. Furthermore, tracing the circulation of these films in the 1913–15 period yields some revealing patterns when it comes to the exhibition contexts of multi-reel feature films in the early feature era. As we have seen, much of the discourse on the feature that circulated in the trade press assumed that film length and type of venue were tightly intertwined, and that long films could only play in legitimate theatres or very large movie theatres. Similar ideas have sometimes informed more recent scholarship, as in the assertion that ‘[f]eature films and picture palaces were mutually enabling and dependent, bound together like the two strands of a double helix. One could not exist without the other.’139 Kleine’s exploitation of features in 1913–15 indicates that, at least initially, the exhibition contexts for these films were much more diverse. The types of exhibition sites for Kleine features that I have been able to identify for this period include dramatic houses/legitimate theatres; opera houses; concert halls; vaudeville houses; houses combining motion pictures and vaudeville; houses combining motion pictures with other forms of stage entertainment; motion picture theatres in major cities (including ‘picture palaces’); small-town picture theatres; small-town multipurpose houses (venues that combined pictures with live entertainment as well as educational, social and other public gatherings); public assembly halls; and Construction site of the Candler Theatre. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

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amphitheatres.140 In addition, the same films appeared in a number of non-commercial or non-theatrical venues, such as churches and other religious venues, prisons and universities. There was also the occasional private screening in movie theatres. The types of exhibition sites and venues varied, as did the programme structure and the types of performances that also included features. First of all, although most venues would announce the starting time of each performance in their advertising, some opted for a continuous performance, fuelling extensive discussions about the mismatch between drop-in moviegoing and multi-reel film performances. Another key decision had to do with act division. Three methods dominated: running the feature without interruption; intermission between each reel; and act division according to theatrical standards. In part, and as others have discussed, the choice hinged on whether the venue had one or two projectors available.141 In single-projector venues, a break between each reel, at least a brief one, was inevitable. As we have seen, this did not apply to the roadshowing of Quo Vadis?, since Kleine had equipped each roadshow company with two portable projectors. The most common practice seems to have been to divide the film into three acts, each act containing two to three reels of film. This structure, clearly modelled on live theatre, was promoted by Kleine and preferred by the trade press, due to the prestige that legitimate drama carried. As the period progressed, however, the trade press tended to promote the idea that the film should be screened without any intermissions whatsoever, and an increasing number of venues apparently opted for running the multi-reeler as a complete film, with no breaks. This implies a shift from the integrity of the reel, via the integrity of the act, to the integrity of the complete film. If the reel as the basic exhibition unit can be linked to the brevity of circus and vaudeville acts, and if the unit of the act and the three-act structure had affinities with stage theatre and opera, the growing insistence on the integrity of the film signals a desire to separate motion pictures from both traditions. This could be an index of cinema’s cultural maturation, or, at least, aspirations along those lines. Exhibitors also had to decide whether to offer added attractions before, during and/or after the feature film, and, more generally, how to frame the performance. Here, too, a wide range of practices was explored. Some venues programmed the feature together with other motion pictures (old Mary Pickford one-reelers; Keystone comedies; newsreels; ‘war pictures’). Sometimes there was musical accompaniment by orchestra or organ (most commonly the Wurlitzer Hope-Jones Unit Orchestra), sometimes an original score, or ‘specially arranged’ or ‘appropriately selected’ music (e.g. selections from famous operas). Some venues would play overture music (orchestra or organ) before the feature. Other shows included ‘curtain music’ and ‘promenade music’ (musical selections performed during intermissions, accompanying the audience’s frolicking and chit-chatting). Occasionally, an organ or other instruments were used to produce sound effects. Some venues employed live sound effects (e.g. performed by actors behind the screen), while others included performances by singers (in group or as soloists). A number of screenings featured a lecturer or ‘dramatic speaker’ who introduced the film or each act, and every so often a lecturer would present a talk after the film.142 In some venues, vaudeville or other live acts performed in conjunction with the feature film. Others opted to offer cabaret and dancing after the evening performance of the film. Olfactory special effects were The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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produced (e.g. filling the auditorium with incense), and there were thematic performances, as when the Cumberland in Brooklyn, NY, decorated the venue (with banners, rugs, trellissing, etc.) according to theme, dressed the ushers in togas and deployed a trumpet-blowing herald in Roman attire – all for a screening of Julius Caesar.143 To mention a few final practices, feature screenings could be combined with essay contest award ceremonies, the handing out of souvenirs or the announcement of election results from the stage. This list gives an idea of the activities that could be going on at various exhibition sites, and a sense of how the feature film experience must have differed quite wildly from venue to venue. If the sites where feature films were exhibited were supposed to represent a more structured space, geared towards immersion in the film – in contrast to the typical nickelodeon theatre – this had not been fully quite realised by 1915, if indeed it ever was. This offers some support to cinema historians who argue that there has been a tendency in cinema studies to underestimate the ephemerality of the individual film for the moviegoing experience – before, during and after classical Hollywood cinema.144 As these historians note, the later Hollywood tycoons were quite aware that they were selling a show rather than specific motion pictures.145 Many exhibitors in the early feature era acted according to a similar principle. The standout case is Samuel L. ‘Roxy’ Rothafel, whose long and successful career is explored in depth in Ross Melnick’s book American Showman.146 In the early feature era, Roxy set new standards for putting together elaborate and innovative motion picture performances that combined the movies with carefully selected, perfectly synchronised music, sound effects, and the use of live entertainers and lecturers. Melnick discusses Roxy’s presentation of Quo Vadis? at the Regent in New York City as an example of precisely this kind of ‘cultural extravaganza’, and details Roxy’s meticulous preparations (the Regent screenings took place six months after the premiere at the Astor) as well as the features of the show (the music, the sound effects, the lecture by John Calhoun, the incense that was used).147 Few exhibitors had the resources or skills to replicate what Roxy was doing at the Regent and the Strand in New York City, but his presentations were enthusiastically covered by the trade press, and may have provided a source of inspiration for the exhibitors these papers targeted.148 We might say that Roxy’s shows epitomised a kind of ideal performance that was preferred and promoted in the period we are discussing here. In the trade press discourse, and among producers and distributors, this ideal can be summarised as ‘the artistic frame’. This included, at a minimum, properly selected and carefully rehearsed music, tasteful ‘artistic’ publicity and – surprisingly often, at least in the early feature era – a competent lecturer. When it comes to expensive and elaborate music, Kleine’s lofty ambitions are well known. For Quo Vadis?, he supplied musicians with musical cues, and he commissioned scores for several of the features that followed. He also engaged composer and conductor Modest Altschuler (who scored Spartacus) for grandiose orchestral accompaniments at the Auditorium in Chicago and at the Candler in New York.149 Of course, only a few venues could afford an orchestra, and musical accompaniment was generally more modest than the Altschuler performances. The opposite of the ‘artistic frame’ was the ‘vaudeville sandwich’, or, as one trade press commentator put it: ‘sandwich[ing] cheap vaudeville in between the different parts of a feature’.150 Sadly, for pundits like this, combining

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Musical cues for Quo Vadis. Copy in the George Kleine Collection in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division

multi-reel feature films with vaudeville was not as uncommon as they might have hoped. At the Brinkman Theatre in Bemidji, MN, Kleine’s Last days of Pompeii shared the bill with ‘3 Vodvil Acts’ in December 1913, and at the Republic theatre in Los Angeles, another Kleine feature was presented in conjunction with vaudeville acts that the LA Times reporter found ‘pleasing’.151 Throughout the period discussed here, a variety of exhibition models, ranging from ‘the artistic frame’ to the ‘vaudeville sandwich’ and including diverse experiments in between, co-existed more or less happily. If some models aligned themselves with ‘highbrow’ forms such as theatre, opera and classical music, and others instead with circus or popular stage traditions, they all seem to affirm the intermedial character of early feature film exhibition. This analysis resonates with much of the recent scholarship on moviegoing in the US (most of which cannot be referenced here). For instance, Melnick discusses film exhibition in general – and Roxy’s approach to showmanship (continuing into the era of radio broadcasting) in particular – in terms of a ‘convergence’ of different forms of entertainment.152 He also notes that this echoes a discovery of earlier studies in local film history – that movies in the silent era were generally viewed in the context of a ‘multimedia performance’ (a term from Greg Waller’s book about film culture in Lexington, KY).153 Consequently, Melnick argues that moviegoing in the silent era was a theatre experience rather than a film experience – people wanted to go to the movies, but not necessarily to see a specific The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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film.154 Interestingly, even in this period of increased differentiation of individual, ‘unique’ feature films, movie-viewing continued in the habitual mode of ‘going to the show’. We may also think about the various intermedial performances of feature films as stagings of core questions about the medium:155 ‘What is cinema?’ Or, ‘What is cinema supposed to be?’ These questions were also raised in the trade press, in the form of a highly ambivalent discourse, especially with regard to the relation between film and theatre. According to these accounts, feature films to some extent represented a kind of theatre (cf. ‘photo drama’, ‘photo play’, ‘silent drama’), and in practice, they were often circulated, promoted and presented along theatrical lines, but they were also considered to be something more than – and superior to – stage drama. Accordingly, commentators could argue that a film like Quo Vadis? was able to ‘break away from the trammels of the legitimate stage’ and present an ‘almost unlimited range of vision’.156 Such contradictory discourses on film’s specificity, and the diversity of exhibition practices, point to the persistence of intermediality and the continuing struggles to define the cinema – even after its supposed ‘institutionalisation’. We will return to some of these struggles and negotiations in later chapters, emphasising further how the institution of cinema is constituted and continuously reconstituted through an ongoing process rather than ossified in the form of a fixed system.

CONCLUSION This chapter has chronicled Kleine’s promotion of Quo Vadis? in the United States as well as his failures to replicate the astounding box-office success of this film – in spite of the frantic search for the most appropriate methods of circulation and presentation that he and others engaged in. The implications of this are deeper than one might first think. First of all, it was precisely this type of display of the multi-reel feature’s disproportional returns on investment that triggered what Gerben Bakker has called the ‘quality race’.157 In this sense, Horace Plimpton had not been far off the mark when he argued already in 1914 that the ‘ball started rolling’ and the ‘country went rapidly feature crazy’ following Quo Vadis?158 (although he could have mentioned other examples in addition to that landmark film). The quality race started with a gradual discovery that bigger budgets, longer films and more elaborate marketing could affect audience members’ demand and willingness to pay, so that increasingly people were prepared to pay higher ticket prices to see such big-budget films. The pace picked up as more and more entrepreneurs tried to capture the disproportional profits that could potentially be reaped from the exploitation of costly feature films.159 Simply put, the idea was spend big to earn big. Kleine’s failure to replicate the success of Quo Vadis? also illustrates how the quality race began to transform the motion picture economy from a mediocracy into a kurtocracy – a term introduced earlier in the book, designating a winner-takes-all economy.160 The challenge was twofold: only the occasional large hit would make a substantial profit, but before actual release no one knew if a film would break through or flop (recall the ‘nobody knows anything’ rule, and the notion of motion pictures as experience goods). The latter had always been the case, but only became a major problem at this juncture. Before the multi-reel feature,

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production costs were so low that the financial consequences of making an unpopular motion picture were negligible. Furthermore, the industry was organised in a way that prevented a highly skewed revenue distribution (a few hits generate most income) and the infinite variance of revenue distributions (the virtually limitless earning capacity of some films). Runs were so short that there was no time for a hit/flop bifurcation to emerge. Some motion pictures were extraordinarily popular (as we learned in Chapter 1, The Great Train Robbery attracted audiences for over a year), but in the great majority of cases, the film was gone from the theatre before good word of mouth could turn it into a major box-office success. Finally, the full chain – from production to exhibition – was predicated on a notion of variety that downplayed the significance of the individual motion picture, both when it came to the profits of producers, distributors and exhibitors and to the audience’s experience of the show’s quality. In contrast, and as we have seen, for multi-reel features to be profitable, they needed a protracted run and for the picture to be promoted as a unique cultural product. Unfortunately, as it turned out, protracted runs and product differentiation allowed only a few films to amass disproportional profits, whereas most pictures had a hard time earning back the costs of production, prints, distribution and marketing. To sum up, the big-budget, high-quality, multi-reel feature film presented an opportunity to make profits beyond what most people had imagined was possible in the motion picture business, but the ‘quality race’ that this inspired also laid the foundations of a risk environment that was defined by extreme, fundamental uncertainty. In the face of this, old firms struggled to develop new capabilities and strategies, and those that already possessed certain skills and resources saw a chance to enter the business. The result was a new film industry in two respects. First, new methods of production, distribution and exhibition replaced most of the practices associated with programme cinema. Second, as it turned out, the firms that had dominated the motion picture business were more or less wiped out and replaced by a new set of market leaders. Already in the midst of struggling to figure out the most appropriate method for the release of Quo Vadis? in early 1913, Kleine noted the pressure a new and longer commodity exerted on the MPPC system: ‘As I shall have to pay a fancy price for this film, you can easily understand my fretting at being hampered by conditions that no longer fit the trade situation,’ he wrote to MPPC attorney George Scull in February 1913.161 In the same letter, Kleine suggested, ‘The situation is interesting in demonstrating how much the business is hampered by licensed terms, which have not broadened with the evolution of the business.’162 Fourteen years later, Kleine had come to believe that, indeed, it was the multi-reel feature film that had put the first nail in the MPPC coffin. Describing to Benjamin Hampton how Italian manufacturers such as Cines had begun to make ‘outstanding productions’ of two to four reels in length available to him in 1912, Kleine stated, ‘It is my opinion that this was the beginning of the centrifugal movement which operated against the General Film Company.’163 He failed to note the irony, however, of the fact that this transformation of the American motion picture business, which he himself had been instrumental in setting in motion, would ultimately undermine his own career, too. But the gradual marginalisation of Kleine’s role in the film industry from 1915 onwards, and the concomitant disappearance from the scene of virtually all the other ‘old-timers’ of the The Breakthrough of the Multi-reel Feature Film

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business, was not a foregone conclusion. There was no iron law that predetermined the dominance of the would-be Hollywood studios and the elimination of earlier industry leaders. Rather – and as usual – there were complexities and contradictions, struggles and negotiations, opportunities lost and found. These are the subjects of the next two chapters.

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3 After the Feature, Part 1: Standardisation, Differentiation and Branding (and the Search for the ‘Punch’)

In Chapter 1, we explored how cinema turned into mass entertainment, and an everyday cultural practice, fuelled by audiences’ constant thirst for new and exciting motion pictures. In Chapter 2, we discussed how the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature film unleashed a quality race that reshaped audience demand, so that perceived film quality came to be associated with high production values. In this chapter and the next, we will analyse how these two developments combined to bring about a reconfigured motion picture business. For producers and distributors like George Kleine, the conditions of doing and staying in business changed drastically in the mid-1910s. Above all, the fundamental uncertainty of the business – the impossibility of predicting whether a film would become a hit or not – became an acute problem. This was partly because the kind of high-quality multi-reel features audiences now demanded were so expensive to make and market, but also because the revenues – for firms and for the industry as a whole – were increasingly generated by a small group of hits, whereas an increasing number of films brought little or no profit back to their producers. As we learned in the previous chapter, before the breakthrough of the feature, Kleine (and others in his position) had been able to sell virtually any film, regardless of quality. Those days were over. If the movie business had once been something of an entrepreneurial bonanza, it was now beginning to turn into a winner-takes-all economy. A new film industry emerged as a result of the ways firms and entrepreneurs responded to these conditions. Two responses were key to achieve long-term sustainability: (a) combining a capacity for mass production with mechanisms that ensured a degree of product diversity and innovation; and (b) developing an infrastructure of distribution and exhibition that allowed producers to capture as much of the revenues as possible once it was discovered that mass audiences were flocking to a certain film. In hindsight, we can see that this was the beginning of the Hollywood studio system, which was characterised by precisely these things – mass production, economies of scale and vertical integration (i.e. gathering production, distribution and exhibition within one business organisation).1 In the midst of a film industrial transformation, however, people had to figure out what defined the new business, what was needed to survive in it, and how to develop the required skills and capabilities within their own business organisations. This chapter pins down this process through a detailed account of how George Kleine navigated his way through these years of transformation. In this way, it tells the story of how cinema began to turn into a ‘kurtocracy’ (a winner-takes-all economy), why a new industry After the Feature, Part 1

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structure emerged from this and why these developments caused George Kleine, for all practical purposes, to retire from commercial film-making and distribution. Kleine was in as good a position as anyone – or better – to make a successful transition into a new kind of motion picture industry. He was making forays into feature film production and he owned and managed one of the largest distribution networks in North America. Yet, by the end of the 1910s, he had drifted to the margins of American commercial cinema. There were several reasons for this, but a lack of trying was not one of them. His efforts to adapt to new conditions played out on various fronts. One concerned the development of film style, narrative and genre. This chapter details how Kleine’s career as a film producer in 1914–16 expanded to include not only investments in spectacular historical epics but also a wider range of styles and genres. The strategy was good in theory but failed in practice, due to disappointing financial results for prestige productions and an overly conservative approach when it came to ‘regular’ releases. Another challenge was how to build a viable distribution organisation for the feature era. Kleine’s work on this front resulted in the Kleine-Edison-Selig-Essanay Service (K-E-S-E, later rebranded as Perfection Pictures), established with the purpose of offering movie theatres a steady supply of feature films and other motion pictures produced by these four companies and distributed through Kleine’s network of exchanges. Again, the strategy was adequate in theory, as an interlocking of the branches of production and distribution aligned with the trend towards vertical integration, but again, practice was another matter. Striking the right balance between standardisation and differentiation was a persistent challenge, but K-E-S-E’s (and later Perfection Pictures’) real problem was a lack of hits. In the end, the greatest conundrum for Kleine and his associates (and their competitors, too) was how to pinpoint the elusive qualities that made certain films appeal to mass audiences – what was colloquially known as the ‘punch’. This chapter and the next tells a larger story about the transformation of the American motion picture business in the mid-1910s, as experienced by one particular man who was trying to adapt to the ongoing changes. Along the way, Kleine discovered the properties of a new kind of film industry, its workings and peculiarities, often with stunning precision. The present chapter traces this process of discovery to Kleine’s practical work as a producer and distributor in these years, whereas the next chapter centres on his interventions in the public debate over the film industry around the same time – especially his campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’. We will see how Kleine astutely identified the core elements of the ongoing industrial transformation, including the fundamental uncertainty of the movie business and its increasingly kurtotic character, but also how the new film industry turned out to be incompatible with the conservative business ideology that he subscribed to. This will explain how and why the film industry began to turn into a kurtocracy, but also why Kleine did not become one of the kurtocrats.

ITALIAN ART, AMERICAN VIRILITY: KLEINE TRIES TO INAUGURATE A US–EUROPEAN FILM PRODUCTION UNIT Kleine once wrote to an associate that ‘It is well for a business man to be an opportunist.’2 From time to time in his career, opportunism led Kleine to venture into

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motion picture production. He had tried in 1907 with Kalem, tempted by the profitpotential that the nickelodeon boom had brought about. Having struck gold with Quo Vadis? in 1913, he made a new attempt to enter the production branch of the business. Sales were dependent on audience acceptance, and the ongoing quality race had raised the stakes. An analysis of Kleine’s stint as a film producer in the mid-1910s shows two things. First, no matter how much producers tried to gauge audience preferences, it was only when the film was released that they would learn if the public liked it or not – and by that point, it was already too late. Second, Kleine’s case demonstrates how this fundamental uncertainty of the business stimulated two seemingly contradictory production policies, one geared towards repetition, the other towards product diversity and innovation. Kleine’s attempt to replicate the success of Quo Vadis? was an example of the former, and ended in disappointment. The decision to inaugurate a production cycle using Quo Vadis? as the explicit benchmark had actually been decided before the film had even been released in the United States. The contract between Kleine and Ambrosio for The Last days of Pompeii, the sequel to Quo Vadis?, included the following clause: ‘The quality of the negative is to equal the best work of the day, and specifically, is to be as good in quality as the Cines production ‘QUO VADIS’…’3 In a business where ‘nobody knows anything’, cyclical production is to be expected, but as we learned in the previous chapter, this particular string of films seems to have skipped the first ‘broadly cyclical pattern of success’ and jumped straight to a ‘decline into variously unsuccessful repetitions of the initial formula’.4 We will never know exactly why the audience did not respond to Pompeii and the other follow-ups to Quo Vadis?, but the mere fact implies a strong preference for novelty among moviegoers, and a dislike of repetition. Also, Kleine was facing mounting competition in the multi-reel feature market, as more and more American producers began redirecting their resources into feature production. Finally, the formal organisation of spectacle films (long and costly historical or religious epics, often featuring spectacular mass scenes, and often based on literary sources) might have already been on the wane as movies transitioned to a more fully codified classical Hollywood style.5 In Rob King’s analysis of the Italian epics of 1913–14, these ‘quality films’ represented a backlash of sorts, an attempt to replace the ‘dehierarchized and democratizing vision’ of early cinema with a ‘representative regime’ of art that ordered subject matter according to ‘dignity’ (historical themes, nationalist pride, etc.).6 Analogously, the discourse on these films as ‘art’ associated their ‘artistic’-ness with the figure of the author, and the theatrical pictorialism of the mise en scène, indicating how this artistic regime harked back to pre-cinematic cultural categories.7 As King’s analysis shows, however, the American social context (a large, but very diverse population), as well as the motion picture industry’s drive to cater to a mass market (which, if we follow Max Weber’s theories, necessitated a ‘dehierarchisation’ of culture), made the Italian epics ultimately unviable in the United States. American cinema after 1915 – Hollywood-style cinema in particular – followed a different path, neither subordinating ‘aesthetic’ elements to ‘representative’ elements (as the Italian ‘quality’ films) nor completely omitting elements of the ‘representative regime’ (as the film avant-garde would set out to do), instead working out ‘a more lasting integration of the two levels’.8 In King’s reading, the ‘quality films’ that Kleine and others After the Feature, Part 1

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exploited worked as a ‘vanishing mediator’ in this process, helping to reconcile two artistic regimes only to then disappear into the mix.9 At the time, Kleine could probably not care less about artistic regimes as long as the pictures were profitable. In his view, the problem was that his Italian imports lacked a distinctly American quality, or, more specifically, the one quality that he believed was the most appealing to American audiences: home-grown picture personalities. This led him to hatch a plan of what looks like an early example of ‘runaway production’– that is, made for the US market but actually filmed somewhere else. The idea was to shoot the pictures in Europe but with an American director in charge and with American actors in the leading parts. Kleine believed that in this way he could take advantage of cheap Italian labour and exotic locations, but still make sure to include elements that would appeal to American audiences. Or, in his own phrasing, the goal was to combine the ‘artistic perfection’ of Italian films with the ‘virility of [the] American method’, drawing on ‘the best out of both schools’.10 As the largest importer of foreign motion pictures to the United States, Kleine had acted as a mediator between the preferences of American audiences and the artistic practices of European film-makers for years.11 Now he planned to go from giving advice to European producers on how to please the American market to building a material base for a US–European mode of production. Kleine left the United States for Paris on 5 June 191312 and remained in Europe until 31 January 1914, when he sailed back on the Lusitania.13 In France and Italy, he met with potential associates, worked out the corporate structure and searched for suitable land on which to construct a fully equipped film studio. In late 1913 and early 1914, Kleine, Alfredo Gondolfi and Mario A. Stevani set up the Photodrama Producing Company of Italy.14 The three parties came to a verbal agreement in November 1913, announced the new company in December, and on 19 March 1914, the Photodrama Producing Co. was incorporated.15 When it came to the studio construction, the choice fell on Grugliasco, a small town outside of Turin, the centre of the Italian film industry at the time. Film archivist and historian Paolo Cherchi Usai has chronicled these stages of planning, the actual construction of the studio and what happened next.16 To summarise, investments were made, the studio was completed and staff were employed. Unfortunately, virtually on the day the studio was to begin operations, World War I broke out. Production was halted before it really began, but most employees were hired on long-term contracts, and when these were broken, the Photodrama Producing Co. had to pay each and every one of them three months’ salary on the spot.17

GEORGE KLEINE ATTRACTIONS AND THE KLEINE-EDISON FEATURE SERVICE The Grugliasco fiasco was a setback, but not the deathblow to Kleine’s career that some cinema histories imply.18 It is true that Kleine started to drift towards the margins of the motion picture industry around 1914–15, but the outbreak of war in Europe did not cause this shift of fortunes in his career. It did thwart his plans to inaugurate a new US–European motion picture production model, but it did not stop him from branching out from distribution into production. The difference was that he set up shop in the United States instead of Italy. In fact, Kleine had entered domestic

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George Kleine with the Eastern Branch Managers of George Kleine Attractions in August 1915. Sitting (l to r): R. D. Marson, Merle E. Smith, Ben F. Simpson, George Kleine, Douglas H. Bergh, Harry A. Bugie. Standing (l to r): William E. Raynor, Miles F. Gibbons, Louis Myll, John J. Dacey, Frank Phelps, Foster Moore, J. C. Miller, Omer F. Doud, W. D. Cooper. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

production a few months before the war broke out in Europe, through a joint venture with Jacques Berst, who had resigned from Pathé in February 1914.19 Kleine and Berst purchased the movie rights to The Kleptomaniac (aka Stop Thief!), Officer 666 and Who’s Who in Society, three stage comedies controlled by Cohan and Harris. Berst worked with scenario development for a while, but was bought out by Kleine in late 1914.20 Officer 666 was released in December 1914, Stop Thief! in February 1915 and Who’s Who in May 1915.21 Officer 666 made a fairly handsome profit for Kleine – the total income from domestic and foreign sales by June 1919 was $72,000, and total expenses (including royalties to Cohan and Harris) $34,000. The revenues from Stop Thief! amounted to $63,500, and total expenses were $34,500. Revenues from Who’s Who were only $21,500, but the costs were so low that Kleine still made $7,000 in profits.22 The investment in Broadway comedies starring Broadway actors, or what Kleine’s referred to as ‘important American comedies’, paid off, then, although not in a spectacular fashion.23 From April 1915, Kleine leased two New York City studios from Biograph, one on 14th Street and one on 175th Street in the Bronx, with studio space, equipment and certain staff included.24 In these studios, Kleine produced additional adaptations of stage plays (comedies and dramas), including The Commuters (released in April 1915), The Spendthrift (released in June) and other pictures that would be released in autumn 1915 under the brand ‘George Kleine Attractions’. These features were distributed through the network of rental exchanges that Kleine had resurrected for the distribution of multi-reel features in 1914. By mid-1915, he was looking to increase the output, which indicates that the branch offices were not operating at full capacity. Meanwhile, the Edison Company needed a distributor for their feature films. The result was the Kleine-Edison Feature Service. Trade press headlines, as well as promotional circulars, suggested that this amounted to a ‘combine’ or even a ‘merger’,25 but as a matter of fact, ‘Kleine-Edison Feature Service’ was a trade name – the companies had agreed that the Kleine distribution branches would handle Edison’s output of feature films, while remaining fully separate corporate entities. Kleine After the Feature, Part 1

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suggested that the publicity should emphasise a ‘closer relationship covering the two lines practically as one equal strength, to be advertised under some such name as Kleine-Edison Feature Film Service’, as this would ‘strengthen both lines and make the service a unit rather than disconnected and loose sources of production’.26 In the 24 July issue of Moving Picture World, an article by James McQuade announced the ‘merger’ between Kleine and Edison.27 This was an interview with Kleine rather than an ad (although Kleine and his fellow Chicagoan James McQuade went way back and were personal friends, so the degree of journalistic integrity is questionable), but Kleine highlighted a message he had outlined in the memo and focused on Edison, saluting him as the inventor of moving pictures and, in general, a beacon of progress. He also emphasised that the Kleine-Edison Feature Film Service would put ‘quality’ over profit; they would provide a reliable feature programme service, but never allow ‘haste’ in production detract from the artistic quality of the pictures. This slogan was repeated in a similar piece in Motography the following week.28 In this interview, Kleine admitted that his involvement in a feature service might come as a surprise to people who were aware of his ‘very strong antipathy to the so-called program method of release’, but he assured readers that they had eliminated any risk of having to rush things, and that there would be plenty of time and space in the production schedule to ‘refine’ the pictures after the point where the average director would have been satisfied. Kleine would contribute with two features per month, and Edison with one feature per month as a minimum.29 In spite of Kleine’s declared ‘antipathy’ to the programme method of release, there are indications that he was planning for a weekly feature service already in June 1915, as negotiations with Edison were ongoing. In a memo dated 25 June 1915 to Merle E. Smith, an up-and-coming executive within the Kleine organisation, Kleine wrote that he might try to ‘induce Edison to issue a feature every other week’, hereby inaugurating a weekly feature service.30 Nothing came of these plans, but this appears to have been due to Edison’s limited production capacity rather than limitations within the distribution organisation. Edison’s Vanity Fair, originally slated to be the first K-E release, was rescheduled to 6 October.31 The inauguration of K-E was supposed to mark the entry of Edison into the feature field, but instead, the first three releases were all Kleine Attractions – The Woman Next door (1 September), The Money Master (8 September) and The Fixer (15 September).32 Vanity Fair followed on 6 October, and another Edison picture – The Magic Skin – was released on 13 October.33 The third October release was Kleine’s The Green Cloak (20 October).34 The pattern of three monthly releases continued over the next few months. Although K-E releases were not weekly, there was predictability to the schedule – whether Kleine considered it a ‘programme’ or not. The apparent contradiction between words and action hints at a typical dilemma for producer-distributors – namely, how to offer a reliable and ample flow of new releases while at the same time convincing exhibitors and audiences that each picture was unique. There had to be a balance between quantity and quality, and between standardisation and differentiation. The choice of release methods as well as active branding figured into this on the distribution end (as the publicity for K-E referenced above shows), but a diverse product line was also crucial, since ‘variety’ often worked as a mediator between quantity and quality. Accordingly, Kleine increasingly hedged his bets when it came to

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motion picture production. Initially, he had channelled investments into one specific type of film – spectacles – but he was gradually diversifying the production slate. This strategy made sense within the context of the new type of film industry that was developing, characterised by increasing uncertainty.

STAGE STARS, TRAMPS AND SERIAL-QUEENS: KLEINE’S PRODUCTION IN 1915–16 That said, the early films he produced in New York were not the high-concept pictures that Kleine had envisioned would emerge from Grugliasco (although we will never know what would have actually resulted from this US–European film factory). These were fairly modest, five-reel comedies and dramas that featured neither the biggest stars nor exotic locations, or any other visible manifestations of boosted production values. This signals a reluctance to spend big money on film production, which can be likened to a self-inflicted restraint on research and development. Gerben Bakker suggests that this may account for the downfall of the MPPC firms, as they were left without the ability to make and market big films.35 Bakker also notes that Kleine was an exception to this possible MPPC rule, as he did indeed attempt to join the ‘quality race’, or at least to devise an ‘escalation strategy’.36 But Bakker’s story, as far as it concerns Kleine, ends with Grugliasco. As we have seen, Kleine relocated production from Italy to the United States, but the question is what happened to the ‘escalation strategy’. Was it lost along the way? If so, why? The answer may have something to do with du Barry (Ambrosio, 1914) – an extremely costly but spectacularly unsuccessful motion picture project that Kleine ventured into in 1914. This ill-fated production was an adaptation of a popular David Belasco stage play, shot in Italy in 1914 and starring American actress Mrs Leslie Carter, who had made her theatrical career playing the title role in the stage version of du Barry several years earlier. As such, it was one of the few pictures that resulted from Kleine’s idea to combine European and American modes of production. The production process was fraught with trouble from the start. Mrs Carter owned the rights to du Barry, and it was she who had approached Kleine regarding the making of a film version. The resulting deal stipulated that Carter would star in the film, and it also granted her a degree of creative influence.37 Kleine claimed that this led to Mrs Carter’s constant meddling in all stages and details of the production, which became the source of tensions, delays and – in the end – a flawed final product.38 du Barry’s commercial career was brief, and the critical reception was invariably negative. The recurring, and most damaging, point of critique was directed at Mrs Carter, who was said to be way too old to play someone who was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world.39 For a later reissue of the film, Kleine tried to mitigate this possibly ageist sentiment by cutting out as many of the close-ups and tight framings as possible without ruining the narrative continuity.40 The negative cost of du Barry was almost $100,000, and Kleine spent an additional $25,000 on prints, advertising and legal expenses. In the end, his net loss amounted to nearly $50,000.41 After du Barry, and after the botched Grugliasco plans, Kleine was more cautious about investing in individual big-budget projects. This worked against him in the long run, to the extent that it meant he lagged behind in the quality race. He remained After the Feature, Part 1

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Trade press advertisement for The Mishaps of Musty Suffer. From Moving Picture World, 4 March 1916

active as a producer, however, and continued to strive for a certain degree of product diversity. In addition to producing a steady stream of five-reel features, Kleine completed a series of one-reel comedies marketed under the name The Mishaps of Musty Suffer. This series was Kleine’s contribution to a ‘tramp trend’ that had already worn off in other cultural fields when it began to hit a stride in cinema in the 1910s.42 It starred vaudeville comedian Harry Watson Jr as Musty Suffer, ‘his famous Tramp Characterization’, as one ad put it.43 The first ten instalments were produced in 1915 and released in February and March 1916 through a novel scheme. Kleine’s idea was to pre-release the film to ‘better class theatres in all principal cities’, which meant that these venues were offered a chance to arrange exclusive screenings before the series would be put out through regular release.44 They would be granted exclusive territory for a restricted period, during which the intention was ‘to issue and to bill the comedies as features’.45 This was an explicit challenge to the notion that the term ‘feature’ should be reserved for multi-reel pictures. One ad included Kleine’s definition of a ‘feature’: ‘A Film subject of extraordinary popularity, widespread appeal and indisputable box-office value. Length a mere detail. It may be one reel or ten.’46 It is unclear exactly how successful the pre-release scheme was, but Kleine spoke proudly of screenings in prestige theatres such as the Strand in New York, the Scollay Square in 78

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Production still from Going Up! (The Mishaps of Musty Suffer, Series A, no. 4), 1916. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Boston and the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver.47 He emphasised that audiences in these theatres were normally ‘ultra-critical … of comedies bordering on the slapstick. … That’s pretty good evidence that we were right in believing the public likes slap-stick when they can get it without vulgarity.’48 There were inevitable comparisons to Chaplin, the producers arguing that Watson’s ‘new style of fun-making … seriously challenges the Chaplin laurels’.49 Pitching the series to an overseas associate, Kleine argued that the Watson comedies were ‘received as better than the Chaplin, more original and cleaner’.50 From early March, the series became available as a regular release,51 and had a good run. A second series was promptly completed and released in June 1916.52 Another type of product that Kleine invested in was the film serial – a format similar to today’s television series, one- or two-reel episodes being released to movie theatres weekly, episodes tied together by a recurring main hero-character, and sometimes by a continuing story arc. This format was incredibly popular for a few years in the mid-1910s, and in 1915, Kleine became involved in the production of a serial called Gloria’s Romance. 53 This was a joint venture between Kleine, who was to handle distribution and marketing; the Randolph Film Corporation, a production company set up specifically to produce this serial; and the Tribune Company, which was to handle the tie-in arrangement – the parallel publication of Gloria’s Romance in story format in the daily Hearst papers.54 Kleine did not invest directly in the project, but acted as ‘Superintendent’ of the production of the negative in exchange for receiving a percentage of net profits.55 He also served as chairman of the Randolph Film Corp. until December 1916, and owned common stock in the company.56 Sadly, the costly production failed to live up to expectations. By May 1917, the Randolph Corp.’s income from film rentals and the sale and rental of paper (posters etc.) was around $860,000, but taking expenses into account, this represented a total loss of about $93,000.57 A report to the Randolph Corp.’s stockholders stated that Kleine had closed gross contracts with exhibitors for approximately $1 million, of which about a fifth were later cancelled. What remained was not enough to earn a profit for Randolph. James Sheldon, the president of the corporation, concluded, ‘The picture After the Feature, Part 1

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was not a success from the standpoint of earning.’ He offered all kinds of explanations, including bad weather and the outbreak of an epidemic of infantile paralysis in the Eastern states.58 The problem was that income had to cover production costs; overhead expenses; Kleine’s 25 per cent distribution fee; $200,000 to the Tribune Co. for bankrolling the setting up of the Randolph Corp.; 7 per cent per annum dividends on stock; and an additional sum of $57,500 to the Tribune Co. for exploitation in the daily papers.59 Obviously, Gloria had to hit very big for the Randolph Corp. to see any money. Kleine, for his part, was not liable for losses,60 so Gloria’s Romance was a relatively low-risk business venture for him, and he made good from the distribution fee. He collected roughly $200,000 for distributing Gloria’s Romance, which at the time covered a considerable part of his distribution expenses, not just for the serial but for his distribution operation as a whole (Kleine’s total expense for running twenty-two branches in 1916 amounted to just under $320,000).61 For Kleine’s personal business, then, the project yielded handsome income without involving very much risk. Nevertheless, the project might have served as a note of caution, discouraging him from committing to serious investment in motion picture production. For one, it demonstrated that liberal spending on a presumably exceptional film was not a guarantee of financially satisfactory results. The negative cost of Gloria was almost $400,000, and the cost for prints, advertising and paper from June 1915 to May 1916 Sheet music to ‘Little Billie Fox-Trot,’ music by Jerome Kern (1916). Copy in the Library of Congress Music Division

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was about $325,000.62 An additional $95,000 was spent on special engagements and other sales costs, so that, taking distribution and other running costs into account, the total outlay associated with the project approached $1.2 million. Clearly, it would require remarkable box-office appeal for the producers/financers to turn a profit. Second, Gloria might have caused Kleine to reconsider his ideas about the box-office power of stars. Leading lady Billie Burke had already set the salary record for a single picture for her role in Peggy (Kay-Bee/New York Motion Picture Co.; distributed by Triangle, 1916).63 For Gloria, she received $120,000 (while her agent received a $20,000 ‘broker’s commission’).64 (In comparison, the leading man, Henry Kolker, was paid exactly one-tenth of Burke’s salary.65) Randolph also paid for a chauffeur, a maid and a secretary for Burke.66 An additional $10,000 was spent on gowns,67 designed on commission by Henri Bendel, Lucile and Balcom.68 Before Gloria was released, Kleine seems to have believed that Burke was worth the expense. He wrote to an associate in London that she was the ‘most popular stage Star in the United States’, and that each episode of the serial had ‘great intrinsic value because of the beauty of the Star’.69 Although the meaning of ‘intrinsic value’ here is vague, it seems Kleine assumed a causal relation between star presence and box-office value. ‘We are asking unprecedented prices and we are getting them,’ he disclosed.70 What the actual release of Gloria proved, however, was that audience acceptance (and the long, successful, prosperous runs this brings about) was the all-important variable in catapulting a picture to hit status, overriding other potential factors, such as star presence, production values or methods of marketing and distribution.71 Kleine secured many lucrative bookings at good prices before the serial was released, but for one reason or another, it did not quite strike a chord with audiences. Attendance was already in decline after a few episodes, and exhibitors began to cancel bookings. A special ten-week engagement at the Globe Theatre in New York City was cancelled after eight weeks due to poor audience attendance and heavy losses. The trend continued into 1917: ‘I certainly never at any time figured that this picture would drop off the way it has,’ James Sheldon wrote to Kleine in April.72 What they both gradually must have realised was that whereas the producer and distributor could secure a big star, boost production values and ensure the film made a big splash upon release, audience acceptance could neither be predicted with certainty nor influenced more than marginally. Neither the massively expensive presence of Billie Burke nor an elaborate web of tie-ins (hooking up the serial not only to the newspaper press and the fashion industry, but also to the music industry and the literary field)73 could turn Gloria into a box-office winner. That Gloria was a serial did not make matters better – very few exhibitors held out to the end of the twenty-episode series, leaving the final few episodes virtually unutilised.

EXIT PRODUCTION, ENTER K-E-S-E By this time, Kleine had already stopped producing five-reel features. This was made public in February 1916,74 along with the unexpected announcement that the KleineEdison Feature Service would cease operations (note that this did not mean that Kleine closed his exchanges). Kleine’s explanation was that the total receipts from After the Feature, Part 1

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features did not merit the expense of distributing them.75 Variety noted that this was an indication of a general ‘surfeit of feature releases’, whereas the Clipper suggested that the Kleine-Edison exit from the feature film field was due to a ‘severe attack of coldfeetitis’.76 Edison reverted to producing one-reel films released through General Film, while Kleine initiated his exit from the production branch altogether. The rental contract for the Biograph studios was terminated in June 1916 and took effect on 1 August.77 In October 1916, he asked Eastman-Kodak to close his account, ‘[a]s we have discontinued manufacturing for the present’.78 The ostensible reason for getting out of production was that the feature market in the United States was ‘oversupplied’ (a statement that was neither accurate nor inaccurate, as we will discover later).79 Later on, however, Kleine claimed that the true motivation for his actions was that a single firm should not dabble in the different branches of the business, but concentrate on one or the other. He explained, ‘[because] no cook can attend to more than one kitchen properly I cut out manufacturing for the time being, and am giving my attention to the little job of managing twenty-three branch offices.’80 Not his undivided attention, however – from January to November 1916, Kleine was also president of the General Film Company.81 The MPPC had dissolved, but the GFC continued as a distributor, targeting small-time exhibitors who were in the market for a full programme service. By April 1916, the GFC had been suffering weekly losses for several months, and Kleine did not manage to turn the situation around.82 His resignation as president was accepted at a GFC meeting on 13 November the same year.83 Again, Kleine proclaimed that running a nationwide distribution organisation was too taxing to combine with other commitments.84 When it came to his exit from production, however, the lacklustre financial results of the Kleine Attractions presumably also figured into the decision. There was also the Billie Burke project, which had given Kleine a first-hand experience of the great risk involved in motion picture production, and the limited chances of coming up with a winner. This may have influenced his decision to pull out of production, but he may also have concluded that if someone else were willing to finance the actual film-making, a distributor could reap considerable profits without excessive risk. Moreover, although he had quit production himself, he still realised the growing importance and value of coordinating production and distribution in the motion picture business. These insights led up to Kleine’s inauguration of a new feature distribution service in autumn 1916. In fact, it turned out that the Kleine-Edison Feature Service had been dormant rather than dead. Six months after the service’s discontinuation in February, Kleine and Edison returned to the feature field, now as members of a new and expanded distribution combine: K-E-S-E, short for its constituent companies, Kleine-Edison-Selig-Essanay. Selig and Essanay had defected from another feature distribution group, V-L-S-E (Vitagraph-Lubin-Selig-Essanay).85 Rumours about the dissolving of V-L-S-E and a possible recombination had been flying about for some time,86 so the formation of K-E-S-E came as no surprise, although the inclusion of Edison was unexpected.87 K-E-S-E would distribute new feature films from the four producers as well as Selig and Essanay pictures previously handled by V-L-S-E. The actual distribution would be taken care of by George Kleine’s exchanges, located in twenty-two key cities across the United States and Canada (a twenty-third exchange

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opened in Cleveland in late October).88 Kleine’s distribution fee was set at 30 per cent of the gross receipts, the remaining 70 per cent to be remitted to the manufacturers.89 There was a separate agreement for Essanay’s Max Linder films (see below).90 As had been the case with the launch of the Kleine-Edison Feature Service, the publicity material for K-E-S-E attempted to offset the suspicion that a standardisation of feature distribution would somehow come at the expense of the uniqueness of each film. Kleine emphasised that K-E-S-E features would be released ‘on the open booking plan’, as opposed to a feature programme.91 Essanay’s president, George K. Spoor, elaborated on this point, arguing that each picture should stand fully on its own merit, and that nothing would be ‘crammed down the exhibitor’s throat’.92 Spoor was pandering to exhibitors (they were the ‘best judges of what pictures they should show’ and ‘too intelligent to stand for the program policy in features’, he argued), but also made the case that an open booking system would lead to a general improvement of the motion picture business. ‘It [open booking] can mean nothing but better pictures,’ Spoor declared.93 The K-E-S-E Service would consist of a limited number of quality pictures, as opposed to an ‘unlimited quantity’ of programme features, but Spoor was careful to stress that the total annual output would make up a ‘great number of stars and desirable productions’.94 The idea was to give exhibitors some assurance of an abundant supply, while at the same time allowing them to pick and choose from the offerings on a case-by-case basis rather than signing up for a bundle of features in advance. As Spoor saw it, the key was to plan ahead, and in November 1916, he announced that a full year of K-E-S-E releases (approximately forty feature films of five to eight reels in length) was already tentatively scheduled: Quality must always be the main point in view and quantity very secondary. This is one of the reasons for planning so far ahead, so that we may be sure of good productions and yet announce the release dates far enough in advance to be of advantage to exhibitors.95

Long-term planning was also necessary to allow for the advance screenings for exhibitors that the open booking plan hinged on.

PROBLEMS OF STANDARDISATION AND DIFFERENTIATION IN THE EARLY FEATURE ERA Taking stock of what K-E-S-E’s emphasis on its ‘open booking plan’ reveals about this early phase of the feature era, we may note that the issue harked back to earlier discussions about what distinguished ‘real features’ from ‘fake features’. By 1914, the supply of multi-reel features had reached a volume that allowed companies to specialise in regularised feature distribution – the formation of Paramount in June 1914 and the inauguration of its feature programme on 1 September 1914 is a landmark case in point.96 On the other hand, up to now, what had defined a ‘feature’ as such (just as much as the length and cost of the film itself) was the special treatment such a film was afforded in terms of exhibition and distribution.97 The appearance of feature programmes could therefore be seen as a reintegration of the longer format into a system of distribution originally tailored for the one-reel After the Feature, Part 1

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standard, and a ‘de-differentiation’ at the level of distribution. Speaking about the formation of Paramount, Adolph Zukor (founder of the Famous Players Film Company and later the president of Paramount) argued that the motion picture business had reached a point where films needed to be treated as individual plays, and not as merchandise containing so many feet.98 Nevertheless, the inauguration of feature programme distribution signalled a move towards standardisation within the feature field. This shift applied to film length, too. As feature programme distribution grew increasingly common from mid-1914, producers and distributors gradually arrived at a standard multi-reel feature film length of approximately 5,000 feet (or five reels). This particular length was neither arbitrarily chosen nor an obvious or somehow predetermined standard. But it made sense at a moment when film exhibition in the United States was in a transitional phase, gradually undergoing structural change. A five-reel feature could replace the mixed programme of four or five one-reelers in old-style nickelodeon theatres (although this involved problems other than the mere length of the show), but it could also be used as the main element of longer shows at other types of venues, including the increasingly common ‘picture palaces’. Standardisation within the multi-reel feature market called for new forms of differentiation. Multiple reel length was no longer a marker of difference in itself, and many of the pictures referred to as ‘features’ were distributed as standardised commodities, without receiving any kind of special treatment. At this juncture, a gradation of features appeared. Films of standard length (five reels) that were subject to programme release became known as ‘programme features’. Films that were longer, costlier or exploited according to some extravagant method were labelled with a variety of terms, including ‘specials’, ‘superfeatures’ and ‘superspecials’.99 The K-E-S-E idea was to launch a service that included nothing but ‘specials’ yet guaranteed a steady supply and a degree of predictability that was comparable to a feature programme service. This was a way to differentiate the K-E-S-E Service as a whole from competing features services (although the actual difference for exhibitors might have been minuscule), and it was a way to strike a balance between the forces of standardisation and differentiation. Hereby, K-E-S-E fulfilled a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for any producer-distributor to become viable in the early feature era. Allegiance to an open booking plan did not mean much if the pictures K-E-S-E put out were not accepted by audiences. The first K-E-S-E release, slated for 2 October 1916, was The Country That God Forgot (Selig Polyscope Co., 1916), a ‘Selig Red Seal Play’ written and directed by Marshall Neilan and starring Tom Santschi and Mary Charleson.100 Another nine features were released in 1916, six made by Essanay and three by Edison.101 In addition, K-E-S-E released a compilation of footage from Charlie Chaplin’s stint at Essanay under the title The Essanay-Chaplin Revue of 1916 (released on 21 October 1916) and a Selig production marketed as The World Series Baseball Film (released on 17 October 1917).102 The grand annual report for Kleine’s distribution organisation in 1916 reveals that net contracts – excluding contracts for the serial Gloria’s Romance, which was subject to separate accounting – amounted to about $880,000, and future bookings by 1 January 1917 would amount to almost $210,000.103 It had cost almost $320,000 to keep the twenty-two exchanges running in 1916, which was about 54 per cent of the total net receipts of all distribution exchanges.104 This indicates a rather

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large profit margin, whereas the sum total turnover gives evidence of a relatively small but not insignificant operation. More importantly, the numbers suggest that neither the Kleine-Edison Feature Service nor the K-E-S-E Service (the report does not separate the two) released any breakaway hit pictures this year. Trade paper sources, as well as other documents from the Kleine Papers, confirm this. The evidence suggests that Edison’s The Cossack Whip was the most successful K-E-S-E release in 1916. This film about love and war in tsarist Russia struck a chord with audiences, was frequently held over and was popular enough to be afforded a ‘comeback’ release a few months after its initial commercial release.105 Edison’s features were widely regarded as clean, well photographed and artistically handled – but lacking the crucial ‘punch’. The Cossack Whip was a notable exception. George Kleine arrived at the conclusion that the ‘punch’ in this case lay in a climactic, and slightly suggestive, whipping scene: ‘In analyzing the success of the “Cossack Whip” my own opinion is confirmed in discussion, that the big climax in which [lead actress Viola] Dana whips the minister is responsible for its success.’106 While Kleine was not too concerned about this, L. W. McChesney, head of Edison’s motion picture division, feared that certain elements might tarnish Edison’s reputation as a producer of clean, wholesome motion picture entertainment: Trade press advertisement for The Cossack’s Whip. From Moving Picture World, 11 November 1916

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We attempted an analysis at Orange of the ‘punch’ in ‘THE COSSACK WHIP’, and decided that we wouldn’t want many ‘punches’ of that kind. … I’m afraid most exhibitors think of ‘the punch’ as something which has to do with questionable sex relations, or of similar situations that we try to keep out of our films.107

Either way, box-office receipts earned Edison back the negative cost as well as the expense of prints and advertising, still leaving a surplus for Edison and Kleine to share. Even though this was one of the more successful K-E-S-E releases of this period, the amounts involved were not of super-hit proportions. The Cossack Whip’s negative cost was about $24,000, and the positive cost just over $9,000, and even though the gross receipts collected by Kleine approached $20,000 beyond that one year after the picture’s release, it was clearly not the kind of success that made millions for the people involved, and it was clearly not a source of income that could compensate for other, less successful K-E-S-E releases.108 This is indicative of the general state of the K-E-S-E operation and a key to why its existence would be brief. If all K-E-S-E releases had been popular enough to cover the producer’s investments as well as distributing expenses, and generate a moderate profit in addition, no one involved in K-E-S-E would have had much to worry about. In reality, even a moderate success like The Cossack Whip turned out to be difficult to produce in a conveyor-belt fashion. Again, this was not from a lack of trying, which an analysis of K-E-S-E’s releases from January to September 1917 makes clear. Over these months, the output became both larger and more diverse. As already noted, this made sense in the face of a movie business characterised by fundamental uncertainty, and in which each feature film project was associated with great economic risk due to escalating production budgets. In theory, mass production and product diversity alleviated some of these pressures, by improving the odds that some day, sooner or later, a box-office winner would emerge. In practice, in the case of K-E-S-E, the search for winners involved a lot of trial, and mostly error.

VARIETY AND VOLUME IN THE K-E-S-E SERVICE Five-reel features made up the core of the service, and from January to March 1917, K-ES-E placed another eleven five-reelers on the market, five made by Essanay (Little Shoes; The Adventures of Buffalo Bill; Skinner’s dress Suit; Burning the Candle; and Satan’s Private door), the remaining six split evenly between Edison (The Last Sentence; The Master Passion; and The Royal Pauper) and the Selig Polyscope Company (Princess of Patches; Heart of Texas Ryan; and Little Lost Sister).109 Skinner’s dress Suit was popular and profitable,110 whereas the others made little impact. In the same period, Essanay started a campaign to relaunch French film comedian Max Linder in the United States. The first two instalments of the Linder series – Max Comes Across and Max Wants a divorce – were released through K-E-S-E in the first quarter of 1917, but both flopped, and the series was discontinued after the release of the third film, Max in a Taxi, on 23 April 1917.111 On 2 March 1917, Variety reported that starting on 2 April, K-E-S-E would offer one feature film every week – increasing the number of yearly feature releases from forty to fifty-two.112 Hereby, the plans for a weekly feature service that Kleine had

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contemplated since the inauguration of the Kleine-Edison Feature Service in September 1915 were finally realised. Kleine’s announcement of a weekly service made clear that the goal was to convince exhibitors to sign up for a full year’s service.113 This contradicted Spoor’s earlier pledge that ‘there will be no form of program’,114 but Kleine emphasised that exhibitors were in no way obligated to commit to the yearly service straight away. ‘No matter if an exhibitor signs for one or fifty-two K-E-S-E features, he will be assured of quality first, last and all the time,’ he insisted.115 As we have seen, the challenge for feature distribution organisations such as K-E-S-E was to convince exhibitors that they could guarantee a reliable service without jeopardising the uniqueness and special merits of each individual release. When K-E-S-E announced its weekly service, the emphasis shifted to the reliability and predictability of the service. To maintain the balance, Kleine proclaimed that the increased output would also mean a significant boost in production budgets. Indeed, the twelve additional releases would be of the ‘superfeature’ kind, which meant that exhibitors would receive films of ‘superfeature’ quality but at regular programme feature prices: Exhibitors will quickly realize that under our new plan they will get in our regular service twelve super-features each year, or, in other words, we have decided to put twelve superfeatures at the disposal of exhibitors at regular service prices.116

Twenty-six weeks passed from early April to the end of September 1917, and twenty-six K-E-S-E features were released – one per week, just as promised. More than half of these (fourteen) were Essanay films, eight were made by Edison and the remaining four by the Selig company.117 The K-E-S-E programme also offered a number of short films, including the third and final Max Linder comedy and re-edited two-reel versions of The Fixer and The Politicians, two Bickel and Watson vehicles originally released through the Kleine-Edison Feature Service in autumn 1915 as fivereel comedies, both of which had utterly failed to amuse audiences. There are no indications that the reissues did much better.118 Harry Watson Jr also starred in the third series of Musty Suffer comedies, which consisted of ten newly produced tworeelers – five by Essanay and five by Kleine.119 In late May/early June, two new series of two-reel pictures were added to the K-E-S-E Service. The Selig Polyscope Co. launched a line of comedies based on farces penned by playwright Charles Hoyt.120 The first of these ‘feature comedies’, A Hole in the Ground, was released on 28 May 1917, and a new Hoyt farce followed every other week after this, until the series was concluded in late September.121 The other line of two-reelers was Essanay’s ‘Do Children Count?’ series, but these were released weekly rather than fortnightly. The twelve ‘Do Children Count?’ pictures were catering to a perceived demand for ‘clean’ and otherwise suitable subjects for children’s programmes.122 In mid-July, the K-E-S-E Service was packed even further through the addition of Edison’s Conquest programme. This was a weekly seven- to ten-reel mixture, usually consisting of a four-reel main feature (a comedy or drama of the ‘wholesome’ kind) and additional short subjects, some of which were ‘strictly’ educational, while the rest were narrative films.123 At one point, L. W. McChesney suggested they might coin a new adjective to describe the programme: ‘enter-structive’.124 Other tentative slogans included ‘Safe and Sane Films for the Whole Family’, ‘Films for Young Folks of All Ages’ After the Feature, Part 1

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and ‘Decent Films for the Clean-Minded’.125 Kleine replied that anything indicating ‘cleanliness’ or ‘decency’ should be kept out of trade advertisements. Such notions, and the label ‘educational’, worked as a ‘curse that will repel the masses’, and as markers of ‘weakness or a wishy-washy quality’, he argued.126 They settled for ‘Films for the Whole Family’.127 In terms of volume, the K-E-S-E Service gradually expanded, from seven weekly reels at the time of the inception of the weekly service in April 1917 to eight to nine reels in May and June, and then to fifteen reels on average when the Conquest programme premiered in July. In addition to the fifteen reels slated for weekly release, K-E-S-E also furnished exhibitors with older subjects, including all three Musty Suffer series (thirty one-reel comedies in all), Gloria’s Romance (twenty two-reel instalments), the Max Linder comedies and ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’ (reissues of the Italian epics Kleine had imported/co-produced in 1913 and 1914).128 In terms of variety, there were five-reel dramas and comedies, one-reel comedies and other short films, serial melodrama, children’s movies, educational pictures and historical epics. The apparent diversity of the output, however, was to some degree harnessed to the repetitive seriality of the programme distribution method and the repetitive character of the various series within the programme. The inauguration of a weekly fifteen-reel service was heavily advertised in the 7 July 1917 issue of Moving Picture World, and these ads further reveal how K-E-S-E was trying to straddle the issues of programme versus open booking and quality versus quantity. On the one hand, in some ads and other trade press notices, the sheer volume of K-E-S-E’s weekly service appears to be the main selling point, signalled by the prominent featuring of the number ‘fifteen’.129 On the other hand, K-E-S-E also informed the public that ‘QUALITY, Not Footage, Is Our Guide’.130 ‘Variety’ was used as a mediating concept of sorts; the ads implied that the expansion of the service guaranteed ‘a program of variety’, and that there would be no programme fillers, but exclusively ‘features of every length’.131 As already mentioned, K-E-S-E had started soliciting for yearly contracts with exhibitors in April 1917, and this was the main strategy in the July campaign, too. One ad stated, ‘A year’s contract for K.E.S.E. pictures means [a] year’s success for your theatre.’132 The ad on the page opposite, however, made clear that K-E-S-E had an ‘[o]pen booking plan affording you [the] chance to rent what you want; single subjects instead of [the] entire Program if desired.’133 Regardless of booking plan, K-E-S-E was banking on convincing exhibitors that the K-E-S-E supply meant sure-fire profits: ‘We can furnish you attractive K.E.S.E. Programs that will assure crowded houses, wide advertising, pleased patrons and big cash returns.’134 Another ad went even further: ‘The Exhibitor Contracting for 52 Units K.E.S.E. Program May Sit Tight and Count on Cash Receipts in Ratio to the Seating Capacity of His House. This Assertion Has Been Proven. It Is Not Speculation.’135 How convenient for exhibitors – had it been true. Statements like these defied all logic of the motion picture business, and Kleine knew it. To be fair, however, an advertising campaign like this had to assume, and give the impression, that all past, present and future K-E-S-E releases were of outstandingly high quality – perceived and otherwise. The fallacy lay in this assumption rather than in the notion of a programme plan that yielded guaranteed profits for exhibitors. Naturally, there were no benefits whatsoever for K-E-S-E to delve into such issues in its publicity work, which was intended to build the K-E-S-E brand –

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not question the quality of its own products. In terms of brand-building, ‘entertainment’ was a keyword. One ad claimed that the ‘BIG SUCCESSES of the year have been K.E.S.E. pictures’, and went on to state, ‘This success was achieved by providing ENTERTAINMENT.’136 ‘K.E.S.E. Stands for Real Entertainment’, another ad boasted.137 Even the semieducational Conquest programme was said to be ‘Entertainment Assured’, although of a ‘clean, wholesome’ kind that ‘attracts the family group’.138 The ads also make clear that the K-E-S-E idea was not just about ‘quality entertainment’ but affordable quality entertainment. In other words, K-E-S-E was competing on price as much as anything else. One ad emphasised that whereas Essanay’s Skinner’s dress Suit had been a major money-earner, K-E-S-E had not increased rental prices.139 Another ad declared that the prices for the Conquest pictures were ‘within the reach of all’.140 At the same time, the ads had to mitigate for the risk that low prices would be perceived as an indication of inferior films – hence the emphasis on ‘quality’. As earlier, the K-E-S-E idea was to convince exhibitors that they would receive ‘superfeatures’ at programme feature prices. Another move to appease exhibitors at this juncture was to eliminate the ‘advance deposits’ that exhibitors usually paid to the distributor when they booked a film, hereby relieving them of what Kleine’s trade press notice to exhibitors labelled a ‘great hardship’.141

FUNDAMENTAL UNCERTAINTY, INFINITE VARIANCE, CONTESTED RESPONSES There are some indications that exhibitors should have been more worried about the quality of the K-E-S-E features than about the advance deposits. Variety’s reviewer ‘Fred’ closed his merciless review of Edison’s The Tell Tale Step (released in May 1917) by stating, ‘[it’s] a nickelodeon feature’.142 ‘Fred’ wrote that the only unusual thing about this picture was the amount of money Edison had spent to make it,143 implying that Edison was perceived as a low-budget producer, and, to add insult to injury, one whose output would not necessarily improve with higher budgets. Variety’s review of The Man Who Was Afraid (Essanay, release date 2 July 1917) suggests that the problem was not limited to Edison, but applied to the whole K-E-S-E Service. According to ‘Mark’, The Man Who Was Afraid was ‘[n]ot a great feature. Just ordinary and may pass muster in the usual K-E-S-E feature service.’144 Meanwhile, the more favourably inclined Moving Picture World – in which K-E-S-E bought considerable ad space, and in which Kleine’s old friend James McQuade reviewed most of the K-E-S-E features – reported on how exhibitors around the country were making big business by running the K-E-S-E programme, and how the K-E-S-E branches were prospering.145 There is no doubt that the K-E-S-E Service had many subscribers, but it is equally clear that the quality of the programme could hardly be separated from the experienced quality of the specific films within it. Contrary to what the K-E-S-E ads implied, the latter could only be determined when a film was placed before an actual audience. Motion picture producers, distributors and exhibitors had always been trying to assess moviegoers’ preferences, but the radical increase in costs in the mid-1910s made it more crucial than ever to figure out what ‘worked’ with the audience. Or, as George Kleine put it in August 1915, ‘We are sitting up nights trying to be up-to-date in analyzing the public preference in the matter of films.’146 The correspondence between After the Feature, Part 1

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Kleine and his associates at Edison, Inc. during the K-E-S-E years offers many more detailed illustrations of the struggle to figure out why one film was popular and the next one was not, and what exact factors actually accounted for a picture’s appeal to audiences. In one letter to McChesney over at Edison, Inc., Kleine commented on a newly compiled statement of gross receipts from all K-E-S-E releases from the start in October 1916 to the end of 1917. In some cases, success or failure could quite easily be accounted for. For instance, Little Shoes did better than its ‘neighbor’ release The Master Passion – the former featured a popular star, the other had a ‘waning star’ carrying a ‘poor story’.147 At other times, differences were harder to explain: Why should THE RETURN OF EVE earn $36,000.00 and THE HEART OF HILLS $24,000.00 released with an interval of two weeks. Neither had particular value, and as a matter of fact THE RETURN OF EVE was criticized by some exhibitors who ran it.148

Kleine drew one general conclusion from the K-E-S-E results up to this point: ‘that gross income has followed mathematically the boxoffice [sic] values of the features’.149 The point was that the cause for varying success was not to be found in the methods of distribution and exploitation, but in some or other quality of the pictures themselves. Along with many others, now and then, Kleine believed that this quality – the ‘boxoffice value’ – most often had to do with the star, but sometimes also with the story or the genre. Crucially, however, these assessments were all done after the fact. Without doubt, Kleine acknowledged that these things could never be predicted in advance with any certainty, and concluded the letter to McChesney with a joke: ‘Some day a man will be born with mathematical certainty in selecting and making winners. When he happens he will get all the money in the world.’150 In addition to this discovery (of what we have discussed earlier in the book as ‘the Goldman Rule’ or the ‘no one knows anything’ principle), Kleine also appears to have detected the infinite variance of outcomes, or what some economists would later refer to as the ‘wild’ uncertainty of the motion picture economy.151 Apparently, there were no limits to the income some films could generate, whereas others could not even recoup enough revenue to cover sundry expenses. Everything in between was possible, and no clear pattern was discernible. It is worth stressing again that this condition appeared only when the film industry began to restructure itself around high-budget, horizontally differentiated, multi-reel feature films c. 1915. Prior to this, the popularity of any individual motion picture only had a small positive effect on revenues, in strict proportion to the extra number of prints circulated. In contrast, what characterised the multi-reel ‘quality’ feature was its potential for disproportionate returns. Conversely, however, there was always the risk that any given ‘quality’ feature would bomb. Some would break even. Given the fundamental uncertainty, however, prior to release, any outcome was equally likely (or, rather, fundamentally incalculable). The drastic nature of this change in the basic conditions of doing motion picture business can hardly be overestimated. For Kleine, a conservative businessman, there was no doubt that the change was for the worse. In 1924, corresponding with his old friend and associate Harry Buckwalter, a Denver-based film man who had also been active since the pioneer days, Kleine reminisced about the early years, and described how conditions had changed since then:

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Those were the happy days, when film production was an industry as sane as any other; today the operation of production is a series of explosions. Occasionally, the energy is directed through the muzzle of a gun and hits a target; in most cases, however, it is like the blowing up of a dynamite mine, which shoots off in all directions and hits nothing in particular, except by accident.152

This is, indeed, an astute description of the ‘wild’ uncertainty of the movie business. Operating in this fundamentally and wildly uncertain business, Kleine and his associates faced the same new challenges as all other motion picture firms. If the profitability of the individual firm as well as the industry at large hinged on a few disproportionally successful films, what factors decided which firms would produce and distribute the few profit-earners? What could a specific firm do to maximise its chances of coming up with a winner? As we have seen, Kleine recognised that no human alive would be able to devise with a fail-safe method, but similar to other producer-distributors, he nonetheless struggled to find some quality markers that could improve chances at least slightly. As we will return to shortly, his recommendation to the K-E-S-E manufacturers was to spend liberally to get the most popular stars and in order to make the film ‘big’ – precisely what he himself had been quite reluctant to do during his stint as a film producer in 1914–16. These recommendations led to a series of debates between Kleine and the manufacturers – Edison in particular – towards the end of 1917 and after, but before this, the K-E-S-E organisation was disbanded, only to be reborn and rebranded as Perfection Pictures. One reason was that K-E-S-E had difficulties maintaining sufficient production volumes. The programme for the autumn and winter of 1917 was announced in the 25 August 1917 issue of Moving Picture World, but the announcement indicates that Essanay was the only K-E-S-E producer that was still operating at a consistent capacity.153 Edison contributed with the series of Conquest programmes, but had either channelled too many resources into this project to be able to sustain the production of five-reel features as well, or simply lacked the capability to handle both. As for Selig, Kleine already knew at this point that The Barker (release date 13 August 1917) would be its final release through K-E-S-E.154 Selig’s defection came as a relief for Kleine – the inconsistency of its feature production had forced him to substitute Essanay or Edison films for Selig features on several occasions.155 But it also posed yet another challenge to a distribution organisation that was already under considerable strain. With Edison busy with its Conquest programme, and Selig about to cease production of five-reel features, K-E-SE was turning into a distributor of Essanay features and a miscellany of short films and special releases. Indeed, it seems that Essanay was actually running somewhat below full capacity, since George Spoor decided to ramp up production in August 1917. The project opted for, however, did not exactly position Essanay at the forefront of the ‘quality race’. On 25 August, Moving Picture World reported that K-E-S-E branch managers and Essanay officials had been conducting meticulous market research that supported the notion that there was a great demand for scenic films.156 Accordingly, Essanay initiated production of a new ‘series of one-reel educational subjects to be entitled “The Wonders of Nature and Science”’.157

After the Feature, Part 1

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K-E-S-E TURNS INTO PERFECTION Questionable quality, inconsistency in the manufacturers’ output, and potentially illadvised strategies and decisions may not have been recognised as the root causes at the time, but the actions taken by Kleine in concurrence with the K-E-S-E manufacturers suggest that they knew something was wrong with the service. The immediate measure, however, was a rebranding scheme rather than a reorganisation. In September 1917, the K-E-S-E Service began morphing into ‘Perfection Pictures’. This new trade name was first mentioned in Moving Picture World on 1 September, in James McQuade’s ‘Chicago Newsletter’, but at this stage it was not revealed who was involved in the venture. The article spoke of a merger of ‘the foremost of America’s producers’, and the establishing of ‘a new high standard in the art of making moving pictures’, to be realised through huge production budgets and contracting the country’s top literary talent to supply the source material.158 An ad in the next week’s issue of World made it official (still without naming names): ‘Announcing Perfection Pictures: The Highest Standard in Motion Pictures.’159 A week later, the brand’s basic orientation was made explicit: ‘Screen literature! Specially chosen stories – the best work of contemporary fiction. Produced with Great Care.’160 Another ad introduced an element of the brand that would be further stressed later on, that ‘America’s pioneer picture producers’ were to make the ‘Perfection’ films.161 On 22 September, all details were finally made public in an eight-page ad splash that exposed the names of the parties involved and the titles of the first Perfection Pictures releases.162 The first ad declared ‘the inception of a new era in motion pictures’.163 It was also disclosed that the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, Thomas A. Edison, Inc. and George Kleine were the pioneer producers referred to in earlier ads.164 Similar to the K-E-S-E policy, Perfection vowed to offer ‘the highest class of motion picture entertainment’ at ‘fair prices’.165 But Perfection also vowed to launch a publicity push of ‘gigantic’ proportions, including ads in periodicals such as the Saturday Evening Post and in daily newspapers across the United States. This slew of ‘publicity of every imaginable sort’ assured to ‘make Perfection Pictures known throughout the America’.166 Four Essanay productions were afforded a full-page ad each, as were Edison’s Conquest pictures and Edison’s The Awakening of Ruth (the first ‘official’ Perfection release). Moving Picture World as well as Motography devoted considerable space to the new brand in their respective 29 September 1917 issues, both papers apparently basing their accounts on the same publicity material.167 Much of what the ads from previous weeks had already announced was repeated, but there was also some news. For instance, it was noted that Perfection’s signature would be ‘quality of stories and quality of photography’,168 and whereas renowned authors would guarantee the former, the ‘Perfection process’ would guarantee the latter. The exact nature of that ‘process’ was said to be a ‘trade secret’, but supposedly someone within the Perfection group had invented a new method for processing motion picture film that would give the images an unmatched degree of clarity and brilliance.169 As to the contemporary authors who were to bestow ‘genuine literary merit’ upon every Perfection Picture, a handful of names were now revealed, including Peter B. Kyne, Clarence Budington Kelland and Kennett Harris, all regular contributors of stories to the Saturday Evening Post.170 A third pillar in the attempt to construct Perfection as a ‘quality’ brand was to stress the

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high production expenses. The figure of $1,700,000 for the first year of production (excluding costs for prints and advertising) had been floated in the McQuade article that appeared in early September,171 and by the time Perfection Pictures was officially announced a few weeks later, this had increased to ‘several million dollars [having been appropriated] for productions alone during the first year’.172 World and Motography alike referred to Perfection as a ‘de luxe’ brand, but what kinds of pictures would result from ‘de luxe’ film-making along the lines outlined in ads and other trade press publicity? A bit surprisingly, perhaps, the answer was light fare that depicted the ordinary lives of ordinary people but with a humorous touch. Essanay’s president, George Spoor, elaborated on this, explaining that Perfection Pictures would offer a ‘new type of story’ that could be described as ‘[l]ight comedy-drama, pictures which cheer rather than depress; stories that present normal life, with all the little touches of humor that creep into our daily lives.’173 According to Spoor, this responded to popular demand, which in turn was shaped by the present situation: ‘In these war times … the public is seeking to counteract the tragedy and sorrow of the great world by viewing the light and cheerful type of story on the screen and in its reading matter,’ he explained.174 A few weeks later, Kleine’s man on the road (or ‘traveling personal representative’, as World put it), Douglas H. Bergh, reiterated this assessment of audience preferences and what type of stories Perfection Pictures would offer in response, ‘The future looks very promising for this [the Perfection Pictures] brand. Refined comedy is peculiarly attractive just now, as they assist in relieving the mental tension caused in family circles by the departure of members for the various national camps.’175 If diversity through quantity had typified the K-E-S-E model, Perfection represented a shift towards a more limited focus on one type of film. Novelty was stressed (a ‘new type of story’) but also the wide appeal to normal American families, and a national community at large, as invoked by the references to ‘these war times’. Opportunism and branding considerations obviously informed this shift, but it also represented an updated way of thinking about the mass audience, not as diverse taste formations that had to be catered to in different ways and with different products, but as a homogenous group whose shared interests took priority over internal differences. It is debatable, however, how much actual film production within the former K-E-S-E group actually changed as a consequence. The emphasis on the films’ wide appeal to an American mass public was somewhat paradoxically paired with cultivation of an air of exclusivity around Perfection as a ‘quality’ brand. The idea planted was that Perfection films were of such high quality that only selected exhibitors could handle them properly. Kleine’s announcement regarding booking and release methods stated that contracts would be issued with ‘the greatest care’.176 ‘Only exhibitors of the highest standing – those who can qualify for the ability to present Perfection Pictures properly – will be granted contracts,’ he declared.177 This may sound odd from a business perspective, but echoes the idea from the earliest days of the feature era that certain exhibition contexts could ‘cheapen’ a high-quality feature, with detrimental effects on its future commercial run as well as on the producer’s or distributor’s reputation.178 Moreover, this form of restriction can be seen as a strategy for creating a form of artificial scarcity to increase the value of the product. For many products, the assumed added value stemming from scarcity would be reflected in the selling price, but there is no indication that this was the case here. Nor are there any signs that the restriction was enforced, for example through the banning of specific customers After the Feature, Part 1

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or through the establishing of some sort of general selection process. Rather, the idea was either to boost demand at the moment of the service’s inception (banking on an impulse among exhibitors to want to be part of an allegedly exclusive club) or that a situation of productive complementarity would arise, in which the linking of a ‘quality brand’ with ‘quality exhibitors’ would generate a greater sum total of symbolic ‘quality’ capital than would have emerged from them as separate entities – for the mutual benefit of both. For the ‘high grade exhibitors’179 that Perfection would consent to deal with, Kleine and his associates promised ample protection of their respective territories, a reliable, high-quality service, and the extra benefits of a massive, national publicity campaign. One ad called on exhibitors to ‘Let Your Theatre Benefit by This Saturday Evening Post Campaign’.180 A later ad, appearing on 20 October in Moving Picture World, spelled out the logic more clearly; signing up for a Perfection contract would give the exhibitor a kind of insurance: Holding a Perfection Contract … is one kind of insurance that you don’t have to die to win. … Perfection Pictures are being exploited by the most gigantic campaign of advertising and publicity ever launched on behalf of a motion picture enterprise. Perfection Pictures are being brought to the attention of every man, woman and child in the United States. … The fact that your theatre is exhibiting Perfection Pictures makes the full page advertisements in the Saturday Evening Post and other periodicals of national circulation your advertisements. … More and more people every day are looking for the Perfection trade-mark before going into the theatre. If they see it in front of your theatre they will go in. Insure your box-office the biggest run of prosperity it ever enjoyed.181

If only the motion picture business worked like this. In reality, there were no assurances, neither through marketing nor anything else. Then as now, nobody knew anything, and the branding process that is discussed here would be of little value unless audiences experienced quality when they watched a Perfection film. That said, the impulse to try to ‘insure’ exhibitors was to be expected, precisely because of the fundamental uncertainty of the motion picture business, and Kleine was not the only one who addressed exhibitors this way.182 It is likely that producer-distributors and exhibitors alike were well aware that there were no guarantees of ‘immense profits’. Rather, they were banking on the power of branding – producer-distributors in relation to exhibitors, and exhibitors in relation to moviegoers. Kleine did not use that particular word to describe the strategy (nor did anyone else, as far as I know), but in the case of Perfection Pictures, the marketing campaign clearly articulated how branding and brand power in the movie business were supposed to work. Consider this copy from an ad appearing in the Times-Picayune in New Orleans on 7 October 1917: Haven’t you always wanted to be sure of good motion picture entertainment before you entered a theatre? Now there is a way to tell. As you approach your favorite theatre look at the posters. When you see our mark – ‘Perfection Pictures’ – go in!183

This was reminiscent of an earlier phase of the movie business, during which product differentiation was predicated mainly on the brand identity of the competing film

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manufacturers, each manufacturer being associated with a particular marker of quality (the refined comedies of Vitagraph; Essanay’s Westerns; Kalem’s use of on-location shooting; the photographic quality of Pathé films, etc.). But it also seems to foreshadow the importance of brand identity in the later Hollywood studio system, and, perhaps, in a brand-based culture industry in general. In each case, the ‘sign-value’ (as distinct from use-value and exchange-value) of a brand was determined by consumer interaction with the brand and how these experiences generated difference.184 But exactly what elements of any given Perfection Picture might have generated the kind of difference that would mark and define the value of the brand? As we have seen, the idea was to combine the ‘foremost stars, leading directors and celebrated authors into one unit’ and to establish Perfection Pictures as a ‘de luxe’, ‘quality’ brand in terms of production values, standards of cinematography and story material. But none of these elements were – in themselves and in the abstract – unique to Perfection Pictures. All leading film producers aimed to use the ‘foremost stars’. In contrast, each of these ‘foremost stars’ was unique, or, in economic parlance, highly ‘asset-specific’. This made them valuable to brand-building, movie producer-distributors, since these stars’ appearances in films marketed under the brand conferred on it some of their perceived uniqueness, thereby generating brand difference. Indeed, in the 1910s and 20s, stars (and, to a lesser degree, stories) became the most important tool for turning films into heavily branded products,185 and, in extension, for branding the motion picture studios. Annoyingly for producer-distributors, however, the great asset-specificity of stars – and the fact that you could not own them – put them in an extremely advantageous position to capture rents along the value chain of the movie economy.186 In other words, once the most popular movie actors (or their agents) discovered their asset-specificity, star salaries were bound to balloon. As is well documented, this is exactly what started to happen in the 1910s, the astounding pay hikes afforded to Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford offering two emblematic cases.187 To George Kleine, the salary levels of the most well-paid stars seemed preposterous. At the same time, as we will see shortly, he was convinced that the presence of a popular star was a necessary condition for box-office success. Having quit production to concentrate on distribution resolved this contradiction, since he could try to get the manufacturers to spend liberally to attract stars, without having to do so himself.

OLD AND NEW, AND AN ATTEMPT TO REBRAND By September 1917, just before Perfection’s launch, Kleine’s distribution organisation was comprised of twenty-four distribution branches (twenty-two in the United States and two in Canada), plus the main offices in Chicago.188 At this point, the distribution organisation was renamed so that Perfection Pictures would be distributed by the ‘George Kleine System’ rather than through the ‘K-E-S-E Service’. Selig’s defection from the combine was one reason for the name change, but an ambition to enhance the sense of ‘newness’ associated with the Perfection brand might also have played into it. In fact, later on, Kleine would emphasise that a key reason for setting up Perfection Pictures was to establish a new brand that would detach the contributing manufacturers from their history as Patents Company members (this may have been After the Feature, Part 1

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an afterthought rather than a main goal from the start, given the early publicity material’s focus on ‘pioneer producers’, but still). Early in 1918, Kleine wrote to L. W. McChesney over at the Edison Co. that all of us oldtimers [sic] should welcome a new name which stands without prejudice … there is a cloud over pretty nearly all of the old Patents Company manufacturers, referring of course to the commercial value of their product. It has been demonstrated by Goldwyn and Paralta that the exhibitor has an open mind toward new product, and that it actually has a better chance than the oldtimers.189

Problematically, however, Edison and Essanay were reluctant to have their individual corporate names and identities obscured by the new brand name, which generated recurring internal squabbles about the publicity material and whether one name or logo was too big or small in comparison to another.190 Kleine was particularly irritated with Essanay’s foregrounding of its own brand at the expense of Perfection.191 Throughout the autumn of 1917, he tried to convince Spoor not to flaunt, or even use, the Essanay name, since it carried a ring of ‘onereelers [sic] and up-to-date inferiority about the old time manufacturers’ trade names’ that prevented Kleine’s salespeople from getting top prices for their product.192 For Kleine, Paramount was the model to emulate. He argued that everyone knew about Paramount, but that no one cared about exactly whose product Paramount was representing.193 The lesson to take home was that the interests of producers and distributors were very closely related, and, therefore, that cooperation and combination under one banner could be beneficial for all parties involved.194 In the end, though, in Kleine’s view, the crucial challenge was to put out box-office winners and successfully distribute and market them as such.195 From 1 October to 24 December, a new Perfection five-reel feature picture was released every Monday – i.e. thirteen films all in all, including three by Edison and ten by Essanay.196 One of these, Essanay’s Fools for Luck had been announced for release on 8 October 1917 as a K-E-S-E film, but was then conspicuously advertised as a Perfection Picture in the same trade paper the week after.197 Another Essanay offering – Efficiency Edgar’s Courtship – was originally released through K-E-S-E on 3 September 1917 but later rebranded as a Perfection Picture.198 Efficiency Edgar’s Courtship and Fools for Luck were the first two instalments in a fairly popular and financially successful series of Essanay comedies starring Taylor Holmes, which might explain why Kleine and Spoor opted to attach them to the Perfection brand. In addition to the features, the five concluding programmes of Conquest pictures (nos. eight to twelve) were also released and advertised as Perfection Pictures. No major hits emerged from the autumn 1917 slate of pictures, although the two features mentioned above generated some profits. From January 1918, the pattern of Perfection Picture releases grew increasingly inconsistent. A new Essanay five-reeler – Uneasy Money – was released on New Year’s Day.199 The other feature put out under the Perfection banner this month was a much-belated Selig five-reeler called Brown of Harvard. The Selig Polyscope Co. was in some financial trouble when production of this film began in 1917; Kleine and Spoor personally lent Selig $15,000 each to bankroll the film, which was to be the last one the company released through Kleine’s exchanges.200 Receipts for Brown of Harvard covered Kleine’s and Spoor’s loans, but the film was not

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successful enough to render any profits for Selig.201 On 2 January 1918, the first in a series of Edison-produced one-reel comedies featuring James Montgomery Flagg was released. Two more episodes in this Flagg’s ‘Girls You Know’ series were released in January, and the remaining nine from February to early June.202 The first instalment, The Screen Fan, was the most successful (and would actually circulate for many years), but by August 1918, this best earner in the series had not yet covered Edison’s production costs. Overall, the series had limited popular appeal, and the first wave of bookings was followed by a series of cancellations. As Kleine noted: The test of salesmanship is the progression of earnings by a subject issued in series. If it meets the fancy of the populace, the later releases stand up well compared with the earlier. If they miss the grip the newer issues show a decided falling off.203

In spite of this potential risk, two other series paralleled the release of the Flagg comedies over the first half of 1918. One consisted of reissues of Essanay ‘Broncho Billy’ one-reelers originally released in 1913 and 1914 (all in all, Perfection reissued twenty of these subjects). The other was a series of travelogues produced by the Lincoln & Parker Company. Neither these nor the three new Essanay five-reelers (The Ruggles of Red Gap, The Curse of Iku and A Pair of Sixes) released in March and April were particularly successful.204

THE SUPERFEATURE STRATEGY AND DISCOVERY OF KURTOCRACY The modification of Perfection Pictures’ release schedule from 1917 to 1918 was the result of a deliberate change of policy that stipulated that weekly feature releases would be abandoned from January 1918. In turn, this new strategy was necessitated by the increasing unprofitability of the weekly releases, and hence of the Perfection Pictures operation as a whole. This is evident from the figures Kleine supplied to McChesney at Edison, Inc. in late 1917 and early 1918, in correspondence preserved in the George Kleine Papers. According to Kleine, his national distribution organisation had handled almost 21,000 reels of film and made 5,360 shipments the week ending 20 October 1917.205 His average weekly costs for running an operation of this size (including home-office expenses but excluding special ad campaigns), based on five weeks’ figures, were just over $15,000.206 Kleine’s average weekly share of gross receipts during the same period amounted to just under $12,700.207 Expressing the deficit in another way, Kleine’s average cost per shipment was $2.81, while his average share of income per shipment was $2.37, meaning that he lost on average $0.44 every time he shipped a Perfection motion picture to a customer.208 He could only draw one conclusion: ‘Either Superfeatures will have to increase the amount of our general average per shipment, or we will have to close up and go fishing.’209 His reference to ‘Superfeatures’ indicates what the new strategy prescribed: halt the weekly five-reel releases and focus on the exploitation of more infrequent but bigger and better feature films that potentially have much higher box-office value than the average five-reel feature. This brought Kleine’s exploits on the feature film market full circle, from the marketing of big, spectacular roadshow attractions like Quo Vadis? in After the Feature, Part 1

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1912–14, through the inauguration of the increasingly programme-like feature services of Kleine-Edison, K-E-S-E and Perfection Pictures, and back to a more limited focus on the occasional ‘superfeature’. Also, with this, Kleine’s long-standing criticism of programme distribution became more pointed, and more in accord with his actions. For instance, he suggested that running a successful distribution operation was more about the intelligent placement of films in the right venues at the right time and under the most favourable terms available, and less about a ‘machine method of booking films, fifty-two in a year at an average price that constantly approaches the minimum’.210 In terms of the larger story of this chapter, which pins down how Kleine struggled to figure out how the new motion picture business worked and exactly how he should adapt, the policy shift was bolstered by an important discovery that adds a final piece to our understanding of this process, and the transformation of the film industry in general. Simply put, Kleine acted on the insight that only a few select pictures could muster truly substantial profits, and that anyone’s long-term success and viability in the movie business hinged on coming up with such hits. In economics parlance, Kleine had discovered that the movie economy was transforming into a kurtocracy – that is, an economy dominated ‘by a handful of extraordinary movies and artists that account for nearly all the industry’s impact and revenue’, as one economist put it much later.211 As usual, the process of discovery was gradual, also because the process itself was gradual. Already in April 1916, Kleine had acknowledged that profits mostly stemmed from ‘big’ productions: ‘I am convinced that at the present time there is no profit for the manufacturer in films of good medium quality. It takes the exceptional film to draw the public.’212 A similar idea appeared in an October 1917 letter: ‘I sometimes think that the only chances for profits is the occasional big feature released as a special at high prices, which may help the regular releases.’213 Five months later, his description of the movie economy as a kurtocracy was more precise: ‘Film speculations may produce big profits but there is a greater likelihood of heavy losses and one success will have to carry a bunch of failures.’214 From the maturation of these insights, Kleine drew several conclusions about the producer-distributor operation he was heading. One of these we have already mentioned: focus the production policy as well as the release method on the exploitation of ‘superfeatures’. Another implication was that K-E-S-E’s unprofitability (figures made available to Kleine in January 1918 confirmed that ‘the deficit [for 1917 was] shocking’215) was not due to inept distribution methods, but to the lack of hits. In turn, these two things combined led Kleine to try to encourage his manufacturers to spend big in order to deliver the ‘punch’. This led to debates between Kleine and the manufacturers that were heated, borderline hostile even. Kleine’s basic position was that his distribution system was highly efficient compared to any other in the business, and that it was therefore unfair that he should have to bear the burden of box-office failures. Meanwhile, he went on to argue, We have gone along for eighteen months without a first class star, male or female, or a single big box-office attraction. The nearest approach was Viola Dana in the beginning, and Shirley Mason later; add to this the sporadic success of Bryant Washburn and the whole story has been told.216

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At this point in mid-February, business had hit rock bottom in Kleine’s estimation (although he added that one could never be sure), as he was losing over $3,000 weekly (the operating costs were about $11,000 but the income only about $8,000). He had already decided to close his branch offices in Washington, DC, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and New Orleans, but did not rule out the possibility that additional branch closures would have to follow.217 The ‘superfeature’ policy was a particularly tough sell to the Edison Co. Again, Kleine emphasised that the problem was not marketing and distribution methods, but the lack of ‘punch’: ‘Not that we want to boast,’ Kleine wrote to McChesney in December 1917, but it is really a fact that for two years we have been selling films which met with little commercial respect, that is to say, box-office attention. We have been told that our pictures are good, our methods commendable … but our pictures did not draw at the box office. … [W]e cannot object if [an exhibitor] does not give our films a heavy run if they lack the punch. Give us the punch and we will sell the film.218

The immediate context was a dispute over terms for Kleine’s distribution of Edison’s Conquest pictures, which culminated a week later with an eight-page letter from Kleine to McChesney, in which he tried to contrast what he perceived to be Edison’s outdated view on the motion picture business and the new realities of said industry: If you and the powers behind you realize that present day conditions will not support the theory that profits are in proportion to a mass of negative footage, but are rather dependent upon the single big issue with the big box office punch you are going to cash in. When that happens I will celebrate the event by shipping you some of that reserved stock that I have stored in my home. … Regard box office quality rather than footage quantity. Consider those competing releases that are making good. Find out, if possible, what particular factor to these releases is vital, then go ahead and do likewise.219

A month later, Kleine’s advice to the motion picture division at Edison, Inc. with respect to their next production was more concise: ‘Make it as big as possible and get a woman star with boxoffice [sic] value if you can.’220 This makes clear what two factors Kleine believed most likely accounted for that elusive quality of the ‘punch’: popular stars and ‘bigness’. As this word [punch] lacks length, breadth and thickness we can neither weigh it, gauge it nor measure it. So far as the question can be answered at all I suppose that the only anchor is a star of box office magnitude. It is frequently puzzling to account for the financial success of a film that is panned by all the critics unless it is because of the presence of Maxine Elliott (with whom no manufacturer wants to repeat), Clara Kimball Young and others of like magnitude. Without the star there is, to my mind, no assurance of success but on the contrary the chances are heavily against the films.221

Later research shows that not even a magnificent star is (or was) an ‘assurance of success’, but the same research also strongly suggests that Kleine was right that films After the Feature, Part 1

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without a star were considerably less likely to achieve smash-hit status. Put simply, movies that feature popular stars are ‘more profitable and less risky than other movies’.222 They are better at establishing a revenue ‘floor’, which makes complete box-office disaster less likely, and they have higher ‘probability mass’ in the upper parts of the distribution. Aside from a star (preferably a female one), the ‘next best bet’, according to Kleine, was ‘the elaborately treated subject with broad exploitation’.223 Kleine’s advice to Edison abounds with similar statements, all emphasising the ‘bigness’ in terms of both production value and exploitation methods. For example, he noted, ‘Profits are … dependent upon the single big issue with the big box office punch.’224 Similarly, ‘There is one element in a film that seems to react promptly and that is bigness in treatment. … There seems also to be a dependable reflex at the box office if the film is handled in a big way by the exhibitor and distributor, provided the film has the meat.’225 But the production policy Kleine was advocating cost money. Edison aimed at an average negative cost per feature film ‘considerably less than $10,000’, so when Kleine informed them in the summer of 1917 that Marie Doro was available at $1,500 per week, the cost was deemed prohibitive.226 (To give some perspective to these figures, the budget for an Artcraft feature starring Mary Pickford was $165,000–$170,000 in 1915 and 1916. The average negative cost of a ‘programme feature’ in 1917 was estimated at roughly $18,000 in one calculation and over $41,000 in another, but regardless of which was closer to the truth, the average production cost was not the most significant indicator to grasp a business that was increasingly dominated by outliers. 227) McChesney conceded that she would most likely be worth the salary, as a Doro vehicle might earn more than the average five-reel feature, but he also noted that this was open to debate, as they were, in fact, ‘in competition with the very much bigger stars which the Paramount people are exploiting’.228 Accordingly, Edison stuck to a conservative line: We have tried to make ourselves believe that a satisfactory picture, as a picture, with a capable cast and a good story, costing comparatively little, is a safer and saner business proposition than the picture costing considerable more and featuring a well-known star in a story which may or may not make a good film, as a film. Mr. Wilson’s [Edison’s vice president and general manager] general feeling, I believe, is that our present policy of conservatism probably is the policy which most becomes a generally conservative organization like ours. Perhaps we lack the courage to gamble big money for bigger returns – in fact, I better make that as a statement instead of qualifying it with the use of the word ‘perhaps’.229

And that was basically that, in spite of Kleine’s assurances that ‘[t]he same amount of money [as invested in programme releases] invested in big attractions will certainly lessen the risk of loss and increase chances of profits.’230 Kleine’s and Edison’s respective views may seem contradictory, but in theory, between them, they held the solution to the challenge all motion picture producers and distributors faced – finding a viable business strategy under conditions of fundamental uncertainty and increasingly kurtotic revenue distributions. The problem with Edison’s strategy was that it was highly unlikely that any of the low-budget programme features they churned out would turn out to be among the select few films of the season that

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generated truly substantial profits. The problem with Kleine’s position, if the citation above is taken at face value, was that the strategy was too vulnerable. Contrary to what Kleine seemed to suggest, if Edison had spent, say, $100,000 on one prestige picture instead of $10,000 each on ten programme features, this would have raised rather than alleviated the risk. Or rather, the ramifications of a flop would have been so much worse. One high-profile fiasco would threaten to put them out of business. Kleine knew this, but may have exaggerated or simplified the matter in order to intimate clearly to the Edison Co. why it was necessary to eliminate the weekly programme service and channel the resources to ‘superfeatures’. We know now that the solution was to start thinking about the annual production schedule as a kind of investment portfolio.231 A sensibly balanced portfolio that included a diverse range of films of different type, cost and risk profile would neither eliminate uncertainty in the motion picture business, nor the kurtotic nature of the revenue distribution, but it turned out to be a model that increased chances of longterm profitability and was less vulnerable to occasional flops. What the Hollywood studios eventually managed to do was come up with annual production portfolios that yielded relatively steady returns from the mid-range features and B-films, but that also made room for the production of ‘superspecials’ that had a chance to hit big (although only a handful produced in any given season actually did).232 As Richard Maltby points out, this means that the production economies of ‘classical Hollywood’ were actually much more similar to the post-war era’s blockbuster-oriented movie economy than is sometimes assumed.233 We could add that first signs were evident already in the early feature era, as the ‘quality race’ took off – this is, indeed, exactly what this chapter’s detailed account of Kleine’s career in the second half of the 1910s tells us. At the same time, we should not overemphasise the linearity of this process, or trick ourselves into thinking that the motion picture economy of 1918 was identical to that of classical Hollywood or of the present day. For instance, the forms of product diversity that Kleine tried to build into his various distribution services after 1915 (K-E-S-E and Perfection Pictures) did not only – or even primarily – represent a ‘portfolio strategy’. Rather, they reflected the reality of film exhibition at the time, particularly the emerging conventions of the ‘balanced programme’, which was supposed to include a big feature, but also a mixture of short films of various fiction and non-fiction genres.234 With that said, and without losing sight of the specificity of the historical situation, many of the problems that Kleine faced were nevertheless strikingly similar to the ones producer-distributors after him would also encounter. Moreover, then as well as later, the long-term viability for producer-distributors at least partly hinged on adherence to a portfolio strategy. A strategy along those lines, however, was only feasible for those who had access to considerable capital – enough to sustain annual large-scale serial production of individually differentiated pictures, a few of which would have to be very expensive to complete. In addition, to maximise the return of the portfolio, a great deal of coordination along the chain of production, distribution and exhibition was called for. This, too, cost a lot of money. The implication of this for the chapter’s larger argument is that when Kleine was badgering Edison with recommendations to spend liberally on female stars and prestige productions, he was merely touching the tip of the iceberg. What was needed was not only an escalation strategy when it came to production, but a massive expansion on all fronts. As we have seen, Kleine had himself exited the After the Feature, Part 1

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production branch because he was unwilling to assume the risks of big-budget ventures, and he was even more unwilling to finance an extremely costly move towards vertical integration. Ironically, this was due to his own conservative business ideology – precisely the flaw for which he so strongly criticised the Edison Co. In fact, Kleine’s conservatism, more than anything else, accounts for his troublesome transition into the new film industry. This is the basic lesson of Kleine’s campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’, which we will return to in the next chapter.

A ‘FREAK PICTURE’ AND THEN FINALLY A HIT (THAT BRINGS EDISON OUT OF THE MOVIE BUSINESS) In spite of the dissent within the organisation, there was an attempt during the first half of 1918 to amass an attractive collection of ‘superfeatures’ under the Perfection Pictures banner. One of the more conspicuous releases was Essanay’s Men Who Have Made Love to Me, based on the work of controversial and openly bisexual author Mary MacLane, starring the author herself, who also wrote the screenplay.235 This film was labelled a ‘superfeature’ and was the subject of a special release. Kleine organised a sneak preview in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall and noted that the picture as well as MacLane were mercilessly panned in the press. Nevertheless, there were hopes of some commercial success. ‘It is a freak picture that may make good at the boxoffice [sic],’ Kleine intimated.236 By early March, he reported that the MacLane picture was doing good business.237 To expand the supply of ‘superfeatures’, Kleine included two KleineCines reissues, Quo Vadis? and Antony and Cleopatra, in the category,238 and also looked to sources beyond the old K-E-S-E manufacturers. This led to the importation of a four-reel Cines war film titled Behind the Lines in Italy and to a deal with Ivan Film Productions, Inc. regarding distribution rights for two features: The Unchastened Woman and Conquered Hearts.239 Behind the Lines in Italy turned out to be a losing venture, amassing a measly $1,264.24 (of which 60 per cent was funnelled back to Cines), against a cost of marketing and distribution of over $10,000.240 The two films made by Ivan Film Productions, Inc. were supposed to launch what Kleine referred to as a ‘new brand of superfeatures, which will be called The Rialto of exceptional merit’.241 Whatever merit these films had, the audience did not seem to have picked up on it. The Unchastened Woman was the more successful of the two, but Ivan’s share of the receipts only barely covered the production costs, whereas it is questionable whether Kleine’s 30 per cent distribution covered the actual distribution costs. Conquered Hearts was a losing proposition. Even worse for Kleine, he had agreed to advance the cost of positive prints, a total sum of almost $23,000 for the pair, of which only about $18,000 had been reimbursed by October 1919, at which point the commercial value of these films had been exhausted.242 These were dismal results for the ‘superfeature’ strategy, but there was a relatively happy end to the K-E-S-E/Perfection Pictures story, as a major hit finally emerged in the form of The Unbeliever, based on Mary Raymond Shipman’s novel Three Things and one of the last productions the Edison Co. ever made.243 This was a war film produced in cooperation with the US Marine Corps. It deals with a young, arrogant aristocrat who is sent off to war, during which he has several life and personality-transforming

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experiences, including a religious awakening, illustrated by a superimposed Jesus traversing the battlefield. The film also features Erich von Stroheim as a ruthless German officer, prone to tormenting and killing women and children. There were some requests that these scenes be omitted, but to no avail.244 Another dispute concerned an intertitle with the message ‘Love your enemy’, which was part of the original version but later cut out, so that no one would doubt the patriotism of the movie.245 The Unbeliever has received some scholarly attention,246 and here I will just add to these accounts a brief chronicling of the impact of this film on Kleine’s career and the increasingly loosely organised Perfection group. The most crucial outcome was that The Unbeliever became the catalyst for Kleine to buy Edison out of the motion picture business. Negotiations over this started in March, a month after the film had premiered on 11 February 1918 at the Rivoli in New York City, managed by showman Samuel L. ‘Roxy’ Rothafel.247 Roxy paid a $1,000 rental fee, but he received the same amount in return as payment for re-editing the film for this particular engagement. The re-editing was not done, as Ross Melnick writes, ‘at the request of Kleine’.248 On the contrary, Kleine argued that decreasing the length might ‘cheapen’ the film.249 He also objected to the idea of using live US Marines for the prologue, again for fear that this would ‘cheapen’ a film that he was convinced had ‘exceptional merit’.250 But it was Edison’s McChesney who dealt with Roxy, and he went ahead in spite of Kleine’s protests. The outcome was fortunate – the Rivoli premiere was a great success, and the featuring of real-life US Marines as part of the programme was repeated for some of the later screenings.251 Demand for The Unbeliever boomed, which allowed Kleine to frequently collect a flat rental fee and a percentage cut of the receipts.252 The film was embarking on a profitable run, then, in spite of some problems getting into good firstrun theatres, stonewalled by long-term ‘contracts between theatres and companies with prominent stars, such as Paramount, Artcraft, Select and Goldwyn’.253 At this

Cover of promotional folder for The Unbeliever, 1918. Copy in the George Kleine Collection in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division

After the Feature, Part 1

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point, Kleine must have decided to try to buy the film from Edison, and though his statements about stonewalling were probably not inaccurate, he may have emphasised this factor in order to exact a better price. On 19 March, Kleine received an estimate of Edison’s total investment in The Unbeliever up to that point, a total of about $48,000, including the negative cost (about $32,000) as well as prints and advertising, with an additional $3,000 incoming for new posters.254 The same day, Kleine cabled McChesney at Edison to offer $50,000 for the negative plus the positive prints and paper he presently had on hand.255 McChesney responded that he had received the ‘rather startling telegram’. They were not satisfied merely to break even, but were looking to make a profit that would cover some of the losses incurred by less successful pictures. Either way, McChesney would have to take the issue up with Carl Wilson, vice president and general manager of Edison, Inc., who was authorised to make a decision but was presently out of town. McChesney added that he could probably get Wilson on board if Kleine offered $75,000, and asked Kleine to wire authorisation to pass an offer along those lines on to Wilson.256 Kleine replied that the film would have to generate $110,000 in gross income to justify McChesney’s counter-offer. He went on to repeat how difficult it was to break into the key first-run theatres, stressing that he would have to handle the film in unusual ways and with great risk ‘to break in’ and to ‘put it over’.257 On 23 March, Carl Wilson entered into the negotiations. His message to Kleine was that he did not consider the $50,000 offer ‘fair or reasonable’. He did, however, suggest that The Unbeliever might constitute the ‘basis’ for a transfer of ‘our [Edison’s] entire rights in all of our pictures which you are now handling’.258 Kleine replied that the offer was ‘interesting’, although he was afraid he would probably not be able to meet the price without ‘[digging] into [his] private fortune’. Even so, he added, ‘It cannot harm either of us if McChesney will do a little figuring, etc.’259 Wilson got back to Kleine on 30 March 1918. He had tried to consult Charles Edison (Thomas A. Edison’s son and at this stage seemingly involved in his father’s business as a kind of senior consultant without official title), but Charles had wired back that he was ‘[t]oo delightfully engaged in marrying Carolyn Hawkins to answer wire about Kleine today.’260 With the reservation that Edison would have to approve any kind of deal in the end, Wilson floated the figure of $250,000 for all rights to The Unbeliever as well as all other Edison pictures that Kleine had handled, plus some unreleased films. According to what Wilson argued was a conservative estimate, income from The Unbeliever alone would give Kleine his money back within a year.261 Kleine replied a few days later that the price was most likely too high for him, especially in light of the uncertainty of any estimates of future income: ‘History has demonstrated repeatedly how unsafe all prophesies are in this business.’262 He also had doubts about the earning power of the other pictures.263 Two weeks passed, without much progress, at which point Wilson wrote to Kleine, stating that he was anxious to ‘clear up’ Edison’s present situation with regard to the motion picture business. Wilson made the case that a deal involved advantages for both parties, the most obvious one for Kleine being the acquisition of The Unbeliever, although he stood a good chance of making a profit from the other films, too. For Edison, Inc., a deal would relieve them of various kinds of ‘detail work’. Wilson further divided the films into classes, estimated their future commercial value and arrived at

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the conclusion that the whole group was worth in excess of $300,000. Based on this, Wilson made the following offer: ‘$200,000 is the price at which we will sell these prospective earnings right now.’264 On 18 April, Kleine confirmed that he had received the offer, and that his people were presently crunching the numbers.265 Meanwhile, L. W. McChesney drafted a letter sent to Kleine on 29 April, in which the offer was outlined in further detail, including exactly what pictures and which rights were included (world rights in most but not all cases). After clearing up these and other similar matters, McChesney’s letter urged Kleine to get back to them as soon as possible to confirm whether he was still interested in proceeding with the agreement. ‘I needn’t tell you again that we want to get out of the motion picture field.’266 Kleine expressed further doubts (genuine or not),267 but within a couple of weeks, the Edison executives’ wish to get out of the movie business would be granted. On 4 May 1918, Kleine was on his way to New York City where a meeting would take place. There are no records of exactly how this meeting unfolded, but the George Kleine Papers contain a memo of an agreement dated 10 May 1918 and a signed contract dated 25 May 1918.268 Evidently, Kleine accepted Wilson’s offer, agreeing to pay $75,000 for The Unbeliever (Edison’s total investment in the film to this point, plus a $20,000 profit for Edison) and $125,000 for the rest of the picture rights included in the deal.269 By 6 June 1918, Kleine had fifty prints of The Unbeliever in circulation.270 By 7 August, income from the film covered all of Kleine’s costs, and on the same day, Edison, Inc. received his final payment for the rights to the film, a month earlier than the agreement called for.271 Kleine expressed satisfaction that he had paid with receipts from the film rather than from his own private funds, as had often been the case recently.272 Up to 17 August, Kleine’s gross collections were about $186,000, or just over $126,000 in income after subtraction of the distribution fee. ‘Gross contracts are well over $200,000 and business coming in steadily,’ Kleine reported to Edison, Inc.273 McChesney replied that he was almost as happy as Kleine about these figures; Edison and Kleine had made a good, mutually beneficial deal, although in hindsight it was clear that Edison should have taken a gamble.274 By 21 November 1918, a mere $5,000 remained on the sum Kleine had agreed to pay to Edison for all the rights covered in the agreement of 25 May.275 Final payment reached Edison before Thanksgiving, and McChesney concluded that they had all made good thanks to The Unbeliever.276 With this, Edison, Inc. exited the motion picture business.277 Essanay gradually withdrew from the motion picture business from 1919. Kleine carried on as distributor for Perfection Pictures for a while, but in December 1918, Wid’s daily reported that Perfection Pictures would henceforth be put out through General Film’s exchanges.278 Prints were transferred from Kleine’s exchanges to the General Film branches, and he also placed a ‘skeleton organization’ consisting of a branch manager and a bookkeeper in each of these offices.279 GFC personnel would handle the physical distribution, so other employees became redundant (in the event they would get their hands on a ‘strong feature’, he would place salesmen on the road for that particular release).280 In this way, Kleine argued, he had managed to economise, yet maintain an efficient distribution organisation.281 For all practical purposes, however – especially since General Film was liquidated a few months later – this put an end to a fifteen-year period throughout all of which Kleine had been at the head of one national motion picture distribution network or another.282 After the Feature, Part 1

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AFTERMATH After the dismantling of Kleine’s distribution organisation, he did not so much withdraw from the commercial film industry as decide to focus on occasional projects, operating under the new trade name Syndicate Superfeatures. This was supposed to grow into a ‘loose’ syndicate of independent film men (Kleine tried to bring some of his old friends in the business – for example, Jacques Berst, George Spoor and Ricord Gradwell – into the operation), and function as a ‘feature buying concern’.283 Lacking his own rental exchanges, he made an attempt to establish a national network of independent exchanges. Each exchange would function as a kind of franchise unit within the network, but they would exercise cooperative buying and other forms of collaboration. Syndicate Superfeatures would function as a kind of clearing house for independent production that could be distributed to and through the exchanges. The plan was outlined and made public in an ad entitled ‘Evolution’, published in the trade press in June 1919, in which Kleine solicited applications from independent exchanges.284 Neither the film production that took place through Syndicate Superfeatures nor the ‘Evolution’ plan met with success. Syndicate Superfeatures’ first project was to bankroll a biopic about Helen Keller in 1919, the film to include an appearance of the famous deaf-blind herself. Kleine loaned $49,000 to the Helen Keller Film Corporation,285 but the resulting film, titled deliverance, flopped. By March 1922, Kleine had invested $60,000 in the film (total cost of production and exploitation at Cover of promotional folder for Deliverance, 1919. Copy in the George Kleine Collection in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division

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this point was over $200,000), which represented a pure loss, as the film’s meagre earnings did not even cover its share of distribution costs.286 Parallel to working with the ill-fated Helen Keller film, Kleine joined forces with the importer/exporter firm of Bech, Van Siclen & Co. to produce a new motion picture serial to be called The Hope diamond Mystery.287 For the purpose of this particular co-production, Kleine set up yet another business unit, Kosmik Films, Inc.288 The production team worked out of Los Angeles under direction of L. C. Wheeler. In spite of promising reports from LA in the spring of 1920, and assurances from several sources that there was a very good market for film serials, The Hope diamond Mystery was another spectacular flop. By December 1922, Kleine’s share of the losses amounted to roughly $43,000.289 Meanwhile, the ‘Evolution’ plan for a nationwide network of independent exchanges had not come to full fruition. The ad had resulted in a number of applications, but judging by a dossier on the applicants that Kleine put together, he deemed most of them to be disorganised, unserious or run by crooks.290 He did collaborate with a few exchanges, mostly for the purpose of distributing his own back catalogue of films, but these experiences were discouraging. Many exchanges routinely failed to submit proper reports, and income he was owed was rarely remitted according to contractual agreements.

CONCLUSION From his stint as a producer in 1914–16 through his managing of a large production-distribution outfit and up to his semi-exit from mainstream commercial cinema, Kleine had learned from first-hand experience how the motion picture business was transformed following the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature film. He had discovered the impossibility of safe prediction in the movie economy (‘fundamental uncertainty’, ‘nobody knows anything’, the ‘Goldman rule’); the extreme variance between the greatest hits and the most disastrous flops (‘wild uncertainty’); and how a few immensely popular hits increasingly generated most of the revenues that the business as a whole as well as individual firms relied on for their subsistence (the gradual shift from mediocracy to ‘kurtocracy’). The practices and strategies that this translated into when it came to the managing of K-E-S-E and Perfection Pictures were often to the point – interlocking the branches of production and distribution; offering a large and varied output; and coming up with a well-crafted branding strategy that struck a sensible balance between quantity and quality, between standardisation and differentiation, between predictability of service and the uniqueness of each product – all of these things made perfect sense. In a way, K-E-S-E and Perfection Pictures did everything right, except for the most important: competing through product innovation. This was not because Kleine and his associates did not like innovation, but because they did not like to spend very much money on it. The roots of the predicament ran deep. There were two problems: (a) people wanted a continuous flow of new motion pictures, more or less on an everyday basis (as discussed in Chapter 1); and (b) people had come to assume that film quality was at least partly predicated on high production values (an effect of the breakthrough of the feature, as discussed in Chapter 2). These were film cultural norms and mores that had been After the Feature, Part 1

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learned, and could therefore potentially be unlearned, but in the meantime, those who spent the most had the best chance of survival. As a result, American cinema after 1915 came to be increasingly defined by market concentration and a pseudo-oligopolistic industry structure, culminating in the major Hollywood studios’ dominant role. It would be convenient to think that this was the result of the sinister colluding and conniving of greedy businessmen, but the greater problem was that the increasingly deeply ingrained association between film quality and big budgets created an exceptionally efficient barrier to entry. As this chapter has explored from the perspective of Kleine’s career, for those without access to huge amounts of capital, it was very difficult to compete, both because the risks of one-off production necessitated mass production capacities and because the infrastructures of production, distribution and exhibition that were needed to capture the profits once a hit emerged were also incredibly expensive. For most people, this restriction was impossible to bypass. In Kleine’s case, however, it was just as much self-imposed restrictions that account for his marginalisation in American commercial cinema over the second half of the 1910s. More specifically, his idealisation of a conservative business ideal – the topic of the next chapter – holds a key to understanding both the downturn of Kleine’s career in this period and the transformation of American cinema in the era of early Hollywood.

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4 After the Feature, Part 2: George Kleine’s Conservatism and the American Motion Picture Industry’s Economy of ‘Recklessness’

In the previous chapter, we explored how the motion picture business in the second half of the 1910s began to change into a winner-takes-all economy. This chapter follows the path to kurtocracy further, by shifting focus away from Kleine’s active work as a producer and distributor to his role as a public figure. More specifically, the chapter will address how Kleine’s self-identification as a conservative businessman came to clash with the ways the film industry was developing, and how this manifested itself in his campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’, culminating in September and October 1918. Kleine’s struggles to adapt to changing conditions demonstrate the necessity of coming up with films that had the right ‘punch’. Unfortunately, this search was essentially blind. Even more troubling, most of the costs associated with making films were sunk costs, so once it was discovered whether a film had the ‘punch’ or not, it was already too late. The futility of prediction, and the industry’s increasing reliance on the profits generated by a few hits, made failure integral to the movie economy. Producers were forced to experiment to maximise their chances of coming up with a winner, and by necessity, most of these experiments would end in financial failure. In this way, the transformation of the movie business into a kurtocracy gave rise to patterns of dominance (at any given moment, there would only be a few happy winners) and diversity (by creating an incentive to experiment and by attracting people to the field). For George Kleine, however, integral failure translated into ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’, and accordingly, he launched a public campaign against precisely these two issues in 1917–19. The chapter analyses this campaign, and how Kleine’s conservative business ideals collided with an emerging economy of ‘recklessness’, kindled by an unprecedented influx of outside capital into the motion picture business. In Kleine’s view, Wall Street money turned the movies into a bubble economy, but as the chapter will show, in addition to financing vertical integration and making mass production feasible, outside capital also lowered the cost of product innovation in Hollywood, which made the emerging Hollywood firms even more competitive. In addition, it became possible to funnel ever-greater sums of money into the production of motion pictures, which acted as a much more efficient, although not insurmountable, barrier to entry than patent protection had ever done. That said, the need for innovation to satisfy audiences’ demand for novelty – established since the earliest days of cinema – made it, if not necessary, then at least useful to provide room for alternative aesthetics and modes of production. After the Feature, Part 2

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KLEINE’S CAMPAIGN AGAINST ‘WASTE’ AND ‘OVERPRODUCTION’: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT Kleine’s earliest articulations (as far as I have been able to trace) on the topic of ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’ date back to 1914, and a letter to Caryl B. Storrs, the author of a broadside against the movies published in the Minneapolis Tribune on 18 October. Kleine defended the motion picture, arguing that a few points of possibly warranted critique did not validate a wholesale condemnation. He emphasised the educational and artistic potential of the medium and the recent progress along these lines. Interestingly, Kleine not only contrasted these values with ‘commercialism’, but also argued that most of the problems that did in fact exist in the motion picture business were attributable to the latter: The progress of the art has been necessarily hedged about by commercialism to which many of its faults may be attributed. The expense of production has increased steadily, and this had lead [sic] most manufacturers into the production of quantity, frequently at the sacrifice of quality. The profits derived from production have been much exaggerated in the press. … A motion picture should be, and frequently is, a work of art, but haste and financial pressure are not conducive to the production of the best works.1

This foreshadowed a motif that would become crucial in Kleine’s later attack on the movie business: the exaggeration of profits. Also, it contained an analysis of production costs that to some degree ran counter to what was actually happening in the early feature era. If the theory of a quality race is correct, producer-distributors intentionally and strategically boosted production budgets in order to reap the disproportionally big returns from expensive quality films.2 In other words, costs were rising because producers made deliberate choices to spend more money, in order to raise the quality of the product. This captures what was later argued to be a ‘bedrock property’ of the ‘creative industries’, including cinema: quality choice (endogenous fixed costs).3 Kleine, however, perceived the steady increase of the ‘expense of production’ as an exogenous force that pressured producers to churn out more and more feet of film in the hope of recuperating these rising costs – as if it was the quantity of footage that determined profits (which, in his defence, had actually been more or less the case roughly up to this point). Arguably, some firms were involved in a ‘quality race’, some in a ‘quantity race’ along the lines Kleine outlined, and some in both. In fact, with the ongoing transformation of the film business into a winner-takes-all economy, it was difficult – and to some extent irrelevant – to contrast ‘quality’ with ‘quantity’. Meanwhile, Kleine’s rhetoric changed. By February 1915, he acknowledged that producers decided the cost level, but now argued that many of them were simply making stupid decisions: ‘they are spending money foolishly in the producing end and not getting returns in proportion to the outlay. How they are going to exist I don’t know.’4 In Kleine’s view, there was overspending as well as overproduction. By mid-1915, multi-reel features had become an increasingly important commodity in the motion picture business. There was great activity in this expanding field, with many new firms entering the market, and the established firms channelling more and more resources into the feature field. Based on this, Kleine predicted that the supply of features would

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soon outstrip the demand for them.5 He wrote that feature production had become ‘too mechanical’,6 and that ‘[t]he film business in this country is in an unsettled state owing to over-production, and my opinion is that most of the film companies are either working at a loss or making no profits.’7 This was the third time on that particular day in February 1916 that Kleine had included a variation on the theme of overproduction when dictating a letter, and he made similar statements now and again later that year, including this one: ‘Within the past year there has been a great overproduction of feature films principally 5,000 feet in length, and to such an extent that few, if any, of the feature companies are making profits.’8 Kleine had potential allies in the so-called Better Films Movement,9 with its persistent calls for fewer but better films, and there were also critics of the programme method of film distribution – for example, Wid Gunning, founder and editor of the trade publication Wid’s daily (later The Film daily), who at one point floated the ‘radical but possible’ idea that motion picture producers should cease all feature film production for three months and allow exhibitors to pick and choose from the best of their extant releases on an open market.10 But overall, few people in the mainstream of the commercial motion picture business seem to have cared enough to either dissent from or agree with Kleine’s views. The circumstances changed drastically when the United States entered World War I in April 1917. Given the general call for frugality in a time of war, Kleine’s prospects for a production stop were probably improved compared to Gunning’s. This advantage, however, was most likely offset by Kleine’s tendency to place himself in opposition to much of the rest of the organised, commercial film industry. This phase in Kleine’s career has been documented in Leslie Midkiff DeBauche’s book about the movies and World War I. DeBauche describes Kleine as a ‘gadfly’ to the motion picture industry around this time, an adamant critic of the way its mainstream was developing, and with little or no respect left for its leading representatives.11 The clearest illustration of this is Kleine’s antagonism towards the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI). NAMPI began operations in August 1916 with William A. Brady as president,12 succeeding a previous trade association known as the Motion Picture Board of Trade, which had dissolved a few months earlier.13 NAMPI’s goal was to act as a unifying force by gathering all interests from every branch of the business in one inclusive trade organisation and lobby group, but Kleine never recognised NAMPI as a legitimate representative for the industry. He was invited to the 6 September 1916 meeting where elections of officers would take place,14 but he neither participated nor replied to the invitation. He remained a non-member in spite of several attempts to get him to join NAMPI throughout the autumn of 1916.15 Later on, in February 1917, when NAMPI’s executive secretary tried to shame him into joining by indicating that he was not doing ‘his share’, Kleine again rejected the association, arguing it was merely the platform for a few men to satisfy their appetite for self-promotion.16 NAMPI’s role was to impress the world with the enormous significance and value of the motion picture industry – not least by making the US government discover the ‘great power’ of the screen.17 In contrast, Kleine’s convictions about the feeble state of the motion picture industry – due to waste, overproduction and chronic unprofitability – were growing stronger by the minute. What he saw as the established fact of an oversupply of features matched his decision in late 1917 to discontinue programme After the Feature, Part 2

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distribution, which he saw as a soon-to-be obsolete practice. In Kleine’s view, a ‘standing order for periodical issues of features’ only made sense for exhibitors in times of inadequate supply.18 ‘With the present overproduction of features a standing order contract is a detriment rather than a benefit, as it keeps out many desirable features,’ he wrote to an Indianapolis exhibitor in January 1918.19 According to this theory, ‘overproduction’ was not necessarily a problem for exhibitors, provided they were free to book their pictures on an open market. For producers and distributors, however, ‘overproduction’ in Kleine’s view spelled lower prices and difficulties in finding a market at all for certain films: Owing to various causes, chief among them overproduction to an extent where there is no possible market for many of the films that have been made, the income of all producers and distributors has been reduced to such an extent that every added charge becomes a burden.20

The only remedy – for the individual firm and the industry as a whole – was to reduce the quantity of the output.21 Consequently, Kleine was wary about the ongoing ‘movements’ in the industry, especially the expansion and branching out (from exhibition into production) of First National in April 1918: There is no economy in the industry as a whole in a transfer of business operations and expenses, or in increasing them. In all these movements we do not eliminate waste but merely change the individuals or concerns that are operating, which is inadequate. … Economy must come out of elimination of expense and not by additions.22

KLEINE GOES PUBLIC: THE OPEN LETTER AND THE TRADE PRESS DEBATE In autumn 1918, Kleine made an attempt to get the US government to force the rest of the motion picture industry to join his cause. He wanted to give the impression that the primary concern was not the film industry in itself, but the well-being of the country. At a time of war, when the conservation of men and material was a societal priority, the film industry, too, should do its share. In a letter sent to the War Industries Board on 14 September 1918, Kleine suggested that motion picture production (of new negatives/subjects) be stopped from 1 October 1918 to 30 September 1919.23 He further proposed (among a few other things) that the Board should set limits on the manufacturing of new positive prints of old subjects, prohibit the opening of new rental exchanges and forbid the use of travelling salesmen.24 His argument rested on the premise that the motion picture market was oversupplied. According to Kleine, there had been roughly twenty-five new feature films produced weekly in the United States in 1917, equivalent to 1,300 new subjects yearly. One thousand of these were of satisfactory quality, but remained unscreened in most theatres. In Kleine’s estimation, the average feature during the previous twelve months had not had more than 20 per cent ‘showing’, meaning it was only screened in about 20 per cent of the country’s movie theatres. He concluded that production could be cut and theatres would still have a good supply of pictures. As far as producers and distributors were concerned, he argued that his proposition would contribute to the

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elimination of unprofitability. According to Kleine, most films did not earn back their costs, but if the average feature film’s commercial life could be extended, and the average rate of ‘showing’ boosted, this could be remedied: ‘It is the practice of the exhibitor to exhibit the late issues, which leads to constant neglect of older films that would serve the purpose equally well. This pressure for new subjects, and rivalry between competitors, are the chief causes of over production.’25 For Kleine, then, what we might refer to as a primacy of the new was the root cause of unsound and unprofitable practices within the motion picture business. This critique is fascinating, as it brought into question the basic driving forces of cinema as commercial mass culture, but also ironic, in the sense that the same forces had helped Kleine make a fortune. It was the ‘pressure for new subjects’ that he had capitalised on at the height of the nickelodeon boom – his ‘golden years’ – and it was the thirst for novelty that had opened the field for a hit like Quo Vadis? in 1913. Now he was demanding that someone pull the brakes on mass culture. This does not mean that the argument was invalid. On the contrary. Motion pictures are non-rival goods – they do not disappear when they are consumed, and one person’s consumption does not rule out another person’s consumption of the same movie.26 Movies are also proprietary and excludable, so the owners can regulate and restrict consumption, but in theory, if everyone would be satisfied with watching the same film over and over again (or just once and then be done with the movies), one motion picture would suffice. This created an incentive for motion picture businessmen to actively promote novelty. Luckily for them, from the beginnings of cinema, new motion pictures were something that audiences both appreciated and asked for. These were the deeper forces Kleine was up against. Ten days after posting the letter, Kleine had not heard back from the War Industries Board. This prompted him to take his views public. He knew that this would probably be received unfavourably, but this stimulated rather than repressed his inclination, his fighting spirit further boosted by anti-Semitic sentiment. On 24 September 1918, he wrote to L. W. McChesney at Edison, Inc.: I care so little for the good or bad opinion of our Semitic competitors that are turning New York City into an oriental colony, that I have in mind to give copies of my letter to the trade papers … [I]t is criminal to have this waste of human energy going on in this industry when the country is straining to its utmost in an attempt to produce the necessary munitions, etc. that are indispensable in winning the war.27

Accordingly, Kleine penned ‘An Open Letter to Executives of Production and Distribution in the Film Industry and Recommendations to the Priorities Committee of the War Industries Board to Conserve Men and Material’, printed as a pamphlet of sorts.28 As the title suggests, the document included his previous letter to the War Industries Board, but also a preface addressed specifically to fourteen leading film producers and distributors (from William A. Brady to Adolph Zukor): ‘Let’s help the government by lessening our activities, not increasing them,’ Kleine urged.29 Actual recipients, of course, far exceeded the people addressed in the letter. A mailing list preserved in the George Kleine Papers includes some two hundred names, mostly of editors and journalists.30 It was published in Motion Picture News’ 19 October After the Feature, Part 2

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issue, and Variety reprinted excerpts on 11 October, as did the Sunday Morning Telegraph on 29 September, indicating that there was at least some penetration in the trade and newspaper press, and a cause for some debate.31 Moving Picture World did not mention Kleine by name, but took the opportunity both to try to debunk his analysis of the business and to question his motives: The suggestion of a Chicago distributor reminds us of nothing so much as the famous old fable of the fox that lost its tail during an excursion among the neighboring chicken coops. Realizing that its caudle [sic] appendage could never be restored, the fox called a convention of his fellows and suggested to them the advisability of having their tails amputated, too.32

James L. Hoff, speaking on behalf of World in this editorial, made the case that in order to conserve the film industry, it must be maintained ‘at its highest power’, and at its present effectiveness in production and distribution that the several thousand motion picture theatres may continue in business and be potent for the collection of taxes for war purposes; that they may spread the propaganda of the government more effectively and, finally, that they may be powerful agents for the sale of One Billion Dollars’ worth of Liberty Bonds.33

Hoff argued that the motion picture business was different from certain other industries, such as the steel industry. In the latter case, the war might make it necessary to intervene directly to limit or divert production (from automobiles to tanks, for example), but in the case of the movies, the best support for ‘our great task of winning the war’ was to just keep going. With regard to the details of Kleine’s analysis of the workings of the motion picture industry, Hoff did not really engage, simply stating that, ‘Anyone familiar with the economy of the business knows that very considerable and material form of waste in either production or distribution has been carefully eliminated. Proof that this is true may be ascertained with little trouble.34 If one were to believe Hoff, however, the only proof necessary was the unimpeachable competence of the men who ran the motion picture industry. The editorial abounded with praise of the ‘level-headed businessmen’ engaged in the industry and the ‘highly sensitive’ men who were ‘guiding the affairs’. On a similar note of industry boosterism, he wrote, ‘Probably no other industry is so situated that it can render to the Government so great a service as has the motion picture industry.’35 The conclusion could only be a fully fledged protection of the status quo: ‘Therefore, in behalf of our conserving and efficient industry, the Moving Picture World resents any interference to the contrary and decries any attempt to interfere with its present status.’36 Kleine was fuming. In a six-page letter to the editor of World,37 he tried to turn the appeal to the authority of the captains of industry back on Hoff. He did this by structuring his reply around verbatim quotes of various NAMPI directors, including William A. Brady, Walter W. Irwin, Frederick H. Elliott and Pat Powers, who had represented the motion picture industry at two recent hearings in the United States Congress.38 Brady, Irwin and Elliott had appeared before the Finance Committee of the United States Senate in September 1918, where the topic of the hearings,

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organised as part of the preparations for a new revenue bill, was ‘To Provide Revenue for War Purposes’.39 Brady had also appeared before the Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives in June 1918, also on the topic of a new revenue bill. Pat Powers, too, was heard during these sessions.40 Kleine’s first line of attack concerned how to account for inventory in the motion picture business; in other words, how to figure out the proper economic value of the prints stored in the various movie companies’ vaults. Drawing on Walter Irwin’s testimony before the Senate’s Finance Committee, Kleine presented evidence that movie companies routinely inflated their inventory values in order to show ‘profits’ against which they could obtain further loans, which in turn was evidence of the irresponsible and wasteful practices Kleine had taken issue with in the first place: SENATOR JONES: How much has your inventory increased during the last year? MR. IRWIN: Our inventory has not increased, and our inventory is really fictitious. … It was necessary for us, in order to show any profits at all upon which to borrow money, in some cases to pay our tax, to inventory our negatives upon their former value.41

Kleine marshalled other statements by Irwin to substantiate his claim that a push for constantly new films, and the fierce competition this resulted in, led to unsound business practices: SENATOR JONES: Do you mean to say that you have been making those great expenditures in piling up goods on the shelves, as you call it, when you feel that you are never going to get your money out of them? MR. IRWIN: Yes, sir. SENATOR JONES: As a businessman, do you mean to tell me that you are putting your money into those things when you honestly believe that the chances are you will never get your money out? MR. IRWIN: Yes, sir. […] The competition in this business is so keen that the company that does not continue its expenditures, and continue a product that is in advance of public demand, soon falls to the wayside.42

Pat Powers’s statements to the House Ways and Means Committee seemed to support Kleine’s conviction that the movie business was running at a loss due to overproduction: I venture to say that the production end of the business lost money in the last year. I don’t mean that everyone in the business has lost, but the production of pictures has lost money; there has been more money spent on the production of pictures than has been taken back from the public. This is due to overproduction, and money going in which did not come back through the theatres from the public.43

Two concluding quotes completed Kleine’s theory that motion picture production and distribution – in spite of many inflated or downright false claims about their size and profitability – had turned into a chronically unprofitable house of cards, upheld only by the aid of Wall Street capital:

After the Feature, Part 2

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MR. IRWIN: Our product in order to hold those patrons must be in advance of the public demand as to merit, as to artistry, as to acting, as to production, as to setting, as to stories, and with the cost of everything increasing, the competition among ourselves is so great that no company can let up. One manufacturer was asked at a meeting with the exhibitors, ‘If you are losing money, why do you continue in business?’ The president of one of the largest manufacturing companies answered, ‘We will continue in business just as long as we have 5 cents to take the subway and go down to Wall Street.’… SENATOR JONES (to Mr. Irwin): … To have it appear in this record that you are deliberately investing money in a thing which you deliberately believe you will never get it out of is beyond the comprehension of at least one member of the committee. MR. IRWIN: Senator, we must do so or quit. May I point this out to you? If you will look at our balance sheet you will see that in many instances we have borrowed that money.44

Kleine concluded that anyone ‘at all familiar with conditions’ knew that Irwin’s and Powers’s analysis was accurate – large sums of money were invested in movie production and distribution ‘without any hope of recovery’. He added that he had done his part by stopping continuous production, and was now imploring his fellow film men to start listening to the voice of economic reason: A business is presumably conducted for profit and while every business is subject to occasional losses, how a sane business man can continue pouring torrents of money, whether his own or funds loaned by others, into a bottomless pit, is beyond understanding.45

World published Kleine’s letter in its entirety in its 16 November issue, but suggested that the letter was not proof of anything except, perhaps, the ‘careless language representatives of the trade sometimes use when talking about business conditions’.46 The paper also questioned the veracity of Irwin’s and Powers’s statements, in light of how ‘the same gentlemen [had proclaimed] the wonderful, not to say gigantic, stupendous success achieved by their respective companies’.47 World admitted that the quotations served Kleine’s purposes well, but that it would not be a ‘tribute to his [Kleine’s] intelligence and perspicacity if it were thought that he believed those statements unqualifiedly’.48 William A. Johnston, editor of Motion Picture News, devoted a two-page editorial to Kleine’s letter to the War Industries Board, headlining with the following message: ‘Let’s Start Right! Mr. Kleine Suggests We Cure Toothache by Removing the Head.’ Johnston conceded that Kleine’s figures regarding ‘lost circulation’ – i.e. a low average rate of ‘showing’ per feature (20 per cent in Kleine’s estimation) – were ‘about correct’, and that ‘the lost circulation of acceptable productions is the very root of the waste in the film industry’. But he disagreed wholeheartedly with Kleine’s suggested solution. Rather than cut production from the top down, there should be an effort to gauge the proper demand and adjust production accordingly.49 Yet another reaction came from James Quirk, the editor of Photoplay Magazine, who wrote his own letter to the War Industries Board to warn them about Kleine’s proposition. To Quirk, Kleine’s letter ‘reek[ed] with misinformation’, and there was also reason to question Kleine’s motives. Quirk explained that although the K-E-S-E group did not put out as many new pictures as some of the other companies, they were among the oldest firms in the business, and

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hence had access to an abundance of old subjects that were either dormant or already on the market as reissues. Quirk agreed that waste should be eliminated, but the Board would handle this better without the interference of Kleine, who seemed to want to ‘amputate his patient’s head to remedy defective vision’. If Kleine’s proposal was realised, the film industry would wither away, American cinema would relinquish its position as world leader and give up global markets to foreign companies, and an unfair advantage would be awarded to firms that would otherwise be on their way out of the industry because of the ‘necessary law of nature and business, the survival of the fittest’. Quirk’s letter was printed in Wid’s daily in late October 1918,50 but there are no indications that Kleine responded, privately or publicly. Correspondence preserved in the George Kleine Papers, as well as miscellaneous trade press items, shows that there was scattered support for Kleine’s ideas, but only from marginal players.51 Meanwhile, a NAMPI representative wrote to Kleine and admonished him for not having discussed the matter with the association before approaching the US government.52 In response, Kleine resented the implication that the problem could be solved internally; although everyone in the film industry paid lip service to the notion of conservation and frugality, they all seemed to think that someone else could do the actual cutting back. In the meantime, production was up rather than down.53 Kleine also emphasised that he had opted to stay out of NAMPI due to his doubts about the sincerity of some of its leading figures.54 This kind of attitude probably did not improve the chances that his plans to reform the industry at its core would gain traction. Somewhat ironically, just a week after this exchange between Kleine and Blumenthal, the producers’ branch of NAMPI did, in fact, decide to put a temporary stop to motion picture production, albeit only for four weeks (later extended with an additional week).55 This, however, had little to do with Kleine’s campaign against waste and overproduction. Instead, it was the Spanish flu, and the mass closure of movie theatres in its wake, that prompted the temporary halt.

THE WALL STREET ISSUE Kleine was calling for a downsizing of the film industry, but the actual development was going in the opposite direction. As we learned in the analysis of Kleine’s work with K-E-S-E and Perfection Pictures, from the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature film around 1914, the general trend was towards higher production budgets, expanded mass-production capacities and vertical integration. Establishing a movie industry of this scale required capital – much more than film companies had in their own coffers. This was where Wall Street came into the picture. For the presumptive Hollywood majors, there were multiple benefits to hooking up with bankers and risk capitalists. In addition to fuelling an unprecedented expansion in Hollywood that alleviated some of the worst effects of the movie economy’s fundamental and wild uncertainty, the influx of outside capital lessened the personal risk involved in decision-making at various levels within the business. This lowered the cost of product innovation and diversity, but for George Kleine, who was a self-identified conservative businessman, it represented an economically unsound incentive for the reckless spending of other people’s money. As a conservative, Kleine believed that business ventures should be After the Feature, Part 2

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approached with caution, and only by people who had the knowledge and experience to be well aware of the risks involved. If loans were used to finance investment, these loans should always be issued against solid securities. In other words, Kleine was neither completely risk-averse nor an opponent of bank loans as such, but his business conservatism prescribed that the people involved in a transaction should themselves assume the economic risk. In a way, this made Kleine a representative of an increasingly residual form of capitalism. Private enterprise in the United States had traditionally been carried out through family-owned small businesses. According to some historians, this began to change in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when a seemingly ever-increasing industrial expansion required ever-increasing amounts of capital, which, in turn, encouraged experimentation in capital mobilisation.56 As a result, finance capitalism was ushered in, and the conditions for private enterprise changed in terms of ownership as well as management. Most notably, business enterprises became both larger and more complex, often bringing several different units and economic functions in under the same roof, often with ownership scattered across many individuals and institutions, and often managed in part by its financial investors but predominantly by professional managers (one influential business history argues that finance capitalism transmuted into ‘managerial’ capitalism).57 In contrast, in the traditional form of family capitalism, owners had usually managed and managers had usually owned, and firms generally concentrated on a single economic function.58 Broadly speaking, these were also the principles that Kleine adhered to. For instance, when he promoted his ‘Evolution’ plan (discussed in Chapter 3) in 1919, he argued that ‘It is the incentive of ownership of one’s own business … that makes the owneroperated exchange the logical method of distribution.’59 The same principle informed the way he organised his own enterprises. The Kleine Optical Company was a corporation, but always with Kleine as the majority owner, and active manager. After 1909, he separated the equipment business from the film business. The Kleine Optical Co. took care of the former, while Kleine conducted the latter under his personal name.60 Somewhat formally put, he was the ‘sole proprietor of the motion picture manufacturing and distribution business operating under the name “George Kleine”, not incorporated’.61 Less formally, Kleine put it this way when Motion Picture News asked him to provide company data in 1919: ‘List of officers: George Kleine as Poobah. … Partners: None but Uncle Sam.’62 Kleine’s anchoring in an arguably pre-modern form of capitalism, and his conservative business ethos, provided him with an ideological basis for deploring Wall Street’s heightened presence in the motion picture business. As the debate concerning his ‘Open Letter’ showed, this issue was at the heart of his campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’. But his specific argument only made sense if a series of empirical assertions about the profitability and real economic value of the motion picture industry corresponded to reality. Kleine was convinced that the leading motion picture companies had inflated the value of their own corporations by disguising expenses as ‘investments’ and by counting shelved films as assets in the balance sheets, even though they lacked commercial as well as material value. If this was true, then the stock certificates that certain motion picture companies used as securities to take out huge bank loans were as worthless as the retired motion pictures stored in the

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company vaults. What made matters even worse for the loan-issuing banks, according to Kleine, was the highly speculative and risky character of investing money in motion picture production, risks they were probably not even aware of. Neither were they seemingly aware of the ‘fact’ – in Kleine’s view – that motion picture production and distribution was an unprofitable enterprise on the whole. (It is important to remember throughout the discussion in this section that Kleine was talking specifically about these two branches, and not film exhibition, which he acknowledged was a profitable, albeit risky, branch of the business.63) To confirm that his argument held water, Kleine spent several years (starting in 1918) trying to gather statistics regarding motion picture production and distribution and the economic value of the whole motion picture business.64 The size of the industry was of particular interest to him, since the widely disseminated claim that motion pictures were the fourth or fifth largest industry in the United States was often used to attract investors. As Kleine noted at one point in 1919, ‘Some time ago some film man stated that we were the fifth largest industry in the United States, and this assertion has been repeated and improved upon until the claim is now being made that we are the fourth largest.’65 Richard Koszarski has shown that such claims went back at least to January 1916, and an article in the New York Times that stated that movies were the country’s fifth largest business, after agriculture, transportation, oil and steel.66 Koszarski also notes that by 1919, this notion was under attack, and various efforts were undertaken to gather hard data about the industry’s size.67 Eventually, claims that the movie industry was among the largest in the country were mostly debunked (for example, in Mae Huettig’s 1944 book Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry).68 In other words, Kleine was not alone in the quest to figure out the size of the industry, and to disprove any inflated claims. He collected many documents and came up with many calculations, but this commentary from August 1920 regarding a circular sent out by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce summarises his view: The circular refers to the film industry as holding ‘the 5th place in the nation.’ This statement has been repeated until it is almost an accepted fact. It is grossly incorrect. The only standard of comparison is the value of the product when it leaves the plant compared with other products leaving other plants. The gross rental income during the last fiscal year probably fell between $85,000,000.00 and $90,000,000.00 in the United States. Deduct cost of distribution and there is left about $60,000,000.00. If we account this as denoting the size of the industry, and compare it with the field of productions such as steel, meats, etc. when finished at the plant, we are very far down in the list. According to statistics we are about on a par with cheese.69

The bone of contention for Kleine was not the ranking in itself but the way that what he saw as exaggerated figures about the film industry’s size and profitability were used as bait to lure investors to the movie business. He noted – correctly – that soliciting for outside funding was not limited to dealings between major film companies and large banks. It was also becoming increasingly common to make public stock offerings to finance one-off film productions, enticing the public to buy stock in a specific movie with the hope of sensational returns. These kinds of schemes were After the Feature, Part 2

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dishonest, based on inaccurate figures and violated the principles of conservative business that Kleine ascribed to. Here is one of many examples of Kleine offering some words of caution: The vital point lies in recognizing the highly speculative character of film production. … I would consider that a new concern is taking a great risk if it goes into production of entertainment films with a capital of $250,000.00. Two or three successive failures will wipe this out. If one listens to the siren tongue of the film promoter, the song is very different, but few of these gentry are people who are willing to risk their own money. Their optimism is always predicated upon their being permitted to handle somebody else’s funds.70

Already in 1915, he had warned a prospective film industry entrant about the speculative character of the business, encouraging them to secure a market before actually entering into production: ‘A great deal of money has been lost in recent years, by amateurs and others who were attracted by the alleged profits of the business of manufacturing films taking it for granted that there would be no trouble in marketing.’71 Later, Kleine would argue that the boom of unsuccessful and unprofitable one-off productions accounted for much of the ‘waste’ in the film business, naive private investors being forced to pick up the cheque: An important item of waste consists in the making of films, frequently a single issue only, by mushroom concerns capitalized by angels’ money who are deceived by golden promises of fat profits. In a large percentage of these cases the investment is a total loss. This is waste that is unavoidable so long as golden tongued orators can coax the nimble dollar from the hands of the innocent.72

The true problem, however, was not ‘single issues’ by ‘mushroom concerns’, but the inflation and supposedly reckless economic behaviour that the influx of more substantial outside capital into the movie economy created. Echoing another familiar discourse of the time, Kleine suggested that excessive salaries – to stars in particular – were the root cause of the problem. In early 1917, Moving Picture World had commissioned an article from Kleine, asking him to commemorate its ten-year anniversary.73 He used the limited space to compare business conditions in 1907 and 1917, and arrived at this conclusion: In those days [1907] manufacturers made heavy profits on their investments, and exchanges that started with a shoe-string in capital or without capital … made big profits. Today manufacturers are gasping for financial breath, owing largely to the exorbitant salaries being paid to stars; exhibitors are paying high rentals for films, and most distributing concerns are losing money.74

To Kleine’s chagrin, World published the article under the title ‘Big Profits Ten Years Ago’, which compelled him to write to the paper and register his objection: ‘You know that I have always avoided the blaring of trumpets when discussing the profits of the film business; I would much have preferred a headline calling attention to the losses of today as mentioned in the last paragraph.’75

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STAR SALARIES AND THE MOTION PICTURE ‘BUBBLE’ ECONOMY In Kleine’s analysis, the returns rarely justified the ‘exorbitant’ salaries paid to stars. Corresponding with an associate in Los Angeles regarding an offer to actor George Beban in March 1918, he argued that it was a fallacy for any Star to think his services are unusually valuable merely because a manufacturer has offered him a fancy salary. We all know that most of these high salaries are not being earned. Concerns that appear to be most prosperous are well known to be deeply in debt, and several of them are staggering.76

Later the same year, when Kleine drafted a response to the many ‘attacks’ he had been subject to following his open letter to the film industry, he put it this way: ‘It is notorious that men and women are drawing huge salaries as actors, directors and executives out of individual businesses whose net returns are tremendous losses.’77 The gist of his analysis was that fierce competition for stars led to skyrocketing salaries, which in turn led to an ever-increasing reliance on loans and outside capital, since profits were nowhere near the levels that would cover the cost of rising salaries.78 The depiction of the motion picture industry as a bubble economy was consistent with Kleine’s views as expressed elsewhere – publicly and privately. At one point, he contemplated putting the Ways and Means Committee in the US House of Representatives on the trail of overpaid and under-taxed movie stars, but this letter was never sent (perhaps he had second thoughts about naming names). It listed several notorious high-earners, including Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, Mabel Normand, Theda Bara, Mary Miles Minter and Clara Kimball Young.79 Kleine concluded that in his judgment, ‘conspicuous motion picture stars are grossly overpaid, and that their salaries are so far beyond a reasonable return for services rendered that no tax levied can be excessive.’80 Kleine often emphasised that what was at stake was the well-being of both the country and the film industry, but his discourse on star salaries was also anchored in a moral universe where wages ideally corresponded to the degree of vocational training, experience, effort and utility. The implication was that there was something inherently unfair with the current level of star salaries: ‘Such stars have not served a long period of apprenticeship, like professional men. From the beginning they received salaries that exceeded the income of the average mature lawyer, doctor or preacher, which rapidly grew to immense figures.’81 (Presumably, he realised deep down that producerdistributors were not paying large salaries to stars because of their abilities, or because there were so few of them, or because they could guarantee profits, but because they had proved to be enormously useful machines for generating publicity.82) It is also clear that Kleine regarded his conservative business model as both morally and practically superior to the loan-injected alternative he believed was corrupting the industry: I have never gone to Wall Street to borrow, nor does this business owe any money to anybody, except recent current bills not yet audited. Three days receipts will cover them, and there is a large cash surplus available for contingencies such as shutting down during epidemics, etc.83

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Reconnecting to our previous discussion about the differences between finance capitalism and earlier forms of private enterprise, this statement seems indicative of Kleine’s strong preference for the latter, which he associated with financial solidity, strong liquidity, and a kind of personal and professional accountability that was part and parcel of owning and running your own business. From this perspective, infusing an industry with outside capital was inconsistent with a sound way of doing business, and Kleine could not fathom how the situation could continue: ‘The spectacle of film producers continuing at a loss month after month and year after year without hope of recovering is appalling.’84 There were, however, two good reasons why a remedy was within reach. First, investors would sooner or later see through the smokescreen of alleged prosperity: This business is beclouded with an air of prosperity because of its visible activities, fooling not only the public but also many of us who are in the midst of things. It is a pity to disturb the serenity of such a situation, but sooner or later there must be a readjustment; possibly when the banks and private investors get tired of dumping money into a bottomless pit.85

Second, truth-tellers like Kleine could be instrumental in removing the veil of ignorance currently clouding the eyes of industry insiders and investors alike. In a letter to Moving Picture World penned in December 1920, Kleine wrote, One of the objects that I had in mind while considering publication of Cold Facts in connection with film finance, in lay publications, was to discourage the mass of outside capital which I consider the prime factor in the inflation of production and distribution costs. … I still believe that if the truth were spread before the workers in the industry, it would help to prick the bubble of inflation; widespread and ruinous, beginning with authors’ rights, and ending with the operation of the smallest branch exchange.86

In the very same paragraph, however, Kleine raised an issue that seemed to imply the ultimate futility of these messianic ambitions, and, perhaps, of his whole crusade against waste, overproduction and unprofitability: ‘The attitude of authors, executives, directors, artists, and exchange employees has generally been one of getting theirs while the getting was good and is based on an assumption of large profits and ignorance or neglect of constant losses.’87 Kleine had voiced the same idea in a slightly different way two years earlier, arguing that the affluence of the workers did not necessarily reflect the overall success of the industry: ‘There is a vast difference between the prosperity of an individual who may be feeding at the crib and that of the business which is filling the crib.’88

SKIMMING OFF THE TOP As hinted at in one of these quotes, Kleine abandoned his ambition to publish the results of his research into the ‘cold facts’ of film financing (the reason he later gave was that he believed ‘more harm than good might arise’ from publication),89 but he did not abandon his views on the matter. In 1922, for example, he was still trying to raise

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awareness of what he labelled ‘the fallacy of enormous profits’, arguing that it was ‘probably true that the entire operation of making and distributing motion pictures in the United States leads to heavy annual losses’.90 Either way, in his campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’, and in his general analysis of the motion picture business around the same time, Kleine was among the first to raise a series of issues that go to the heart of our understanding of how the film industry works, but that remain bewildering. Given the fundamental uncertainty of the business, why would any sane person ever want to invest money in motion pictures? Given how few movies make a substantial profit, are stars really worth the salaries they are paid? Are there any profits at all in the motion picture business? With regard to the last question, Kleine noted that a large number of films – possibly a majority – caused losses for their producers. From this, he concluded that the industry as a whole was unprofitable. This is why he was so utterly perplexed by Wall Street’s pumping of money into the motion picture business. Arguably, Kleine underestimated the power of a few extraordinary winners to secure the profitability of the industry as a whole. Technically, one stupendous hit was all it took. More importantly, from the moment the would-be major Hollywood companies started investing in movie theatres, the value of the real estate and income from the profitable exhibition sector offered a Autographed publicity still of Billie Burke, ca. 1916. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

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security to investors that counterbalanced the risks associated with motion picture production.91 Conversely, it was the move towards vertical integration, rather than investment in movie production, that made it necessary for movie companies to seek outside capital. As Paramount’s Adolph Zukor later explained it: ‘To build, buy or lease theaters you have to have money.’92 From this perspective, Kleine’s campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’ was, perhaps, shooting at the wrong target. Regardless of whether Wall Street’s investments in the motion picture industry made sense, it is beyond doubt that at least a few people – the top-earners in the business – were very happy that money was pouring into the system. These were the greedy bunch Kleine pictured to be ‘feeding at the crib’. Kleine knew all about the income gap between actors from personal experience: in 1916, he and his associates had found it reasonable to pay Billie Burke $120,000 for thirty weeks’ work, while leading man Henry Kolker only received $12,000 for the same period. Obviously, Burke was perceived to embody a unique star persona who could not be easily replaced, and who had a very strong box-office appeal, whereas Kolker was seen as replaceable and mostly devoid of substantial box-office power. In other words, Burke had high asset-specificity, which allowed her to capture a very large part of the money expended on the realisation of the project. When Kleine and others decried the ‘exorbitant’ rise of star salaries during the second half of the 1910s, they were indirectly referring to a self-similarity within the increasingly kurtocratic film industry: just as a handful of films generated most of the profits, a handful of people reaped most of the rewards.93 In this sense, popular cinema was becoming a machine for the enrichment of the few. In hindsight, it is easy to look at Kleine’s efforts to reform the commercial motion picture industry from within as a stubborn, embittered, conservative refusal to accept the inevitability of change and the rise of Hollywood. This is not all wrong, but there is also reason to remind ourselves that towards the end of 1920, when Kleine’s campaign against waste and overproduction petered out, what we now conceptualise as ‘the Hollywood studio system’ was still just emerging. The Hollywood majors’ dominance, and the dominant modes of production, distribution and exhibition they represented, was not a foregone conclusion. Or, at least, it did not necessarily appear as a foregone conclusion in 1920. Also, as this chapter has shown, Kleine’s analysis of how the motion picture economy worked was often remarkably astute, and at times encapsulates almost perfectly the nature of the film industry’s transformation in the late 1910s and early 20s, at the cusp of Hollywood. At other times, his idealisation of a conservative business method appears to have blinded him to some of the peculiarities of the particular business he was in. One fact that was particularly hard for Kleine to swallow was that in the motion picture business of the mid-1910s and onwards, failure was rampant. From his conservative viewpoint, failure was ‘waste’, and not a necessary element of cultural production.

THE COST OF CONSERVATISM Kleine’s business conservatism acted as a self-imposed impediment to making a more successful transition into the Hollywood era. Perhaps a leading role in the reconfigured

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film industry would have been out of reach either way, but his conservative business ideology surely did not help. This ideology prescribed that a businessman should economise whenever possible, make reasonably secure investments that offered predictable returns and not waste efforts when the prospects for profit were bleak. This did not quite square with a business in which only a small minority of the products yielded profits. As Kleine described it at one point, ‘The ratio of results to efforts in the film business would sometimes tax even the Einstein theory of relativity.’94 Equally detrimental, Kleine’s business conservatism may also have led him to underestimate the value of reducing the cost of innovation in the new type of motion picture economy. It was clear that audiences desired a continuous flow of new and interesting films, and that every new film had to be at least somewhat different from the previous one. But no one – neither producers nor audiences – knew for certain exactly what kind of novelty they wanted. These preconditions made one-off ventures too risky, and they made it dangerous for producers to concentrate strictly on one genre or type of film, or to get stuck in an overly repetitive production cycle. In other words, a large production volume was important, but the mode of production also had to allow for a degree of diversity and innovation. What would incentivise a motion picture producer, director, scenario writer or actor to risk creating something new and different rather than something that has been tried and tested in the past? One hypothesis suggests that if the costs of innovation are high, we should expect less of it, and vice versa.95 This means that we can expect the most innovations either from those who have nothing to lose, or from those who have so much that a loss does not really affect their situation. George Kleine had amassed a considerable fortune early in his motion picture career, and came out of even his most spectacular financial failures relatively unscathed. But his conservative business model meant that it was still he who had assumed the risk, and thus had to carry the loss. In Hollywood, the opposite was more and more frequently the case. The increasingly widespread access to outside capital in the form of loans and venture capital meant that the people who actually did the work often did not have to pick up the bill when a film bombed. There were, to be sure, professional reputations and other kinds of non-monetary capital at stake for these film workers, but the routine spending of other people’s money removed at least some of the risk associated with unconventional decisions. What Kleine saw as insane recklessness was, in a sense, a way to reduce the cost of product innovation and diversity. What he interpreted as an assault on the foundations of sound business, and what he waged war against in 1918, was, in a way, integral to the persistence and success of cultural production in Hollywood. In the precise historical moment, however, this particular line of defence against Kleine’s attacks may not have been available, even if people were aware of it. The reason was that leading figures within the motion picture industry were making it a priority to give the impression that the movie business was a business like any other – respectable, stable and conducted in a normal, businesslike manner – precisely for the purpose of attracting outside capital.96 According to Janet Wasko, these goals were accomplished from 1919 to 1927. The presumed respectability and stability of the movie industry grew steadily, and more and more Wall Street investors were attracted to the field. The Hollywood scandals of the early 1920s (see Chapter 5) were a bump in the road, but the inauguration of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of After the Feature, Part 2

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America (MPPDA, or the ‘Hays Office’) in 1922 helped placate the bankers, and the wave of expansion and integration in the movie industry that had truly taken off in 1919 continued.97 Kleine’s campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’ in 1918 was a public cry of resistance, rooted in a conservative business ideology that seemed incompatible with the way the industry was developing. But neither his personal views nor his public rhetoric necessarily meant that his organisation could not have responded strategically and aptly to the ongoing changes. Kleine the businessman could potentially have made an inventory of the information, resources and skills that he had, and figured out a way to access those that he did not already possess, putting everything else to the side. In this context, it is interesting to note that around 1915, as the transformation of the motion picture business was beginning to pick up speed and force, Kleine had been a distributor longer than anyone else still active in the field, and he had a fully equipped nationwide web of rental exchanges under his command. On the face of it, this put him in a very advantageous position. In the era of skyrocketing budgets, for a film to make a profit, it had to reach a very large audience, which made national, or even global, distribution crucial. Running a distribution organisation of this scale was a complex and very expensive operation, and a very important asset in the new film economy. One economist also points out that as the feature era began, distributors were placed at the epicentre of the move towards vertical integration.98 On the one hand, distributors would contract upstream to get access to feature films, which often also made them co-financers of film production through cash advances. They would also contract downstream with exhibitors to find an outlet for the features. In this way, distributors epitomised a model of vertical integration before the fact.99 Unfortunately for Kleine, he failed to exploit whatever advantages his position and capacity as a distributor might have given him. As we learned in the previous chapter, a lack of hits was the main problem. We will never know exactly why most of the films Kleine distributed did not appeal to wider audiences, but an overly conservative approach (such as a reluctance to spend the money needed to attract the biggest stars and the best above-the-line talent) remains the best explanation. As to ‘contracting upstream’, Kleine was most likely dealing with the wrong firms. Neither Edison nor Essanay nor Selig adapted to changing audience preferences. They either lacked the skills, knowledge and resources to do so, or did not want to retool themselves, preferring to exit the business. The desire to get out, however, was seemingly caused by the failure to adapt, rather than vice versa. After all, these companies struggled for several years (up to 1919) to make K-E-S-E/Perfection Pictures as well as General Film viable in the new motion picture economy. With regard to ‘contracting downstream’, it is well worth remembering that Kleine’s early successes in the feature field were mostly based on roadshow distribution. Roadshowing lived on, but mainly as a residual or occasional practice,100 and quite early in the feature era, the most important thing was to get access to the largest and most profitable first-run motion picture theatres (as distinct from the stage theatres, opera houses and combination houses where early features like Quo Vadis? had been shown). During the K-E-S-E era and in the years after, Kleine discovered how difficult this could be. Paramount had cornered the market for the most popular movie stars, which also made it possible for them to more or less corner the market for the most profitable theatres. More concretely, they

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managed to secure long-term contracts with key exhibitors, who would otherwise not have access to the popular Paramount output. First National, a coalition of exhibitors, was established as a countermeasure to Paramount, and eventually merged with Warner Bros. Other producing-distributing concerns copied Paramount’s strategy, and when the Hollywood studio era proper began around 1930, a few Hollywood majors either owned or controlled most of the key movie theatres in the country. But before all of this happened, Kleine had already experienced difficulties getting his pictures into the best theatres. In addition to many theatres being tied up in long-term contracts with Paramount, Goldwyn, Fox or any other of the leading producer-distributors, there were also what Kleine referred to as ‘local theater monopolies’. These were not monopolies in the strict sense, but local or regional theatre chains, or coalitions of exhibitors who had joined forces to boost bargaining power in relation to distributors. In Kleine’s criticisms of the film industry in the late 1910s, these ‘local monopolies’ were a key target – in addition to ‘waste’, ‘overproduction’, exorbitant salaries, Wall Street money, general ‘recklessness’ and other issues discussed in this chapter. Kleine’s attack was two-pronged. From a business perspective, ‘local monopolies’ pushed rental prices down to levels that made it impossible to run a profitable distribution operation. From a legal perspective, they were probably in violation of every law put in place to safeguard fair and competitive business conditions.101 One of Kleine’s main adversaries was the Mastbaum company in Philadelphia, run by brothers Stanley and Jules Mastbaum, who controlled a regional chain of theatres and who were also in charge of a booking combine that negotiated with distributors on behalf of other exhibitors in the Philadelphia region.102 The government shared Kleine’s suspicions that the Mastbaums engaged in anti-competitive, possibly unlawful activities, and filed suit in February 1918.103 Already in January, Kleine had sent his own special representative, Andrew J. Callaghan, to Philadelphia for the secret purpose of gathering evidence against the Mastbaums. Callaghan’s documentation was then forwarded to the Federal Trade Commission’s attorneys.104 Kleine rejoiced when the courts decided in favour of the government and against the Mastbaums in September, and he and Essanay’s George Spoor sent out a press dispatch, vowing that the ‘battle for open booking [had] only begun’.105 In 1921, when the FTC brought suit against Famous Players-Lasky, the Stanley Company, the Saenger Amusement Company and other defendants – again for suspected violations of the Sherman Act – Kleine cooperated once more with the FTC and supplied them with various kinds of information and evidence.106 This did not solve his problems with placing pictures in the best venues, however, a predicament that foreshadowed an even tighter stronghold on key theatres later on. Even United Artists, among the industry leaders at the time, would attest to the difficulties of gaining access to the most important venues, and UA was, of course, in a much better position than most independent producers and distributors.107 In autumn 1923, Kleine argued that ‘local monopolies’ were still the biggest threat to the interests of distributors and producers, and concluded that although various solutions had been discussed over the years, so far none of these had been both practical and adequate. He did acknowledge that one solution would be to lease or construct theatres that would then be used exclusively by one producer, or one star, for several years, but discounted the idea: ‘This would require enormous capital to be effective in After the Feature, Part 2

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these various states, as well as a long time before the system could be put into force.’108 A similar idea was hatched around the same time by William Marston Seabury, who argued that independent producers and distributors should unite and start a corporation that would set up an independent circuit of first-run movie houses in key cities.109 Kleine expressed some interest, but nothing came of these plans.110 At this juncture, Kleine must surely have registered that Paramount had already invested in theatres, that the exhibitors in First National were expanding in the other direction and that additional concerns might soon tread upon a similar path towards integration. As the above citation indicates, he must surely also have registered that only a considerable infusion of borrowed money could have enabled this. Again, Kleine’s phobia of Wall Street money worked at cross-purposes with what might otherwise have been a viable strategy. By 1923, this was a moot point as far as Kleine was concerned; for several reasons it was too late for him to join any kind of race within the commercial mainstream of the film industry. Age might have been as important a factor as any other. Kleine had already turned fifty when his importation of Quo Vadis? broke open the feature field in 1913; perhaps ten years later, he may have lacked a bit of youth and vigour that, while it may not have been necessary for a radical reshaping of his business organisation, might have made it easier. Some remarks in his personal correspondence suggest that at the age of sixty, Kleine had better things to do with his time than running a large motion picture business. He would rather take fishing trips to the Great Lakes area, and taste his way through the cellar supply of beverages that he had made sure to amass before prohibition came into force.111 Moreover, it is unclear whether Kleine would have been able to secure the kind of capital needed to expand his business on the scale that the new motion picture economy called for.

CONCLUSION Although he ended up in the margins of American commercial cinema in the late 1910s, Kleine’s analysis of the motion picture industry was both sharp and perceptive, and in the period from 1913 to 1918, he pinpointed what was at the core of its transformation: it was becoming a kurtocracy in which a small number of films generated nearly all of the profits; most of these profits ended up in the hands of a few people; and a small number of corporations controlled the infrastructure of production, distribution and exhibition. At the same time, in spite of the market concentration, the continuing enrichment of the few and the generally kurtocratic character of the business, there was also continued diversity, innovation and competition. To some extent – and seemingly paradoxically – kurtocracy stimulates these factors. As Michael Pokorny and John Sedgwick have pointed out, since one unit of output – one film – can render spectacular profits, the industry attracts a wide range of producers, from small indie outfits to global media conglomerate behemoths.112 But an equally important cause of diversity and competition in the motion picture business is its fundamental uncertainty. When it comes to motion pictures, nobody, including the consumers themselves, knows exactly what kind of innovation they want.113 They know that they want something new and exciting, and producers try to

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provide them with it, but no one knows beforehand what will work and what will not. In another article, Pokorny and Sedgwick note that in this sense, the motion picture industry’s driving force is the blind search for success, which means that failure is not an unfortunate outcome of the system, but integral to it.114 Paradoxically, then, when the fundamental uncertainty of the motion picture business was activated with full force around 1915, the eventual result was a system that simultaneously guaranteed the existence of marginal, independent, odd or residual practices, and included a range of winner-takes-all functions that channelled most of the profits generated into the hands of the small elite who controlled Hollywood. This analysis shows why the inner workings of commercial mainstream filmmaking by default would be characterised by a certain tension between dominance and diversity, between convention and invention. The next chapter raises the question of whether a similar dynamic, or dialectic, shaped American cinema at large, and the relation between a dominant mainstream and alternative cinemas. Arguably, the consolidation of a commercial mainstream also carried with it an opportunity to formulate alternative conceptions of cinema and to work out alternative film cultural practices. Indeed, parallel to the emergence of Hollywood, and the increased kurtocratisation of cinema from around 1915, various alternatives flourished. The following pages explore Kleine’s role in the early history of one such formation: ‘non-theatrical’ cinema.

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5 ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’: George Kleine, Non-theatrical Cinema and Early Hollywood

Box 44 of the George Kleine Papers at the Library of Congress contains a small file with the subject heading ‘“The Photoplay” by Prof. Munsterberg (Article)’.1 Within it are three typewritten pages of selected excerpts from Chapter XI of psychology professor Hugo Münsterberg’s book The Photoplay: A Psychological Study. In one of the cited passages, Münsterberg summarises the key argument of the book: ‘Art is a way to overcome nature’, and the photoplay can do this in its own highly original and independent way, which proves that film ‘is an art in itself’.2 Earlier in the book, Münsterberg had tried to show how filmic devices were used in the photoplay to externalise various mental processes. For example, the close-up was analogue to the mental process of focusing attention on an object or event, the flashback was an objectification of memory, and so on. In that way, film fulfilled the purpose of art: to overcome nature by reconstituting rather than merely recording reality. He described the aesthetic experience of movie watching in this way: The massive outer world has lost its weight, it has been freed from space, time, and causality, and it has been clothed in the forms of our own consciousness. The mind has triumphed over matter and the pictures roll on with the ease of musical tones. It is a superb enjoyment which no other art can furnish us.3

According to Noël Carroll’s reading of Münsterberg’s book, as an early instance of film theory, The Photoplay primarily dealt with the theoretical issue of the time: Could film be ‘art’?4 Why was this question so important? Because discourses on film as art were extremely central to the development of cinema as an economical and cultural institution. But so was the idea that film could be used to educate.5 Another excerpt that Kleine had lifted from The Photoplay spoke of the motion picture’s immense power to influence audiences, holding them captive under a ‘strange fascination’.6 The effects of giving up one’s mind to the movies were social as much as psychological: The more vividly the impressions force themselves on the mind, the more easily must they become starting points for imitation and other motor responses. The sight of crime and of vice may force itself on the consciousness with disastrous results. The normal resistance breaks down and the moral balance … may be lost under the pressure of the realistic suggestions.7

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But Münsterberg acknowledged that there was a flipside to this, ‘While the sources of danger cannot be overlooked, the social reformer ought to focus his interest still more on the tremendous influences for good which may be exerted by the moving pictures.’8 Münsterberg’s analysis amalgamates what Jennifer Peterson has described as the ‘two wings’ of reform discourse on motion pictures around this time.9 Negative reform discourse warned about the social dangers of (certain) movies and (certain forms of) moviegoing, calling for regulation, censorship and disciplinary action. Positive reform discourse, meanwhile, emphasised the ways in which motion pictures could be harnessed for the purpose of uplift and social progress, especially by utilising them as an educational tool.10 When it came to the promotion of ‘educational films’ in the United States, George Kleine was a pivotal figure. As we learned in Chapter 2, he also launched a series of ‘quality films’ in 1913–15, similar to the Shakespeare adaptations and historical films discussed by William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson, but of unprecedentedly epic proportions.11 The commercial heyday for these films was brief, but after 1915 Kleine retooled them for a non-theatrical market, promoting them as the epitome of film artistic refinement. The Photoplay provided him with a rationale both for his efforts to promote educational cinema and for his advocacy of film as ‘art’ and a tool for aesthetic cultivation of the public. Kleine’s interest in film as education and art deepened over the second half of his career, from 1915 onwards. His views and his practices developed in dynamic, sometimes oppositional, relation to the conception of cinema as mass entertainment, even in the years when he was still heavily involved in the commercial mainstream of the movie business. This interplay between different conceptions of cinema, and the tensions within Kleine’s career they gave rise to, are the topic of this chapter. A central argument that will be developed in this chapter is that Kleine’s promotion of the educational and artistic values of motion pictures was meant to contribute to the formation of non-theatrical cinema as an autonomous field, separate from the commercial mainstream. This calls for some sort of pinpointing of the term ‘non-theatrical’. It clearly alludes to various films, exhibition contexts and film cultures that exist outside of the standard venue for commercial cinema – the movie theatre – and to systems of production and distribution other than those that bring commercial films into movie theatres. But this includes a great variety of products, practices and contexts (from amateur films to avant-garde movies, from home viewing to museum screenings, from philanthropist initiatives to commercial production and distribution, etc.), and sometimes the lines between ‘theatrical’ and ‘non-theatrical’ are blurred (as when commercial films are revived for non-theatrical exhibition venues such as schools or prisons, or when commercial movie theatres are used for screenings of non-commercial films). There is also the potential problem that ‘non-theatrical’ implies a negative, and inferior, relation to an assumed dominant conception of cinema: theatrical, commercial cinema. This has stimulated a search for alternative and better terms, such as Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson’s notion of ‘useful cinema’.12 Here, however, I have retained the term non-theatrical in the broad sense outlined above, partly for convenience, and partly because it was used by Kleine and his contemporaries, which means that the term itself to some extent reflect the ways in which this ‘field’ was imagined at the time. ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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Kleine’s reputation as a pioneering champion of the educational values of motion pictures dates back at least to 1910, when Robert Grau’s book The Business Man in the Amusement World was published. Grau wrote that Kleine was ‘one of the most persevering men who have given their aid to … elevating the grade of the motion picture’.13 The caption to the portrait that appeared on the following page identified Kleine as ‘An Uplifter in the Moving Picture Field’.14 This linkage between Kleine, educational film and ‘uplift’ was underplayed in the survey histories of American cinema that followed in the next few decades,15 but later scholarship has written him back into the history of educational cinema. A case in point is Anthony Slide’s Before Video: A History of the Non-theatrical Film, a chronicling of non-theatrical cinema that many later scholars have used as a reference and starting point.16 In turn, Slide based much of his historical overview on a reading of the Educational Screen (a periodical devoted to educational cinema started in 1922), especially Arthur Edwin Krows’s series of articles about the history of non-theatrical cinema, which were published over several years starting in September 1938.17 Krows’s history concerned what he called the ‘non-theatrical’ field more generally, and not ‘educational’ film exclusively or specifically, but he described Kleine’s work to promote educational films as a landmark effort. Krows argued that 1910 was a particularly important year, pointing to several significant events. One was Kleine’s issuing of a Catalogue of Educational Motion Picture Films.18 This publication was the first of its kind to appear in the United States, but the inspiration came from Charles Urban, who had issued similar catalogues in Great Britain since 1903, and who visited Kleine in June 1909.19 It listed some 1,000 short subjects grouped under labels such as ‘travel’, ‘history’, ‘naval’, ‘military’, ‘animal life’, ‘religion’ and ‘kindergarten studies’, to name a few.20 Presently, as cinema historians are rediscovering educational and nontheatrical cinema,21 this catalogue has resurfaced as a somewhat totemic object with regard to the history of educational cinema in the United States. Oliver Gaycken writes that the catalogue represents an ‘early attempt to collect films for the goal of educational use’.22 Elsewhere, Gaycken has analysed the catalogue’s categorisation of subjects, which made up a virtual ‘cabinet of curiosities’; how it contributed to the popularisation of educational film in the United States; and how ‘educational film’ was defined at various junctures.23 Jennifer Peterson has also referred to Kleine’s ‘influential’ catalogue on several occasions, arguing that it was one of the earliest attempts to promote educational films in commercial theatres.24 Notwithstanding the merits of these accounts, in the following I suggest a slightly different view on this much-discussed catalogue as well as on Kleine’s role as promoter of educational film more generally. With regard to the catalogue, I will show that its effects on the wider use and circulation of educational films were negligible. It was not a successful business proposition, and – more importantly for our mapping of his career – neither was this Kleine’s intent. Issuing the catalogue had symbolic value, but its direct impact should not be overestimated. Neither should we overestimate the popularity of the types of films that were listed in the catalogue and labelled ‘educational’ (mostly non-fiction), or entertain the notion that Kleine somehow believed that these films were the future of American commercial cinema. In fact, Kleine operated under the assumption that educational films were relatively unpopular, and he did not believe that these could become standard fare in commercial

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movie theatres unless they were ‘sugar-coated’ by being attached to other and more popular types of motion pictures. He was convinced, however, that there was a potential market for so-called educational films outside of regular, commercial movie houses. The issuing of the catalogue in 1910 was his first step in this direction, and his first attempt to begin cultivating a non-theatrical market. The strongest evidence that Kleine began to discover – or construct – a non-theatrical field around 1910 was not the catalogue, but his plans for a separate, non-theatrical distribution network, which began to take shape at more or less the same time. He did not act on these plans in the early teens, however, presumably because his commercial exploitation of multi-reel feature films was his main priority in these years. In 1916, however, he realised that if there was a non-theatrical field, these very films could be retooled for this market when they were no longer in demand in regular movie theatres. This represented a second step in his cultivation of a non-theatrical field, manifested in the reissuing of a group of feature films under the banner ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’. This expanded the field to include not only short educational films, but also longer entertainment films. What was still lacking, however, was an infrastructure of nontheatrical production, distribution and exhibition. A few years later, towards the end of the 1910s, Kleine set out to address this problem. This led up to an experiment in non-theatrical distribution, in which extension divisions at state universities functioned as rental exchanges. The experiment did not live up to expectations, but marked another step towards the maturation of non-theatrical cinema as an autonomous formation. Across this chapter, we will explore how Kleine approached the non-theatrical field both as an emerging market and as an arena for alternative film culture. In terms of the book’s larger story, and American cinema’s wider cultural history, Kleine’s work in this area was a manifestation of a gradual bifurcation into a theatrical and non-theatrical branch. From the first appearance of motion pictures, they had been screened in a plethora of spaces, and used for a variety of purposes, but around 1910, Kleine and others started thinking about these contexts and uses as a larger entity, which was given the name ‘non-theatrical’. In Kleine’s case, this gradually developed into a vision of non-theatrical cinema as a unified, autonomous, alternative film cultural sphere, but as we will see, this vision proved to be difficult to reconcile with the matter-of-fact diversity of cinema as it developed outside the commercial mainstream. KLEINE’S 1910 CATALOGUE OF EDUCATIONAL MOTION PICTURE FILMS: FIRST STEPS TOWARDS A NON-THEATRICAL FIELD Kleine’s 1910 catalogue of educational films listed roughly 1,000 subjects, but very few of these were actually available for rental or purchase. Jennifer Peterson correctly notes that the Kleine Papers are ‘filled with letters of praise’ for Kleine’s catalogue,25 but there was also a slew of letters that evidence the difficulties in actually accessing the films. Several people, most of whom had nothing to do with the commercial film business, requested educational films listed in the catalogue, assuming that these were, in fact, available from Kleine or from local rental exchanges. Kleine’s replies show that most subjects were out of stock, which meant that new prints had to be ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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made on order; however, in most of these cases, the conclusion was that the potential business would not justify the expense.26 Thus, there was a catalogue of educational films, but not necessarily any films to circulate. As Kleine later wrote, ‘the films were not easily available’.27 This raises the question of his actual motivations for issuing the catalogue. It has been suggested that Kleine was looking to strike it rich with so-called educational films,28 and that he believed ‘travel films and other “educational” subjects represented the commercial future of the industry’.29 This does not apply to his issuing of the catalogue in 1910. Evidence in the Kleine Papers leaves little doubt that it was not a directly commercial proposition. Already in August 1909, Kleine anticipated that the catalogue would hardly bring much new business: ‘I have engaged a competent man to work on an educational catalogue and what with labor, printing bills, etc. it will probably cost us about $2,000 and will take years before this part of the business becomes profitable,’ he wrote to associates in Paris.30 So why did he issue the catalogue, then, if not for business reasons? The potential accumulation of goodwill would have been one reason. Peterson notes that the campaigns to promote non-fiction genres in 1910–13 coincided with various efforts to elevate the standing of the film industry.31 She also observes that for the film industry, the goal was profit, not uplift, but adds that this was nevertheless linked to various attempts to boost cinema’s cultural prestige and promote it as a respectable form in order to broaden the audience base, and hence increase profits.32 The catalogue could be useful for this purpose, while simultaneously working as a legitimacy strategy for Kleine’s business organisation. The reputation of the Motion Picture Patents Company might also have figured into the equation.33 We learned in Chapter 1 that Kleine recognised the importance of managing the MPPC’s public image by friendly cooperation with the daily press, among others. As he remarked in hindsight, ‘Spoor, Selig and G. K. spent material sums in those days for ads in daily papers to impress the public with the growing dignity of the Moving Pictures.’34 Perhaps the catalogue is best seen as a book-length ad vouching for the dignity of Kleine, the MPPC and the motion pictures. The same logic had underpinned Kleine’s involvement in an earlier experiment in educational film, initiated in June 1909 by John Collier, the head of the National Board of Censorship (renamed the National Board of Review in 1916). Collier wanted to arrange special film screenings for schoolchildren in the New York area, and asked Kleine to compile ‘a series of programs’ of films that could fit ‘a broad application of the term “Educational”’, as Kleine put it35 In correspondence with the Edison Company, Kleine added the following analysis: I do not see any material profit in this proposition for ourselves … but I believe that the plan is important, because of its tendency to elevate the business, and to interest a number of people who may be at present indifferent or opposed to moving pictures.36

If nothing else, Kleine’s promotion of educational films helped elevate his own standing – he did, indeed, receive a lot of praise for this work.37 In the unlikely event that he would receive direct income from sale or rental of the films listed in the catalogue, this would have been pure velvet. His imports had already been very profitable in the period before 1910.38 But these educational/non-fiction films had

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almost invariably been sold and rented as split reels, on which they were combined with narrative fiction films. As Kleine later wrote, the great demand for comedies and dramas in the heyday of the nickelodeon presented ‘a chance to sugarcoat a long series of short scenics, industrials and topicals, by tacking them on to comedies or dramas, and refusing to split the reel’.39 He saw this as a way to change the public’s taste by ‘holding its nose and forcing “education” down its throat in homeopathic doses’.40 The trope of ‘sugar-coating’ is recurrent in Kleine’s discourse on educational film. In a speech he delivered on 20 April 1922 at the Annual Meeting of the National University Extension Association (later published as part of the proceedings under the title ‘Cooperation in Visual Instruction’),41 Kleine claimed that in the period around 1913, educational subjects ‘were about as welcome as a bitter pill to a child, [and] we had to sugar-coat the dose by tying it to another type of film, usually a popular short comedy or drama, and then these twins were not sold separately’.42 In the same speech, he describes how he would sometimes cut over 1,000 feet of educational films into two parts in order to place them onto split reels.43 He also tried to release a full reel of purely educational material, much to his customers’ chagrin: When, by way of experiment, we released a full reel containing two unusually interesting subjects of the non-theatrical type, on March 29, 1911, one of these showing ‘Japanese Catching Fish with Cormorants,’ 528 feet, the other, ‘Dr. Charcot’s Trip to the South Pole,’ 378 feet, many exchanges that received these prints under the standing order system warned us not to repeat the offense.44

Regardless of what exhibitors and audiences really thought of non-fiction and other educational films, Kleine had been instrumental in bringing many such subjects into nickelodeons. But the work he began by issuing his Catalogue of Educational Motion Picture Films in 1910 was not part of a campaign to make such films the commercial future of the industry, but a way of detecting whether there might be a secondary, nontheatrical market for them, and whether this market had potential to develop further, with educational films as a staple commodity. In August 1910, a few months after the catalogue had been sent out, Kleine wrote to H. F. Moore, Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, who had expressed interest in it. In this letter, Kleine stated that the catalogue could be seen as an attempt to keep some of his old subjects alive, but he also added, We hope in the course of time to establish a series of rental depots which will make a specialty of Educational subjects with the purpose of renting them to Educational institutions and exhibitors other than theatrical. This, however, is a laborious and expensive matter, and our plans have not yet been definitely formulated.45

In 1913, aligning with this, Kleine described his ‘missionary’ activities in 1910 in the educational field as an attempt to popularise educational films and to ‘encourage the forming of so-called “libraries”’.46 It seems clear that the catalogue marked the beginning of a shift from ‘educational films’ to ‘non-theatrical cinema’, rather than the start of a campaign to place nonfiction at the core of the commercial film industry. As we will discuss later in the ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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chapter, in the 1920s, Kleine made an effort to actually establish something akin to the ‘rental depots’ and ‘libraries’ he had called for a decade earlier. This was a continuation of the work he had begun in 1910, not a new departure, and another step towards the establishing of non-theatrical cinema as a field separate from the commercial-theatrical side of the motion picture business. We could add that the catalogue also contributed to a discursive construction of an autonomous ‘field’ for the types of film that could be labelled ‘educational’. This process can be more clearly traced to the trade papers. For instance, Moving Picture World inaugurated a regular column titled ‘In the Educational Field’ in January 1911, and there was a general surge of articles in the trade press about ‘educational’ film in 1911.47 These articles helped disseminate the notion of an educational ‘field’, but they also reflect a widespread and genuine belief in the cultural value of educational films, and the power of the motion picture to educate, cultivate and uplift audiences. There is no reason to doubt that Kleine, on some level, shared the same convictions. But it is also important to recognise how nebulously and strategically he used the designation ‘educational film’ and appealed to the ‘educational’ power of the moving image, depending on context and purpose. In public, he normally expressed views that aligned with the positive reform discourse that emphasised the educational value of motion pictures, and how this could potentially be used for good. At other times, Kleine’s reasons for touting the educational value of movies were more directly driven by self-interest. For instance, in 1913, he attempted to convince the Ways and Means Committee in the US House of Representatives that importation of not only strictly educational films, but all kinds of ‘moving picture film negatives, exposed and developed’, should be admitted into the United States duty free because of their ‘artistic or educational nature’.48 Kleine made a distinction between ‘photoplays’, which ‘include all subjects posed before the camera, whether dramatic, comedy, etc., involving the evolution of some tale or story’, and ‘subjects not photoplays, such as travel, industrial, historical, geographical, microscopic, surgical and other topics, visualised for entertainment or instruction’.49 In other words, the distinction between ‘photoplays’ and ‘not photoplays’ was not based on the presumption that one was meant to entertain and the other to instruct. Several years later, when Kleine was planning a reissue of Cines’ 1914 film Julius Caesar, he tried to avoid the Ohio censors’ inspection fee that was based on a distinction between ‘educational’ and ‘theatrical’ films. Since the reissue was pitched to non-theatrical customers, normal Ohio censorship regulations did not apply, Kleine argued.50 In this case, then, an ‘educational’ film was here defined by the exhibition context rather than any formal or generic qualities. This seems to have been Kleine’s main idea in the 1920s, which led him to reconsider earlier uses of the term: During a period of years the term ‘Educational’ was misapplied in the industry to almost any subjects not dramatic, including travel, industrial, religious, and scientific topics. … Not until many years later was the use of films in churches and schools frequent.51

The earlier association of ‘educational film’ with anything ‘not dramatic’ aligns with Peterson’s suggestion that around 1910, ‘educational film’ generally designated what we would now refer to as ‘non-fiction’.52 Yet Kleine’s 1910 catalogue listed several dramatic

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films. While there was widespread support for ‘educational film’ in the motion picture industry and among reformers, the nebulosity of the term also indicates that this could mean different things to different people. Slightly rephrased, the notion that motion pictures had educational value and potential was widely shared, partly because the term ‘educational’ could be made to fit many different agendas.

A TRANSITIONAL CASE: ‘GEORGE KLEINE’S CYCLE OF FILM CLASSICS’ In late 1912, Kleine began de-prioritising issues relating to educational films to focus on multi-reel features, putting his work with educational films practically on hold until 1916. By then, Kleine had become convinced that there was a demand for such films, but that the field was unprofitable: ‘One may spend years of time and large sums of money in making or assembling subjects especially adapted for this work, with no adequate returns in sight.’53 Nevertheless, he had decided to launch one more trial, declaring, I am going to make another experiment in addition to the many I have made in the past, which will involve grouping all of the long classic subjects that we have in our stock, offering to run them in a course. This will be advertised in a way unusual in the film business.54

A few months later, in May 1916, ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’ was released. The ‘Cycle of Classics’ consisted of eight commercial feature films originally released for the theatrical market. Quo Vadis?, the sensation of 1913, was the centrepiece, but the Cycle also included the subsequent string of Italian imports that Kleine had exploited in 1913–14, including The Last days of Pompeii, Antony and Cleopatra, Spartacus, Othello, The Lion of Venice (Ambrosio, 1914) and Julius Caesar. An eighth picture, Edison’s 1915 adaptation of Vanity Fair, completed the Cycle. This project was reminiscent of Kleine’s 1910 Catalogue of Educational Motion Picture Films in the sense that it also represented a business strategy predicated on repackaging, reissuing and rebranding. But this was not only a business strategy; it also reflected a more widespread ambition around this time to discover and promote the value of ‘old’ (i.e. commercially exhausted) motion pictures, and to develop practices for film collecting, which in turn were underpinned by various discourses on the cultural value of film. As mentioned already, Kleine aimed to advertise the Cycle in an ‘unusual’ manner. He wanted something extraordinary that would distinguish the Cycle as ‘high-class’, and he hired the author Rupert Hughes for this purpose. The result was a leather-bound, sixty-four-page promotional book. If nothing else, this scheme appealed to commentators in the trade press. Moving Picture World declared, ‘The book is the gospel of the screen’s higher destiny’, and took it as a sign that ‘the motion picture has made marvelous strides of progress’.55 Motion Picture News talked of an ‘excellent step forward’, and the editor wrote to Kleine to proclaim that the book was ‘the finest piece of literature [he had] yet seen in this field’.56 Most of the book’s sixtyfour pages offered detailed plot descriptions, but there was also an introduction that presented the ideas behind the Cycle, and a concluding section with suggestions of how to programme the ‘classics’ and how to get the local community involved. ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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In 1916, a film ‘classic’ could refer to a film adaptation of an esteemed work of literature or drama, or to films that dealt with the history of ancient Greece or Rome.57 Several films in the Cycle fit one or both of these interpretations. For instance, Julius Caesar and Othello were both based on Shakespeare, at least in part, which is significant in several respects. William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson have analysed Vitagraph’s earlier Shakespeare films in terms of the intertextually charged reception context, but also in terms of ‘uplift’, and how a cinematic appropriation of bourgeois subject matter served to attract a middle-class audience and improve the reputation of motion pictures.58 A similar framework seems to apply to Kleine’s series of ‘classics’. Indeed, the promotional material makes clear that the Cycle was designed precisely to merge the two missions of having ‘better films’ attract the ‘better classes’ and of bringing ‘high’ art to the ‘lower classes’. Or, in the words of the booklet, the Cycle was catering to ‘influential individuals’59 and ‘serious-minded persons’,60 but it also underscored the mass appeal of the films: ‘The educational message these beautiful films carry has been absorbed by people of every race and creed in almost every city, town and hamlet.’61 Poster for Julius Caesar screening at the Lewis Theatre [1922?]. Copy in the George Kleine Collection in the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division

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The promulgation of ‘high’ art by means of a distinctly modern mass medium such as film potentially harboured a contradiction, but as Rob King points out, the ‘quality films’ of the mid-1910s (which included Kleine’s ‘classics’) were less about catering to a refined elite than about the ‘broad circulation of approved texts and genres across diverse taste publics’.62 Shakespeare was especially useful at this juncture, an abundantly obvious part of the selective tradition, with ‘established centrality’ in all institutions of cultural reproduction.63 At the same time, Shakespeare had also long been part of a distinctly popular cultural context, before processes of sacralisation and distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow set in (as Lawrence Levine discusses).64 Somehow, Shakespeare ended up becoming at once the most elitist and the most populist author in the western canon. Literary scholar John Guillory asks, ‘Is it not Shakespeare who signifies high culture to all of us, whether experienced in the theater, the movies, on PBS, or endlessly redacted in any and every medium, high and low?’65 The other sense of the word ‘classic’, pointing to the Cycle’s potential uses in classical education, was understated at first, but this link gained new currency when the same films were again reissued via state universities in the 1920s. Meanwhile, the promotional book that accompanied the Cycle’s May 1916 release gave an explicit definition of the term ‘classic’ that was much closer to the present-day sense of the word: ‘We call them “classics,” and we use the term advisedly. Literature, music, sculpture, has its classics; its masterpieces, if you please, and so has this newer art.’66 The attempt to canonise these films as ‘motion picture masterpieces’ of enduring artistic value was unsuccessful for several reasons, but this definition of the term ‘classic’ indicates an investment in a notion of film as ‘art’. At the same time, the Cycle also straddled the categories of entertainment and education. The films on offer were originally produced for entertainment purposes and for the theatrical market, and the Cycle was a commercial proposition, but one that was cloaked in a discourse on the educational power of film. The publicity book explained a learning process in which the ‘mind pictures’ of the producer translated into knowledge through a seemingly unmediated chain of communication, with permanent results, and to the greater good of all mankind: Knowledge finds its line of least resistance through the eye – the succession of moving pictures are the mind pictures of the film producer. Our eye takes them up and in the process of transfer to the brain they become part of our conscious knowledge. If the producer’s effort is serious, a work of incalculable good is done, for the motion-picture audience is the largest in the world. … Impressions received this way are permanent.67

These were general ideas about the pedagogical possibilities presumed to be innate and specific to the medium of film, and are reminiscent of ideas we came across at the beginning of this chapter in the excerpts from Hugo Münsterberg’s The Photoplay. But the book also suggested that there was one educational genre above the rest: the ‘historical film novel’. The ‘classics’ were entertainment films, then, but also examples of the ‘most successful [type of] educational picture’.68 This combination of entertainment and education was paralleled by a double address to theatrical markets and a non-theatrical audience. The suggested exhibition strategies make this duality clear. Three plans were outlined, all predicated on the idea ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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Proofs of advertisement in the Classical Journal for George Kleine, February 1929. Copy in the George Kleine Papers, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division

that educators, churchmen and local community associations would cooperate with the ‘most progressive’ exhibitor in town to screen the ‘classics’.69 In other words, the Cycle was packaged and promoted as educational and targeted a different public, but the films were entertainment features to be screened in theatrical venues. This might seem contradictory, but it can be seen as a symptom of the transformation of American cinema around this time. As suggested earlier in this chapter, the idea of a non-theatrical field dated back to around 1910, but the packaging of Kleine’s ‘Cycle of Film Classics’ indicates that by 1916, the actual division of American cinema into theatrical and non-theatrical branches was progressing through trial and error, and without enduring and institutionalised practices to rely on. The promotion of the Cycle recognised the existence of a non-theatrical field, but no infrastructure to accommodate its interests – hence the reliance on local movie theatres. In this way, the Cycle was lodged in between paradigms – between an established and an emergent formation of cinema – which explains the amalgamation of theatrical and nontheatrical elements, of commercial and non-commercial appeal. The packaging of the Cycle was one thing, while the actual practice of showing it was another. I have found no evidence to indicate that screenings of the Cycle ever took place according to any of the three methods outlined in the promotional book. But some of the individual films nevertheless had long careers. Julius Caesar, for example, was screened in high schools in Wyoming, Pennsylvania and elsewhere as late as May 1930.70 From the launch of the Cycle in 1916 and up to this point in 1930, the Caesar film – as well as other ‘classics’ – had played in numerous high schools, smalltown theatres, universities, Latin clubs, churches, Boy Scout clubs and military camps – to name some of the exhibition sites. The Cycle was used, then, but not exactly in the ways its promoters had imagined. In this sense, it was not so much a ‘cycle’ as a small-scale ‘motion picture library’. Indeed, when Kleine’s ‘Film Classics’ were reissued again in 1921, it was as part of the ‘George Kleine Library of Classic and Modern Productions’.71 As the name indicates, this ‘film library’ had expanded beyond the original few ‘classics’. This was one of many ‘motion picture libraries’ that began to appear in the United States in the 1910s. The 140

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term referred to a range of practices and business models that were all somehow related to making non-theatrical use of old motion pictures. Sometimes, ‘film libraries’ resulted from the cooperation between public libraries and people with ties to the motion picture business. For instance, as Jennifer Horne has shown, around 1914, the National Board of Review set out to feed public libraries with educational films that were perceived to ‘congest’ the commercial film traffic. As Horne puts it, the hope was to create a ‘stable, state-supported, distribution system for that second-class category of film, films the National Board of Review would later refer to as “by-products of the entertainment film”’.72 The problem of non-theatrical distribution is something that many others – including Kleine – would return to later on. Meanwhile, most ‘film libraries’ of the 1910s offered a limited and somewhat inconsistent supply; in general, the field was scattered and disorganised, and the volume of operations relatively small. But taken as a whole, the ‘motion picture library’ idea and its different applications represent some of the first attempts to organise collections of old motion pictures. As Haidee Wasson has shown, viewing old films was an oddity at the time, and, in fact, into the 1930s.73 Neither were there any institutionalised practices of preserving films for posterity. The appearance of ‘motion picture libraries’ of various kinds – including Kleine’s Cycle – was a strong indicator that the cultural status of motion pictures was changing. Simply put, it was increasingly acknowledged that (some) movies had not only commercial, but also cultural value. This provided a rationale for seeing them, and for saving them – regardless of their potential in the marketplace. With regard to Kleine’s Cycle, the cultural value of the ‘classics’ was also a selling point, so we could say that their cultural value also gave them commercial value – a common kind of intra-capital conversion. But the Cycle was also a mixed model of the most typical ways of thinking about film and cultural value in the mid-1910s, pledging multiple allegiance to notions of film as historical record, educational tool and art form. With regard to the first, Kleine strongly asserted that the historical accuracy of the ‘classics’ – especially Julius Caesar – was perfect, down to the smallest detail.74 In a way, this echoed an idea that had appeared alongside motion pictures – namely, that film could be seen as a new kind of historical document, based on its capacity to record and store reality and thereby function as a kind of archive in itself. Paula Amad labels this conception of the medium – or this particular ‘media fantasy’ – the ‘archival imaginary’.75 In this theory, film could be used to record and compile an encyclopedia of everyday life (although in practice, however, saving films at all was unusual in early cinema). Kleine’s ‘classics’ offered historical fiction rather than documentation, and they belonged to an artistic regime far removed from the recordings of everyday life, but this only shows that the case for film as a historiographic technique that was culturally valuable could come in different shapes. As we have seen, Kleine also argued that the historical film was the supreme educational genre. In addition, the publicity for the ‘Cycle of Film Classics’ outlined a more general theory about the educational power of moving images. Such general ideas had also appeared very early on, but intensified when the nickelodeon boom stimulated a cascade of attacks on the movies. The assumed educational potential of film, and its capacity to ‘uplift’ audiences, bestowed it with a degree of cultural value that made it less vulnerable to these attacks. For the reissuing of his old feature films, Kleine found a new context for the application of the same basic ideas. ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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Finally, Kleine tried to canonise the ‘classics’ as masterpieces of cinema. Hereby, he invoked a notion of film as art that explicitly engaged with the history of the medium itself, thus differentiating slightly between this idea about film’s cultural value and the two discussed above. At the time of the Cycle’s initial release, discourses on film as art had been in sway for a long time (again, such ideas seem to have been around since the beginnings of cinema). But there were no masterpieces of cinema in 1916, and Kleine’s nomination of a few candidates fell on deaf ears. Even if this particular attempt was doomed to fail anyway, it was also premature, since a conception of film art was not yet institutionalised. This happened later, in the 1920s and 30s, through the strategic cooperation between the movie industry and a host of cultural institutions, most notably universities and museums, all of which could capitalise on a notion of film as art – in different ways and in different forms of capital.76 In the same process, roughly speaking, a basic canon and basic protocols for film appreciation developed. As mentioned, these ideas provided a rationale for seeing the films in the Cycle, but also for saving them. In this sense, the Cycle represented an idea of a film archive, if not an actual archive. As many cinema historians note, this idea, too, appeared at the same time as the film medium.77 They also note that it was not until much later, in the late 1920s or early 30s, that film preservation was established as an institutionalised practice. Whatever lies in between is addressed in terms of tragic loss and described as a kind of obstacle course, where the crassness of the motion picture industry and the inertia of politicians make up the most significant ‘stumbling blocks’.78 This implies that film historians have usually ascribed to a view of film preservation and archiving as a commonsensical, moral imperative. As Caroline Frick points out in her book Saving Cinema, ‘The most common refrain is that film has inherent value as vital cultural heritage.’79 What the analysis of the ‘Cycle of Film Classics’ shows is that whatever values were assumed to make (some) old motion pictures worth saving – and seeing again – these were not inherent at all, but subject to an ongoing negotiation.

AN EXPERIMENT IN NON-THEATRICAL DISTRIBUTION: THE INSTITUTIONAL FILM EXCHANGES As had been the case with the 1910 Catalogue of Educational Motion Picture Films, the release of the Cycle in May 1916 generated small if any financial returns in the short run. By October 1916, Kleine had already begun to concentrate more on the material obstacles that he believed had to be overcome in order to establish non-theatrical cinema as an enduring and vital formation – culturally and economically. He had grown convinced that distribution was the key, and that this problem could, in fact, be solved, but only if non-theatrical customers were both willing and able to pay a rental price for films that was high enough to cover the cost of the labour involved in producing, collecting and circulating the films.80 This premise was the foundation of his next experiment in non-theatrical cinema: establishing a nationwide system for non-theatrical distribution via state universities on a ‘sound commercial basis’.81 Already in 1910, Kleine had hoped that his catalogue would stimulate the establishment of ‘rental depots’ for the non-theatrical market.82 In February 1911, he again addressed the problem of how to supply educators, lecturers and institutions

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with educational films, and suggested a similar idea – that such groups get together to acquire ‘a library of films to be interchanged’ between them.83 In March 1912, he argued that the best way to get educational subjects out to a bigger audience and a larger market is ‘to have a number of supply stations from which films of this [educational] character will be shipped out on rental’.84 In the years that followed, Kleine was busy tending to other affairs, but after the dismantling of K-E-S-E (see Chapter 3), and his de facto withdrawal from the commercial motion picture industry, he was looking with renewed interest towards the non-theatrical field. The field appeared to have matured, but Kleine was still wary regarding its commercial potential. In September 1919 he wrote, ‘There has been an apparent pressure for Educational films during the last ten years, but every test that we have made indicates that this demand is more apparent than real and does not react commercially.’85 Even so, plans for an experiment in non-theatrical distribution on a national scale began to develop seriously the very same month. Kleine had recently sent a circular ‘to all State superintendents of schools of the United States’ to gauge the interest and capacity of schools to integrate motion pictures as an aid in visual instruction.86 C. P. Cary, school superintendent of the state of Wisconsin, forwarded Kleine’s letter to Professor William H. Dudley,87 who would become the key liaison between Kleine and the state universities. At this juncture, Dudley was in charge of the Bureau of Visual Instruction (established in 1914) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and he had also worked for the Visual Instruction Section of the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC. His role within this government organisation was to assist universities across the US in organising departments of visual instruction within already existing extension divisions – Information material issued by the Bureau of Visual Instruction at the University of Indiana, ca. 1924. Copy in the George Kleine Papers, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division

‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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following the model Dudley himself had designed at the University of Wisconsin. Broadly speaking, this work was inspired by the ‘Wisconsin Idea’, which stipulated that university research and education should be extended beyond the boundaries of campus, to the benefit of all citizens of the state. As research by Alex Kupfer shows, from the 1910s onwards, film became an increasingly important means of connecting campus to community, and an increasingly important contributor to the realisation of the Progressive ‘service ideal’ that the Wisconsin Idea represented.88 On the institutional level, this development manifested itself in the government-supported instalment of bureaus of visual instruction within extension divisions. Accordingly, when Kleine made contact with Dudley in 1919, extension divisions at a number of state universities were already hosting film libraries (often, but not always, managed via a special department for visual instruction). These film libraries catered to campus needs, but the films were also made available to a range of other non-theatrical venues. Dudley and Kleine seemed to make a good match, given their shared enthusiasm for visual instruction and educational film, and had actually been in touch on and off since 1894.89 When they reconnected in September 1919, they began to discuss how the motion picture distribution operations already in place at the state universities could be expanded and improved, and what could be gained by hooking up the extension divisions to motion picture suppliers like Kleine. It took Kleine and Dudley two years to inaugurate the experiment with ‘institutional film exchanges’.90 In the meantime, Dudley had been instrumental in the creation of the National Academy of Visual Instruction (NAVI), an offshoot of the National University Extension Association (NUEA), in which he was also a driving force.91 He was elected NAVI’s first president in July 1920. About a year later, in June 1921, Kleine sent a proposition and a ‘survey of the national situation’ to Dudley.92 Further meetings were held, the plan refined and, finally, on 15 July, Dudley sent a formal letter to twelve institutional members of NAVI, outlining Kleine’s proposition.93 The basic idea was to initiate an experiment to determine whether the institutional members of the Academy, primarily extension divisions at state universities, could establish what they came to refer to as ‘institutional exchanges’, each exchange representing a nodal point in a national film distribution network.94 Kleine’s contribution was to supply them with a selection of his films, culled mainly from two groups: the Italian features he had imported and circulated in the mid-1910s (subsequently repackaged as ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’);95 and the Conquest pictures, a mixture of feature films, one-reel comedies and educational short subjects, originally produced by the Edison Co. and distributed by Kleine as a series of preconstituted educational film programmes.96 To begin with, prints would be deposited at six of the National Academy’s institutional members, or, more specifically, at the six extension divisions that were already the most active in film distribution. These exchanges would distribute the films to non-theatrical customers on a commercial basis, but at relatively low rental prices. They were to retain between 30 and 35 per cent, with the rest of the revenues going back to Kleine. No cash guarantees or minimum volumes of rentals were stipulated. Drawing on the results of the six pilot institutions, the experiment would expand until the goal of establishing one institutional exchange in each of the United States had been accomplished. The primary aims of the experiment were to arouse interest in the educational uses of motion pictures and to stabilise and standardise non-theatrical film distribution,

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but it also set out to address a range of problems in the non-theatrical field. Chief among those was the ‘supply problem’, which involved figuring out what types of motion pictures were suitable for the non-theatrical market and where to find such films. The standardisation of distribution was in and of itself part of the solution. As Kleine wrote to Dudley, The recurrent difficulty is an adequate and economic system of distribution. [The National Academy of Visual Instruction], operating in every State, will solve this problem. … [T]here are in existence large stocks of suitable films, but scattered and disorganized. These will flow to your members.97

But Kleine and others also recognised that, even though there were suitable films available, the variety and volume were not sufficient. Kleine and Dudley suggested that the National Academy appoint a group of ‘experts to lay out film courses that would accompany standardized text books or courses of instruction in schools, colleges, and universities’.98 These experts were to consider the production and purchase of suitable films, and the acquisition of distribution rights, ‘under a plan and system that is coherent and consecutive’, and adopted ‘for an entire educational system’.99 The idea was to supply the non-theatrical field not only with ‘pedagogical subjects, but with others of a semi-educational or purely entertainment nature’, too.100 Kleine’s emphasis on entertainment films was motivated by self-interest, but the idea that the non-theatrical field should embrace entertainment films was not uncommon at the time, and had been promoted, for example, in the editorial pages of Educational Screen.101 Dudley, too, had argued as early as 1914 that the non-theatrical field could play an important role in the promotion of ‘better’ entertainment films, an idea he still adhered to in 1921.102 As Kleine saw it, the difference between the theatrical and non-theatrical fields did not reside in any ‘generic difference in the type of film exhibited’, but in the places of exhibition.103 On the other hand – in the same article for the Morning Telegraph – he argued that ideally, the non-theatrical field should ‘confine itself to an entirely different stock produced for its own use’.104 This was motivated by the demand for tailor-made pedagogical subjects; but in addition, the entertainment films required for the non-theatrical market were not exactly of the same kind as those made for the regular theatrical market. The types of film did distinguish the two fields, then, but the key distinction was not between education and entertainment. As far as Kleine’s own additions to the experiment went, he labelled these films as ‘instructive entertainment’, rather than as ‘strictly pedagogical’.105 Kleine argued that the non-theatrical field should be self-supporting in terms of production. There were sources of supply, but these were unreliable. The entertainment films from the theatrical market that were also suitable for the non-theatrical market were too often poor-quality, second-hand prints.106 Films supplied by industrial firms were meant to advertise rather than educate, Kleine pointed out.107 The US government offered films free of charge, but not with enough consistency or according to a coherent plan. The alternative that Kleine proposed was to establish what he referred to as a ‘sound commercial basis’,108 by which he meant to establish the non-theatrical field as a durable and profitable economic enterprise within a market economic framework. He argued, ‘Commercialism must enter in connection ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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with the production of films and to maintain these [exchanges] upon a self-supporting basis.’109 A cornerstone assumption was that film-exhibiting customers would pay a fair rental price, so an important goal of the experiment was to ‘[convert the] users to the idea that film service is a material thing that must be paid for, just as schools, colleges, libraries, etc. pay for other things of value’.110 The average rental would be small, but thanks to the great number of potential customers, the exchanges would be able to cover distribution expenses and accumulate a surplus that could be used to acquire additions to the film library and to finance the production of new films – especially if the institutional exchanges pooled their resources and exercised the power of ‘cooperative buying’.111 Gradually, a non-theatrical market of enormous volume would develop, Kleine predicted. For producers, this meant that the cost of production could be prorated over thousands and thousands of schools, churches, clubs, and so on, reducing risk and warranting investment. Eventually, a self-supporting commercial system along these lines would relieve the non-theatrical field from the unfortunate reliance on the industry and the government.112 Kleine’s devotion to commercialism was a logical extension of his career and his earlier efforts in educational cinema, according to which missionary work and market considerations had always gone hand in hand. Also, a few months into the ‘institutional exchange’ experiment, it seems that Kleine had begun to reconsider his views regarding the profitability of the non-theatrical field, even suggesting that this market would someday outsize the theatrical market for motion pictures: ‘Intensified distribution will meet with a demand so extensive as to over-shadow the noisy theatrical demand for films,’ he wrote to Thomas Edison in November 1921.113 With the above goals in mind, six pilot institutions were chosen: the University of California, Berkeley; University of Florida; University of Kentucky; University of Utah; the Washington State University; and the University of Kansas.114 Prints were shipped to these institutions in July and August 1921, and by early 1922, another five had joined the experiment. Another six were added later the same season – bringing the tally up to a total of seventeen institutional exchanges handling Kleine films, sixteen of which were featured in an ad that appeared in Classical Weekly in February 1922.115 According to one estimate, these exchanges served territories covering twenty-four states and a population of forty million people.116 Three more joined at the tail end of the year, and over the next few seasons, some dropped out while others enrolled. A total of twentyfour institutions had participated at one point or another by the late 1920s.117 The number of Kleine prints handled and the volume of business varied considerably. The Department of Visual Instruction at Berkeley was by far the most active, accounting for about 23 per cent of Kleine’s shares of the revenues during the first season of the experiment.118 The second and third most active were the University of Wisconsin and the University of Utah. North Carolina and Washington State were also fairly active, whereas business in states such as Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota and Oklahoma were minuscule. This reflects uneven geographic, demographic and organisational conditions, but differences in volume, and different strategies from one exchange to the next, were part and parcel of the experiment. As Kleine himself noted, one exchange had received 120 subjects and a total of 218 reels of film, whereas the operation in Ohio was limited to one man, Professor Victor D. Hill at the Latin Department at Ohio University, distributing two prints of Julius Caesar.119

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Advertisement for Julius Caesar. From Educational Screen, December 1922

Proofs of advertisement in Classical Weekly for George Kleine, February 1922. Copy in the George Kleine Papers, the Library of Congress Manuscript Division

A summary of the first season’s activities stated that there had been 699 subjects and a total of 1,405 reels in circulation.120 Julius Caesar was the most heavily circulated film, accounting for a total of 244 engagements across the United States.121 But the total volume of business was not exactly mind-boggling; Kleine’s total share of revenues from all the institutional exchanges over the first season amounted to $13,120, which was not enough to cover the production cost of even a modest feature film (especially taking overhead costs into account). He still concluded that the season had been a success – not from a commercial perspective, but as an experiment. Although production investment was far from viable at this point, they had every reason to believe that as more and more potential customers became actual customers, the goals would be accomplished. When Kleine addressed the Seventh Annual Meeting of the NUEA, his message was optimistic, ‘The non-theatrical business will develop separately and autonomously, and will cease to be a tail to the theatrical kite, an undignified position, which frankness compels us to admit it has held in the past.’122 To a degree, the statement resonated with reality. Signs of an increasingly stable and sustainable non-theatrical field were actually visible at this juncture, in the form of a proliferation of periodicals, organisations and catalogues dedicated to visual instruction and educational film.123 The issue for Kleine, however, was whether it was possible to establish an economically self-sufficient system of distribution and production. Revenues from the institutional exchanges did not increase during the 1922–3 season, but they only fell by a few hundred dollars compared to the previous year. By the end of the 1925–6 season, however, Kleine’s income had dropped to about $5,000 ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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per year, a level that was slightly improved over the next season, in spite of the University of Oregon pulling out. The final two years of the experiment saw Kleine’s income decrease to about $2,000 annually, and the number of participants go down to nine. The trend was obvious, and it is safe to say that the experiment did not live up to the high commercial expectations. There are a host of explanations for this, including occasional conflicts with local theatrical interests, lack of equipment, poor storage facilities and other practical problems.124 Also, all of Kleine’s films were printed on 35mm nitrate stock, which meant that safety concerns prevented their distribution in certain places, and he was very slow to adapt to the emerging 16mm market.125 But a more serious problem had to do with the content of the films. Their appeal wore off with novelty, similar to the patterns of diminishing returns in the theatrical market. As Russell F. Egner, Kleine’s associate at the University of Utah put it in September 1925, ‘While Mr. Kleine may not receive the revenue that he should have, or wants to have, I sometimes think he is fortunate to get anything out of some of the antiquated productions.’126 The ideal product for the non-theatrical market would lend itself to repeated use, school year after school year, but it seems that only a few of Kleine’s films lived up to this ideal, and they also faced competition from the newer entertainment films that most of the exchanges brought in on a regular basis from other sources.127 Such reliance on other sources was not part of the plan, which instead was aimed towards the production and acquisition of new subjects. But these functions, as well as the solutions to various practical problems, were dependent on either the reinvestment of accumulated profits or on institutional support. According to Kleine, the whole experiment was hampered by a lack of institutional support for the extension divisions’ efforts to build film libraries and circulate the movies. ‘None of [the institutional exchanges] receive appropriations that permit the widespread service that they should logically offer, both educational and recreational,’ he claimed in January 1925.128 But this was an afterthought. At the outset of the experiment, production and acquisition had been seen as a natural outcome of market logics, as somehow inherent to the ‘sound commercial basis’. But the experiment never reached the expected volume, and the profits never came close to the amounts needed for production investment. The main reason for this, as Kleine saw it, was the low Advertisement for George Kleine Motion Pictures. From Educational Screen, November 1924

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willingness to pay. This reluctance was the cause of much frustration at various stages throughout his career, and Kleine regarded the non-theatrical field as crowded with people who wanted something for nothing. He went so far as to argue, ‘Many nontheatrical users [had] been parasites.’129 Kleine’s engagement in the non-theatrical field persisted, as did his devotion to commercialism as its founding principle, in spite of the repeated and apparent hopelessness of this proposition, and in spite of his own conflicted views on the matter. But, as we have seen, his motives were not purely commercial. Later on, Arthur Edwin Krows wrote in the Educational Screen that Kleine was driven by ‘a sufficient number of altruistic reasons in addition to the commercial motives which skeptics who never knew the man will recognize first’.130 It would probably be more accurate to say that Kleine operated under a generalised ideology of business, according to which profit and progress were not mutually exclusive, but to some extent logically complementary. Unfortunately for Kleine, as it turned out, this ideological baggage was not carried into the sphere of extension education without some friction. The solution that he set forth for the non-theatrical field was in essence a market solution – an attempt to harness non-theatrical cinema to the institution of the market. But when Kleine talked about the ‘market’ – his ‘sound commercial basis’ – he was not merely referring to a socio-material arrangement that facilitated repeated transactions between rational buyers and sellers – he was also putting a premium on factors such as ‘competitiveness’ and ‘efficiency’.131 In his dealings with the institutional exchanges, he kept bumping into completely different evaluative protocols, rooted in a completely different institution, i.e. the university. From Kleine’s perspective, many of the extension division representatives were utterly incompetent when it came to standard business procedures (proper handling of order forms, invoices, reports, cash remittances, etc.). This comment regarding the Agricultural College of Mississippi’s mishandling of a shipment sums up his view: ‘We have had no notice from them, which follows the usual efficiency of the highbrow when he is mixed up with a business transaction.’132 From time to time, lack of proper business methods provoked Kleine to threaten to withdraw his prints from particularly slipshod exchanges.133 In the end, however, what was most discombobulating for Kleine was the mystery of how so many people and institutions could simultaneously value something highly yet were unwilling to pay its price. This clearly defied all market logics. Kleine’s cooperation with the institutional exchanges continued up to January 1930, when the last few prints were recalled. But any expectations of achieving the bold goals stipulated in 1921 had been abandoned years earlier. Already in January 1925, he had made an offer to Eastman-Kodak to sell his full catalogue of motion pictures for a lump sum of $200,000, promising to withdraw all prints from the institutional exchanges.134 The deal was never consummated. Extension divisions remained at the heart of non-theatrical film culture. Even though Kleine was one of the largest suppliers of films to these institutions for a few years in the 1920s, there were other sources of supply, and their work as non-theatrical film distributors continued to expand in spite of the diminishing popularity of his films. At least in successful institutions, such as the Bureau of Visual Instruction at the University of Wisconsin, the number of shipments steadily increased throughout the 1920s, reaching an ever-expanding audience, and there were more and more additions ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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to the film library from a growing number of sources.135 A persistent problem, however, was a lack of films made specifically for the classroom.136 Clearly, the motion pictures that Kleine had deposited with the institutional exchanges were not the solution, but this was not the point of his experiment. The aim was to explore whether the non-theatrical field could become economically self-sustainable, and hereby finance production of whatever films were in demand among non-theatrical customers. In the meantime, throughout the 1920s, the supply of films was somewhat random, although most films came from either the industry or the government. To the extent that there was an influx of films from commercial producers like Kleine, this was a result of the refashioning of the commercial motion picture business. As discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, commercial cinema was increasingly geared towards mass production, while simultaneously becoming a business of outliers. The blind search for these outliers – the breakaway hits – resulted in a surplus of useless films, shunned by audiences (if they ever reached the marketplace at all). Some of the subjects that ended up in this ‘slaughterhouse of cinema’137 were brought back to life in the non-theatrical field. This was the case with several of the films that Kleine offered to the institutional exchanges, including the Edison-produced Conquest pictures, which had been rejected by theatrical audiences almost immediately in 1917–18, and the costly Helen Keller biopic deliverance from 1919, which had also failed to find audience approval. His ‘Film Classics’ had done slightly better in the marketplace, some of them even turning a profit, but the one that would have the longest and most successful non-theatrical run – Julius Caesar – had originally been a box-office disappointment. Thanks to the institutional exchanges, these and other Kleine films were put to new uses, in new and different contexts, for new and different audiences. With this, they also earned back a little bit more of what they had once cost Kleine to produce or purchase. But they failed to fulfil his grander ambition: to prove that non-theatrical cinema could be built on a ‘sound commercial basis’.

REFORM DISCOURSES Business considerations were high on Kleine’s agenda, but this was not the only thing that had attracted him to the non-theatrical field. He was also convinced that nontheatrical cinema could serve as a platform for a reformation of American film culture at large. The background was Kleine’s growing discontent with the state of affairs in commercial cinema. Basically, he did not like the way the mainstream was developing, and he did not like Hollywood. By the early 1920s, he had come to believe that commercial cinema was dominated by motion pictures that were ‘highly spiced with sensationalism’,138 and full of ‘banalities …, hokum …, coarseness and … unrealities’.139 He denounced the many films he regarded as ‘super-sensational, [involving] the love triangle, or … in other ways objectionable’.140 Much of this echoed a line of critique that was commonly voiced around this time, according to which, Hollywood films were ‘cheap’ and offered too many images of ‘fast life’, ‘lawlessness’ and ‘debased womanhood’.141 Moral outrage over motion pictures was nothing new. In particular, the nickelodeon boom beginning in 1905 had been the cause of widespread concern over allegedly corruptive film content and morally unsanitary exhibition venues.142

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The immediate response came in the form of state intervention via local or state censorship boards, mass closures of nickelodeons and various forms of local ordinances regarding film exhibition sites. But there were also self-regulatory measures, most notably the establishing of the National Board of Censorship in 1909, a joint initiative of reformers within the People’s Institute in New York and the leading motion picture companies.143 Submitting motion pictures to the Board of Censorship was voluntary, not politically mandated, and Kleine and most other manufacturers and importers happily obliged.144 He supported the Board’s work and role in the motion picture business, and later argued that it belonged to the group of people and organisations that had contributed the most to motion picture progress.145 Kleine’s embrace of self-censorship and self-regulation emanated at least partly from his wariness of certain types of motion pictures. This scepticism was persistent throughout his career, and did not suddenly appear with Hollywood, or in the 1920s. For instance, in a 1914 interview in the New York American, Kleine made the following announcement: ‘I hate the sex films. … I should be sorry to let my daughter see such things. Heaven forbid that any son of mine, if I had one, should get his ideas on certain subjects from the “movies.”’146 In the same article, Kleine argued that some form of motion picture censorship was ‘absolutely necessary’. He lauded the work of the National Board of Censorship, but also stated that ‘in principle’, he approved of the kind of ‘rigid censorship’ practised in Chicago, too.147 Four years later, in 1918, Kleine was called as the first person to speak before the Chicago Motion Picture Commission, which had been formed to investigate how censorship should be exercised in Chicago.148 His opinions resembled the ones he had aired in the New York American four years earlier. Kleine argued that one could not trust the audience to ‘purify itself’, so some form of censorship was necessary.149 Although he preferred self-regulation to intervention, he thought the state should, indeed, intervene if ‘salacious’ pictures were on display.150 He again used his daughter Helen, sixteen years old by that time, as a point of reference, suggesting that any film he would allow Helen to see would be appropriate for public screening.151 Around the time of the 1914 interview quoted above, Kleine saw the ‘ultra sensational’ and ‘bizarre’ elements of some films as exceptions in a business that was generally conducted along morally decent lines; there was no reason to condemn the motion picture wholesale, he argued.152 By the time the Motion Picture Commission hearings took place in Chicago in 1918, he was less apologetic; and a few years later still, he was critical, bordering on hostile. His analysis of the particular features that made some films offensive remained intact, but what had changed by the early 1920s was that he had come to believe that indecency or insipidness were now the rule rather than the exception. Kleine’s views on censorship also changed. His previous approval – ‘in principle’ – of state-enforced censorship had been supplanted by a mistrust of the ways in which this was actually practised around the United States. In 1924, he argued that the ‘political censorship of the day [was] of doubtful merit’, and characterised the local forms of censorship that were actually in force as arbitrary and expensive, ‘frequently irresponsible and flippant’,153 even ‘farcical’.154 He had also lost faith in the film industry’s self-regulation, at least in the way it was now exercised by Hollywood itself, in the form of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA). This group had been established in 1922 with the purpose of managing film content as ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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well as the motion picture industry’s image in general. The former postmaster and Republican politician Will Hays was drafted in to lead the organisation, but Kleine tended to understand the formation and work of the MPPDA in terms of trade restrictions rather than cultural reform.155 Neither political ordinances nor self-regulation through the MPPDA appealed to Kleine, in other words, but he had detected another possible way to eliminate objectionable pictures: the cultivation of the non-theatrical field. By elevating the role of ‘experts’ and academics, the institutional exchanges that he was trying to establish at state universities would provide an ‘automatic stamp of approval’,156 assuring that all ‘vulgar, indecent or obscene’ elements had been eliminated and that the films could be safely shown to any audience.157 Kleine made a distinction between urban and rural audiences, arguing that the censoring function of the institutional exchanges would be of particular value in ‘small towns where social intimacy is deeper than in large cities’.158 In other words, in Kleine’s scheme, experts were to design and select the ideal product for the non-theatrical field according to their high cultural and moral standards. This contrasted with the commercial film industry’s catering to the fickle tastes of the ‘miscellaneous audience’. In fact, pandering to a mass audience was exactly what Kleine identified as Hollywood’s greatest flaw. On average, he argued, the mass audience had primitive taste, ‘clouded’ ethics and ‘underdeveloped’ culture, and it was only too predictable that the product would assume the same characteristics if supply was adjusted to meet this demand.159 Kleine’s solution has a familiar ring to it: develop a presumably ‘high-class’ product and cater primarily to an elite class of ‘film lovers’, to use his phrase.160 As he saw it, ‘Institutional distribution, if organized throughout the U.S., will be in a position to cater to the better elements … and establish a standard both cultural and ethical that must eventually win its way to the masses.’161

WAYS OF SEEING THE MASSES What emerges from these statements is a conception of the mass audience that was fraught with tension. On the one hand, Kleine expressed a distrust of the masses, and a disdain for the popular, but on the other hand, he seemed to assume that they could and would be reformed. To some extent, this was a palimpsestic reflection of a shift in his discourse on the mass audience for movies from the early and mid-1910s to the early 20s. Around 1914, Kleine had managed to combine an idea of uplift through the top-down dissemination of legitimate culture with a more populist sentiment. With regard to the former, Raymond Haberski Jr has pointed out that the first people to write substantially about motion pictures – trade press pundits like W. Stephen Bush, Frank Woods and Louis Reeves Harrison – all argued that film could play an important role in dispensing culture to the masses.162 This allowed them to legitimise their interest in motion pictures for the very same reason that most cultural arbiters and intellectuals shunned them: because they appealed to the masses.163 Kleine, too, argued that film could help spread culture to the masses, and his discourse on the matter gives an indication of exactly what kind of culture he and his contemporaries were talking about. First of all, there were the films of ‘great value’, such as Quo Vadis? – made at some risk for the producer – aimed at something higher

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than the comedies and farces that were made for average tastes.164 Second, Kleine made a case for ‘filmed drama’, arguing that this gave small-town and rural audiences a chance to see plays that they would never have a chance to experience live.165 ‘Canned drama’ was better than no drama, in other words. Kleine assumed that the artistic value and cultural clout ultimately stemmed from the dramatic source; he also identified traits specific to the medium of film and emphasised the value of these. For one, although filmed drama lacked the voice and magnetic presence of a human body, unlike stage drama there were no restrictions on setting. Furthermore, thanks to the mechanical reproducibility of motion pictures, a filmed drama looked as good in the small town as on Broadway.166 This idea was tinged with an egalitarian vision, and in the same vein, Kleine finished off his letter with a populist argument, according to which there was no better proof of the value of motion pictures than the millions who flocked to them, week in week out. The ‘cognoscenti’ may not understand their appeal, but the great mass of people enjoyed their motion pictures, and rightly so.167 That said, quality films and filmed dramas alike were precious to Kleine and the trade press pundits because they fit neatly into the ready-made categories of consecrated culture. Hereby, they were potentially useful within the context of what Janet Staiger has called a ‘politics of admission’, a campaign that aimed for the admission of film into the category of ‘art’, rather than a redefinition of the category of ‘art’ itself.168 Some years after writing the letter cited above, Kleine had abandoned any populist sentiment regarding the masses that he might have once flirted with. As we have seen, in the early 1920s, he started to describe the mass audience as ‘primitive’, ‘underdeveloped’ and with ‘ethics clouded’. Even before this, an elitist, culturally conservative strain in his views on motion pictures had become increasingly pronounced. In 1917, in personal correspondence, he had this to say: ‘What you and I like and think is very different from that which is demanded by the hoipolloi [sic]. Costume pictures, historical pictures and others that may be considered cultural are almost invariably losing ventures.’169 A few years later, in the summer of 1921, he wrote to the same friend to express his admiration for The Cabinet of dr. Caligari (1920), a film that ‘Kleine said was ‘the brainiest and most interesting film’ he had seen in years. He added, ‘As might have been expected, it was caviar to the general. I heard one man say as he left the theatre that it was the rottenest film he had ever seen.’170 Different factors caused this shift from a somewhat populist outlook around 1914 to a more culturally conservative perspective a few years later, but one was probably his gradual withdrawal from the most competitive segments of commercial filmmaking and distribution. Up to a point, market considerations may have trumped whatever cultural standards Kleine subscribed to in private, but that pressure subsided as he gradually moved away from commercial cinema and into the non-theatrical field. As Rob King has suggested (drawing on Max Weber), the dynamics of the marketplace require a declassification of culture and a mixing of modes and categories in order to attract the widest possible audience.171 In King’s analysis, this helps explain why Harry Aitken’s Triangle Film Corporation’s attempt to inaugurate a highbrow film culture for the genteel classes failed. In Kleine’s case, it helps account for the ways his career path co-evolved with his changing discourse on the movies and the masses. With these changes, Kleine also found reason to lower his expectations when it came to the uplift of the masses through the dissemination of high art via the mass medium ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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of film. When a Chicago Tribune editor in 1923 suggested a combination of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and the alluring star persona of Mary Pickford, Kleine commented that even though such a film might turn out to be both entrancing and profitable, this would be on account of Pickford rather than Shakespeare. He concluded, ‘You may lead the … horse to the trough of literature and art, but you cannot force him to drink.’172 A letter from a few weeks earlier, however, addressed to the editorial department of the New York Times, makes clear that what Kleine was elaborating around this time was not a uncompromisingly declinist narrative about cinema, but an idea about how film cultural uplift and progress could be achieved by means of carving out separate niches. According to his diagnosis, the greatest problem in commercial cinema was its ‘appeal to the subcalibre [sic] majority’, and he feared a film culture in which motion pictures were made by ‘Mediocrities for their inferiors’. He pointed to his own Julius Caesar as evidence of this sad state of affairs. In spite of critical acclaim and its masterful staging, it ‘had met with an indifferent reception from the masses of film fans, and theatre managers’, most likely because fans had suspected ‘a sinister attempt to teach [them] literature’. Firing off a barrage of gastronomical metaphors, Kleine made a case for the specialised production, distribution and exhibition of motion picture art: It is idle to quarrel with a man who wants roast beef when we think that he should eat fish. … Instead of filling a lot of theatrical baskets with mixed nuts, classify the nuts, and fill the baskets with like. … Let the ‘sub calibre’ [sic] potato foregather with his kind in the movies, while the competent asparagus disports itself in the purer ether of selective cinema.173

These, he made clear, were the motivations behind his cooperation with extension divisions at state universities. With regard to the larger development of non-theatrical cinema around this time, such distinctions were, in fact, crucial. As Haidee Wasson points out, the non-theatrical field of the 1920s took shape through various experiments with cinematic practices that were predicated on an alternative conception of cinema’s functions, but also on an alternative idea about the audience, no longer conceived of as a faceless mass, but as specialised and unique audiences.174 In Kleine’s case, however, there was the usual ambiguity. On the one hand, he clearly made a distinction between the mass audience and more refined segments of the public. On the other hand, the market ideology that informed his vision of non-theatrical cinema on a ‘sound commercial basis’ seemed to smuggle back in a conception of the audience as an undifferentiated mass of consumers rather than as a multitude of specific groups with specific identities, interests and needs.175 Perhaps this is an additional reason why his vision turned out to be so difficult to implement.

THE NON-THEATRICAL FIELD AS A HAVEN FOR FILM LOVERS AND AS A ‘MELLOWER’ OF COMMERCIALISM Kleine had not given up on the prospects of reforming film culture, and he had not abandoned all hopes of realising the motion picture’s potential to bring moral, cultural and aesthetic refinement to the masses. But as the previous section made clear, in the

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1920s, he displaced these ambitions to the non-theatrical field. Under the joint stewardship of high-minded industry insiders like himself and the educated elite of the university sphere, non-theatrical cinema might possibly develop into a haven for ‘film lovers’, and an arena for motion pictures of artistically and educationally superior quality. This rediscovery of the motion picture’s potential for uplift was to some degree caused by the personal excitement derived from attaching himself to the world of academia. Here, he had finally met his equals when it came to cultural standards, and he was exhilarated by no longer being forced to intermingle with the riff-raff of the commercial movie business. In November 1921, in the early phases of the university distribution experiment, he wrote the following to Sumner Williams (an associate at Edison, Inc.): I am living in a highbrow atmosphere strangely paradoxical in film circles. You will be startled to hear of telegraphic orders for press sheets, posters and other publicity matter that is reaching us out of the Halls of Learning, and from the hands of scholars.176

In another letter, he noted that his new friends in the non-theatrical field, ‘all of them connected with the universities, speak a different language from Hollywood and the Film Building in New York’.177 The shifts in Kleine’s discourse on art, movies and the masses, and the change of focus from theatrical to non-theatrical cinema, were not entirely unlike poet Vachel Lindsay’s changes of thought over the same period, and regarding similar issues. Lindsay’s The Art of the Moving Picture came out in 1915; later, film scholars recognised this book as among the first to approach motion pictures in an intellectually serious, though not scholarly systematic, manner.178 In it, Lindsay articulated a strong belief in the power of the movies to bring art to everyone.179 As Haberski Jr points out, however, a few years later, Lindsay was less enthusiastic about these prospects. In a talk at Columbia University in the spring of 1919, partly reiterated in an article in Motion Picture Classic, Lindsay promoted the development of the ‘endowed photoplay’, movies of ‘artistic dignity’ to be produced and circulated outside of the commercial mainstream.180 The endowment would come from hundreds of ‘centers of art and education’ which would unite behind the project.181 Lindsay claimed that the commercial film industry’s factory-like mode of production destroyed ‘fresh ideas’ and ‘reduced everything to a common denominator’ in order to appeal to a mass audience.182 While he did not denounce commercial picture production entirely, he was convinced that the advancement of the art and the development of original and new ideas lay elsewhere, in the ‘endowed motion picture’.183 Preferably, a centre for film production would be established at Columbia University or some similar place, other cultural and educational institutions functioning as arms of distribution or exhibition sites.184 In Lindsay’s view, the ‘endowed motion picture’ would not only establish an alternative film cultural sphere, but also bring about the betterment of commercial cinema. He argued that other ‘endowed arts’, such as opera and orchestral music, ‘have an influence upon commercial art; they mellow it and raise its standard’.185 The endowed photoplay would have the same effect on movie-making.186 There is no evidence that George Kleine had read Lindsay’s earlier work or was familiar with the notion of the ‘endowed photoplay’, but Lindsay’s notion of an ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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autonomous, alternative film cultural field that would raise standards not only within this limited area, but throughout the commercial motion picture business, has striking similarities to Kleine’s ambitions within the non-theatrical field. As we have seen, Kleine’s aspiration was to establish higher standards of taste, which the masses would eventually adopt. A key difference, however, was that his suggested model rested on a ‘sound commercial basis’ rather than endowments. Lindsay had (jokingly?) suggested that some ‘repentant motion picture millionaire’ would perhaps be interested in taking the pioneering plunge, in spite of the costs and risks associated with the ‘endowed photoplay’.187 In theory, Kleine was that millionaire; but he was probably too much the businessman, and too familiar with the field’s bleak profit potential. The experiment in non-theatrical distribution through the extension divisions at state universities represented a compromise. Kleine’s marginal cost for reissuing his films to these institutions was low, and there was little economic risk involved,188 but the project might still have proved useful in helping establish an infrastructure for the kind of alternative film cultural sphere that he imagined the non-theatrical field could develop into. The similarities between Lindsay and Kleine’s outlooks were not coincidental or isolated. More generally, there is a kinship between Kleine and a host of other commentators in the 1910s and 20s – from Lindsay to Iris Barry – in that they shared a sense that the film medium had not yet found its proper public, or made this public properly film literate.189 Moreover, just as there would later appear many variations of the idea that alternative exhibition spaces could ‘influence national film industries, national identity, and public taste’ (as Peter Decherney puts it),190 the notion that a higher standard would ‘win its way to the masses’ indicates that Kleine imagined that an alternative, non-theatrical cinema might eventually become the dominant film cultural formation, or at least somehow push the audience’s motion picture preferences in a more refined direction. Again, this reflects his somewhat conflicted view of cinema’s audience, according to which the mass was at once to be mistrusted and mobilised for high-culture purposes. The former perspective expressed quite clearly an idea about film reception that assumed the mass audience was full of passive dupes – empty vessels to be filled with information at will.191 The latter view, on the other hand, implied a potentially active audience, which foreshadowed the perspective of the ‘film appreciation movement’ of the 1930s. Spearheaded by Edgar Dale, this movement rejected the cultural-dupe theory of the mass and argued that viewers could be educated.192 It was also operating under the assumption that improved film literacy would have positive effects on Hollywood movies by expanding the market for quality films.193 Perhaps it was something along these lines that Kleine, too, had imagined when he argued that the higher standards of non-theatrical cinema would eventually win their way to the masses. Or, as he put it in March 1922, some months into his non-theatrical experiment: ‘Possibly in the course of time there will really be “better and finer” when the institutional exchange work finds its stride.’194 It should be stressed here that these somewhat elitist, high-culture views were Kleine’s – his associates at university extensions divisions did not necessarily share them, and neither did they necessarily inform the motion picture distribution practices developed by these institutions. Indeed, a closer look at their work seems to

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suggest that their approach to motion pictures was pragmatic rather than based on some reformist agenda or highfalutin cultural vision.195 From this perspective, the primary reason why the extension divisions hooked up with Kleine was that they were eager to get their hands on whatever films might be available to them. This probably applies to the majority of the institutional exchanges that participated in the experiment, which implies that pragmatism more than anything else made the project possible in the first place. Nevertheless, William H. Dudley’s outlook on the nontheatrical field actually aligned with Kleine’s in significant ways. We have already mentioned that Dudley advocated the promotion of ‘better’ entertainment films through non-theatrical channels. He also believed that this was a means to elevate film culture in general, and pressure the theatrical field towards higher standards. As he wrote in 1921, the demand for better films would be encouraged via the systematic cultivation through the schools and civic centers of a taste for that which is clean and wholesome, and that will stimulate and satisfy one’s nobler thoughts and feelings. The need for laws and boards of censorship to ‘regulate’ would largely disappear.196

This was closely reminiscent of Kleine’s views on the same matters (see above). Dudley also shared Kleine’s conviction that non-theatrical cinema should be cultivated as an autonomous, self-reliant field. In September 1922, he wrote to Kleine and emphasised the necessity of ‘welding our own forces together and building up a productive organization and service entirely independent of the theatrical crowd’. He concluded that ‘What we need is our own production, our own organization, and an awakening to the realization on the part of the higher authorities in each university that visual instruction should be put on a more solid foundation.’197

THE NON-THEATRICAL FIELD AS GENTILE HAVEN: KLEINE’S ANTI-SEMITISM Not everyone involved in the institutional exchange experiment agreed with Dudley and Kleine, especially when it came to cooperation with the ‘theatrical crowd’, but Kleine’s vocal opposition to Hollywood continued unabatedly. He was neither the first nor last Hollywood detractor, and with regard to the interplay between Hollywood and various alternative and oppositional formations, there is a sense of history repeating itself. But there is one factor that was more specific to the 1920s, and that helps explain the urgency of Kleine’s efforts, and his hopes (or fantasies) about the magnitude of the non-theatrical field: his anti-Semitism. Kleine never expressed antiSemitic views in public, but private correspondence leaves no doubt regarding his attitude,198and there is evidence to suggest that anti-Semitism provided the basic rationale for his whole non-theatrical distribution scheme. In June 1921, just as the experiment was about to start, Kleine wrote to Thomas Edison and explained, ‘An advantage, by no means the least, will be the possibility of divorcing this field of operations from objectionable individuals and concerns that are operating at present in the theatrical end of the motion picture business.’199 The following year, Kleine wrote to George Blair at Eastman-Kodak, to clarify, ‘You will understand that after maintaining a policy of silence during the past three years I am now about to break ‘The Purer Ether of Selective Cinema’

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into publicity in competition with Hebrews.’200 Imagining the non-theatrical field as a gentile haven, yet untouched by Jewish influence, Kleine reacted with distress when the National Non-Theatrical Motion Pictures – headed by the Jewish Harry Levey – emerged in the summer of 1922 as a major competitor in the field of non-theatrical distribution.201 Fearing a hostile takeover of the field, Kleine did his best to undermine Levey and intensified his own efforts to establish non-theatrical cinema as an alternative for what he and some of his associates liked to refer to as ‘plain Americans’.202 Meanwhile, there were rumours that Levey was establishing some form of collaboration with the Christian Herald magazine, a religious publication that was considering branching out into non-theatrical distribution of motion pictures suitable for church use. Kleine wrote to Dudley that if these rumours were true, I wonder at the Christian Herald making such an arrangement with a man of his race. If it means anything it is that the large influence of this paper will be used to further the interests of an alien organization that cannot by any possibility have any real sympathy with the movement.203

We should perhaps note that anti-Semitic views were rampant in American culture at large around this time, which, of course, does not make them less offensive. With regard to the film industry specifically, John Trumpbour’s book about American cinema’s global expansion offers ample evidence of strong anti-Semitic currents in many pockets of what he calls the ‘early domestic mobilizers against Hollywood’.204 Against this background, Kleine’s anti-Semitism should not come as a total surprise. Not all Hollywood detractors were anti-Semites, though, and not all took issue with exactly the same things. As is well documented, there was a wave of outcry against the allegedly extravagant lifestyle within the ‘movie colony’, especially in the wake of a series of scandals that erupted in the early 1920s that included alleged murder, rape and drug abuse.205 Kleine criticised soaring salaries in Hollywood, but mostly because they reflected unsound business policy, not because they financed depraved lifestyles. He did, however, regard the ‘agitation’ against Hollywood as a sign that the time was ripe for building a non-theatrical market as a viable alternative.206 As he put it to the institutional exchange in North Carolina in February 1922: ‘The unhappy publicity which the film industry has received lately will undoubtedly act in favor of the institutional film exchanges.’207 While Kleine’s lambasting of Hollywood mostly had to do with the internal structure of the American motion picture business, others worried more about the image of America that was exported through films. As John Trumpbour has discussed, the Daughters of the American Revolution and other religious and civil associations believed that Hollywood films were full of debauchery, vice and depictions of crime, and argued that this was not the image of America that should be sent out to the world.208 In such accounts, especially if underpinned by anti-Semitism, Hollywood was ‘un-American’, or not American enough. Overseas, anti-Hollywood sentiment was rooted in the completely opposite idea. Hollywood films were too American, and the values that these films visualised and promoted threatened to erode local cultures. Audiences would ‘talk America, think America, dream America’, as one wary British commentator put it in 1927.209

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MASS APPEAL AND GLOBAL MARKETS Different people in different countries may have had different reasons to criticise Hollywood, but in some significant ways, an American such as George Kleine and a foreign commentator such as the one quoted above reacted against more or less the same provocation. For one, there was the mass appeal of Hollywood films. We have already discussed how Kleine feared that pandering to the mass would lead to a declassification of culture, and a breakdown of established taste hierarchies. In fact, by 1921, he seemed to believe that this had already happened. ‘To some extent the public taste has been perverted,’ he argued.210 Similar fears informed the European response to American film in the 1920s. Second, there was the emphasis in many Hollywood films on the pleasures of modern consumer culture.211 At this juncture, consumer culture was an alternative, not dominant, culture, and posed a challenge to traditional Protestant ethics. As one historian puts it: Consumer culture’s emphasis on pleasure and self-fulfillment challenged traditional nineteenth-century Protestant, middle-class injunctions against spending, immediate gratification, and loss of self-restraint. Perhaps most threatening of all, the new culture suggested that everyone – regardless of age, class, gender, or race – was entitled to desire whatever they pleased.212

For an ageing, middle-class, white, male Protestant like George Kleine, then, it was not easy to reconcile the ‘hedonist ethos’ of consumer culture, and of Hollywood films, with a deeply felt belief in the value of hard work, thrift and self-control.213 Kleine formulated his response to Hollywood in verbal attacks, but also through the films that he put into circulation via the institutional exchanges. On the one hand, there were the Conquest pictures. These films varied in character, length and genre, but many were infused with a sense of nostalgia (albeit in tension with modernity).214 Another recurring feature was a strong focus on men and boys, not least in Boy Scout films such as Knights of the Square Table (Edison, 1917).215 A promotional folder from 1921 made it clear that a major selling point was precisely their difference from the standard film fare. The folder claimed that Conquest films ‘establish the fact that audiences can be entertained … without the inclusion of elements that are offensive to good taste and morals’. On the other hand, there were the ‘Film Classics’. If the Conquest films represented an alternative to the alleged ‘hedonist ethos’ of Hollywood, the ‘classics’ represented an alternative artistic regime, based on highcultural categories, rather than a form of mass appeal seemingly designed to defy the boundaries of gender, class, race and nation (as addressed earlier in the book). Meanwhile, Hollywood films were breaking down the barriers of taste not only in the United States, but across the globe. According to Victoria de Grazia, this was a prerequisite for the inauguration of a global mass-market consumerist regime.216 De Grazia also suggests that in Europe, there was a stronger tendency to align cinema with pre-existing categories of high culture, such as the avant-garde, or various other strands within intellectual life. This was productive in some ways, but estranged cinema from the masses, she argues, and placed European cinema in a disadvantageous competitive position in relation to Hollywood.217 That said, the reasons for American

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cinema’s remarkable global penetration were complicated.218 The head start that American firms got off to in the ‘quality race’ is one key factor, and access to global distribution networks another,219 but the mass appeal of American films, so deplored by George Kleine and other Hollywood detractors, may have been equally important. As we have learned in this chapter, Kleine saw Hollywood’s pandering to the masses as the very root of an objectionable film culture, but the film style that developed in response to the overarching purpose of maximising the audience was ‘excessively obvious’, comprehensible to all.220 This has led some to suggest that a ‘competitive advantage of narrative transparency’ accounts for Hollywood’s global popularity and impact.221 While this may obscure other mechanisms of dominance, it cannot be completely discarded. We could add that Hollywood films were not only accessible, but they also had a potential to harbour a multiplicity of meanings for different viewers. As Richard Maltby has shown, the Hollywood film contains ‘multiple logics’, and as a ‘commercial aesthetic’, it strives to combine many different elements that may appeal to many different types of viewers, simply in order to maximise the potential audience, and hence profits.222

CONCLUSION The story of how motion pictures came to be established as mass entertainment and as an everyday cultural practice for masses of people runs through this book. In an earlier chapter, we noted that the commodity form of motion pictures – their tradability, their reproducibility, their non-rivalrous character – harboured the conditions of possibility for maximum market integration. The combinations of legibility and polysemy that were being worked out in Hollywood films were not a direct effect of this inherent, globalising potential, but they were definitely part of the same story. Initially, Kleine had happily exploited every profit opportunity the motion picture business could offer. By the time of early Hollywood, his perspectives had changed quite dramatically. Throughout the 1920s, he pitted himself explicitly against Hollywood, an industry whose business models he rejected, and whose output of films he found bland and aesthetically subpar at the best, promoting a perverted image of American life at worst. As he saw it, he offered education and instructive entertainment in place of Hollywood’s mindless diversions and sensationalist depictions of the kicks of modern American life. Instead of producing new releases, Kleine reissued films that he believed to be imbued with enduring cultural value, and that would hence stand the test of time. In general, he was a champion of fewer films, but of higher ‘quality’. Hollywood, on the other hand, set out to offer a mass-produced, but diverse slate of pictures every year. Moreover, as shown in earlier chapters, he owned what he managed and managed what he owned, whereas Hollywood was built on borrowed money and speculative investment. Finally, in terms of distribution, markets and target audiences, Kleine’s primary aim was non-theatrical venues such as schools, churches and community halls, and what he believed to be an elite audience who gravitated towards these venues, whereas Hollywood aimed to draw a mass audience to purpose-built motion picture theatres.

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As we have seen, Kleine expressed some hope that non-theatrical cinema might eventually become a dominant film cultural formation, or, at least, a serious challenge and alternative to Hollywood. In his view, this could only be realised if non-theatrical cinema was economically self-sustainable, resting on a ‘sound commercial basis’. In other words, his anti-Hollywood movement pledged allegiance to commercialism. Kleine realised that the types of films that circulated in the non-theatrical sphere might have had limited commercial appeal compared to Hollywood films. He also realised that the willingness to pay in the non-theatrical market was low, but this did not necessarily matter if the full, mass market of schools, churches, prisons and so on could be activated. As this chapter has shown, however, this was easier said than done. Accordingly, Kleine’s desire to liberate the non-theatrical field not only from the commercial film industry, but also from what he believed to be an unfortunate reliance on the government and the industry, was not satisfied. Quite to the contrary, nontheatrical cinema developed through the intersections of the interests of commercial producers and distributors, philanthropic organisations, the state and the industry.223 Kleine was merely one among countless prospectors of the non-theatrical field, and his work with the extension divisions – however central these were to non-theatrical film culture – was merely one effort among a plethora of campaigns, events and initiatives.224 To give just a few examples, the field attracted general associations like the YMCA, industrial concerns such as the Ford Motor Company, philanthropist initiatives like the Commercial Bureau of Economics, government bodies such as the Department of Agriculture, and raw film or projector manufacturers like EastmanKodak and the De Vry Corporation.225 Although each of these may have desired to construct some kind of durable infrastructure for non-theatrical film culture, their respective aims and ambitions varied wildly, ranging from profit-seeking and advertising to tick eradication and the fostering of good, well-behaved, worker-subjects-citizens. Seemingly, the only thing that joined these different agents was a conviction that motion pictures could somehow be useful – for something (or, rather, for many different things).226 The multiplicity of non-theatrical uses and users could hardly be contained within one vision. Arguably, Kleine’s scope was at once too wide and too limited. He imagined non-theatrical cinema as a unified, autonomous formation, but only along the lines of the high-culture aesthetics, Protestant ethics and market ideology that he subscribed to. In the end, this left him doubly out of step, and ultimately disappointed. In 1929, Kleine summed up his experience: It is regrettable that the non-theatrical field, and more particularly the educational field, is unprofitable to both producers and distributors of motion pictures. Countless attempts have been made by different concerns to develop a volume of business that would at least pay distribution expenses and a fraction of the negative cost. Repeated trials during the past twenty years have led nowhere.227

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Conclusion (and an Epilogue)

This book has presented a history of George Kleine’s career in the motion picture business from its inception to the end of the 1920s. Needless to say, many events, episodes and incidents have been left at the wayside. I would still like to believe that I have covered the most significant trajectories, twists and turns of his career, and managed to capture and convey a sense of who this man was. We have followed Kleine along the path from his father’s optical store to becoming the leading sales agent and distributor of motion picture equipment and films in the United States in the first years after the turn of the century. We have seen how he expanded his business even more by importing motion pictures from Europe on a mass scale from 1904 to 1908, how he thrived during the banner years of the nickelodeon and how his expansion was capped around 1908 with the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company. We have learned how Kleine, partly against his own interests, helped negotiate the MPPC and its distribution branch, General Film, into existence, bringing himself in as a member, only to break out from the MPPC’s confinements a few years later by venturing into the burgeoning field of multi-reel feature films. We have traced his attempts to repeat the success of his earliest feature film imports, and the even more difficult struggle to adapt to a new kind of motion picture business that developed in the years after 1915 following the breakthrough of the feature. We have explored how this resulted in Kleine’s de facto exit from commercial film-making and distribution around 1919, and how he, from this point onwards, in increasingly vocal opposition to Hollywood, devoted most of his attention to the promotion of educational films and the cultivation of non-theatrical cinema. From the prism of Kleine’s career, this book has also presented an account of how American cinema changed from the time the technical apparatus for projecting motion pictures became available up to the late 1920s. Again, needless to say, this account is far from exhaustive. Some paths of enquiry have been omitted, while others have been opened, but, perhaps, not quite followed through to the end. Even so, I believe that the book has offered insight into some of the most crucial phases of the ‘institutionalisation’ of American cinema. If this is a vague term in and by itself, hopefully this account has helped specify what is involved in the process it signifies. Earlier in the book, I suggested that what ‘institutionalisation’ seems to refer to with regard to American cinema is the gradual establishing of the conventional, regularised practices that make up cinema as mass entertainment, mass culture and mass communication. Without pretending to describe this in its entirety, I have tried to

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pinpoint some of the key steps in the process. The demand for entertainment experiences that the second industrial revolution stimulated was one important prerequisite. The shift towards narrative film-making and the concomitant discovery of ‘reel’ value around 1903 was an important early step, since it facilitated a standardisation of the modes of film production. It was also an indication that the audience preference for narrative entertainment films was already becoming dominant at this point. Equally crucial was the establishing of functional systems of mass provision in 1905–6 through the appearance of film rental exchanges and permanent motion picture theatres (nickelodeons). A few years later, the MPPC was instrumental in ushering in another important element of the cinema ‘institution’: the interlocking of the branches of production and distribution. A couple of years later still, the breakthrough of the multi-reel feature brought about another defining characteristic of the ‘institution’: the trading of motion pictures as qualitatively differentiated products rather than as piece goods. In the process, it was discovered that there was a strong positive correlation between large budgets and large revenues, which instigated a ‘quality race’. Simultaneously, audiences became more and more convinced that the film quality they actually experienced was, indeed, linked to the cost of production. Film-making became more expensive, and more risky, and – for a few lucky people – more profitable. As an expected (but in no sense predetermined) effect of the ‘quality race’, and the tendency towards winner-takes-all patterns, the motion picture business became increasingly geared towards mass production, market concentration, vertical integration and globalisation. This expansion required more capital than motion picture producers and distributors had at hand, or could accumulate from income from their releases, which leads up to a final step in the process of institutionalisation as far as this book has traced it: the inauguration of finance and managerial capitalism in the motion picture business around 1919, through an influx of Wall Street money. If cinema turned into an ‘institution’ along the lines sketched here, it was not in the form of a monolith, but as an institution that was constituted and reconstituted through an ongoing, dynamic process. According to this view, the dominant conception of cinema was always in contact and contention with alternative notions of cinema and its preferred social uses, with alternative ideas about the value of motion pictures, and with alternative practices of motion picture viewing, circulation and production. The book’s last chapter illustrated how these kinds of negotiations could unfold during George Kleine’s career, focusing specifically on his attempt to establish non-theatrical cinema as an alternative film cultural sphere, autonomous from the commercial film industry. Kleine’s case is instructive, not least since he defined his work in non-theatrical cinema in such explicit opposition to Hollywood. Lee Grieveson has suggested that, by 1915, a dominant conception of cinema as ‘harmless entertainment’ had been firmly established, and classical Hollywood developed to accommodate this conception.1 According to Grieveson, the implications of this for alternative formations, such as educational, avant-garde or politically radical cinema, were double. On the one hand, these were all pushed to the margins. On the other hand, mainstream cinema, circumscribed as ‘harmless entertainment’, left uncharted territories to explore, thus making it possible for such alternative movements to flourish.2 In economic terms, we could think of this as a kind of dynamic product Conclusion (and an Epilogue)

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differentiation, and in political terms as hegemony, which is also the product of a dynamic process – an endless struggle rather than an ideology that never bends. Drawing on Grieveson’s scheme, we can explore in further detail how the interplay between dominant and alternative cinemas actually played out at various historical moments, and how it applies to Kleine’s case. This reconnects us to the schematic table that was outlined in the introduction to the book:

Conception of cinema

Conception of cinema

Commercial mass entertainment

Art, education and historical record

Typical principles and practices

Typical principles and practices

New releases Non-discriminatory consumption Routine novelty; everyday practice Storage cost and risks Box-office value Mass appeal Tradability Infinite reproduction Hits/flops bifurcation Pleasure

Old films (commercially exhausted) Selective consumption Special events Preservationist imperative Artistic, educational and historic value Niche audience appeal Collectors value ‘Unique’ prints Classics/non-classics bifurcation Literacy, uplift and action

This table points to the main features of the dominant conception of cinema, but also to the spaces of differentiation where alternative conceptions and practices could develop. As I have argued in earlier chapters, cinema as a commercial form of mass entertainment was predicated on a primacy of the new. Film producers had to promote novelty to stay in business, partly because of the commodity form of motion pictures; but it is likely that most audiences would have demanded a steady flow of new subjects anyway. George Kleine, meanwhile, advocated extended life cycles for films and for the repeated use of old motion pictures. In Chapter 4, we learned that this was one element of his campaign against ‘waste’ and ‘overproduction’. Why should new subjects be overproduced when there is an abundance of perfectly good old films that only a fraction of the audience had seen, he asked. A similar idea undergirded Kleine’s vision of non-theatrical cinema (and was practically applied through various reissuing schemes, such as his ‘Cycle of Film Classics’). As he wrote to Thomas Edison in 1921, ‘The non-theatrical business has a great advantage in that a system of suitable negatives has continuing value and does not make it necessary to indulge in continuous production, as such subjects live over an indefinite period.’3 According to this view, at least some films had enduring value, even though their commercial value was limited. Commercial film libraries and practices of commercial reissuing were around as early as the 1910s, but they were

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not very widespread or well organised; watching old films remained an uncommon, haphazard practice up until the 1930s.4 One explanation for the relative disregard for old motion pictures in commercial cinema was the high costs associated with storage and preservation. Many film companies decided that the small income from possible reissuing simply did not warrant these costs, especially given the explosive quality of nitrate. In contrast, assumptions about film’s enduring cultural value logically led to the conclusion that motion pictures should be preserved for new generations. The different composition of theatrical and non-theatrical audiences was also a factor. At least when it came to schools as exhibition sites, Kleine could make repeated use of the same motion pictures year after year, because the audience base was continuously renewed. Another advantage when it came to the use of old pictures in schools was that the viewers in these venues made up a captive rather than paying audience. Students in the remote school where Kleine’s Italian epics were screened in the 1920s had little recourse but to accept what was on view. More generally, commercial cinema catered to a diverse mass audience, whereas alternative formations targeted niche audiences of various sorts. As discussed in some detail in the previous chapter, George Kleine and other Hollywood detractors believed that the mass appeal of Hollywood films was one of their worst aspects. These films were made by mediocrities for their inferiors, as Kleine put it. As a remedy, he hoped that the non-theatrical audience either was, or could be moulded into, a more refined group of viewers – ‘film lovers’, in Kleine’s words – who would appreciate a finer type of motion picture, either for its cultural, film artistic or educational value. With that said, to some degree, Kleine failed to recognise the diversity within the non-theatrical audience, and the specific identities of different non-theatrical audience groups, ultimately reimagining them as a faceless mass, albeit of a different kind than the one Hollywood targeted. But as a whole – in all its multiplicity – the non-theatrical field represented a gradual recognition of the interests not of a mass audience, but of various specialised and unique audiences.5 The mass audience for commercial entertainment films was encouraged to engage in motion picture consumption on an everyday basis, as a routine practice. Chapter 1 highlighted some of the ways in which this kind of film culture was achieved. First, gradually higher incomes and more leisure time for an increasing number of people presented the conditions of possibility. Second, an infrastructure of distribution and exhibition had to be established in order to supply people with movies on an everyday basis. We could add here another, obvious, factor that was not emphasised enough earlier: the low price of admission. In the feature era, as films were individually differentiated to a larger degree, relatively uniform ticket prices may have also been key.6 Low and uniform ticket prices encouraged moviegoers to take a risk rather than make strategic decisions about what film to see and which ones to avoid. As long as the surprise gains of pleasure would outweigh the cost of occasional disappointments over the long haul, people would keep returning to the theatre day after day. Neither was it common to adjust the price once it was discovered whether a film was popular or not. This was an even stronger indication that the first priority was not to try to ensure that each patron paid exactly as much as he or she was willing to pay, but to encourage people to keep returning to the movie theatre. In other words, we could say that the Conclusion (and an Epilogue)

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most valuable commodity was not motion pictures, but people’s time and attention. As we learned in Chapter 1, when motion pictures first appeared, their revolutionary force stemmed from their tradability as physical commodities. Perhaps even more fundamentally, they were also machines for churning out spectator hours – they came to function as a means of production within the ‘attention economy’.7 In contrast to the routine, non-discriminatory consumption of entertainment films in movie theatres, alternative cinemas were, by definition, geared towards screenings for niche audiences that were anything but non-discriminatory. The very point of building an infrastructure for non-theatrical film culture was to make selective film viewing possible. In short, the goal was to place the right films before the right audiences. The variance of what was deemed ‘right’ in different contexts was potentially vast, but the point is that selective consumption in itself was a marker of difference, compared to dominant film culture. Arguably, this selective element defined non-theatrical screenings as special events rather than as everyday occurrences, even in structured contexts such as the classroom. On occasion, nontheatrical screenings were explicitly labelled as special events, with special people present, and with specific goals in mind – political, artistic or educational. Meanwhile, masses of people went to the downtown picture palace or the neighbourhood theatre to have fun. There was pleasure to be had in the non-theatrical contexts, too, however. Kleine, for instance, was convinced that the motion pictures he circulated in the non-theatrical market offered entertainment as well as education and aesthetic sophistication. Conversely, Hollywood cinema, with its multiple logics,8 came to integrate an idea that watching Hollywood films could be an edifying experience, not only an enjoyable diversion. Through a similar crossover, the notion of film as art was also gradually built into the dominant conception of cinema as commercial, mass entertainment. As discussed in previous chapters, an alliance of trade press pundits, cultural critics and proto-film theorists joined forces to prove that the motion picture could be regarded as an art form with the capability of rising above its industrial-commercial origins, but these accounts often placed the potential of film art in opposition to the actuality of commercial film production as it was carried out in Hollywood.9 Eventually, the movies’ capacity to merge art and commerce was more widely accepted in both theory and practice, and the slogan that film is ‘an art and an industry’ gained traction. A decisive event in this history was probably the inauguration of the MoMA Film Library, since this meant that a respected cultural institution with considerable influence over issues of cultural consecration legitimised the idea that at least some motion pictures produced by Hollywood firms for profit could nonetheless be classified as art.10 Eventually, nearly everyone came to accept the possibility that a Hollywood film could be considered a work of art. Hereby, when it came to motion pictures, the possible contradiction between pleasure-orientation and artistic value dissolved.11 In the end, this became a win-win scenario for the film industry, its institutions and the people who put the stamp of artistic approval on their products. Arguably, Hollywood had the most to gain. The system that was geared towards the nondiscriminatory consumption of new releases was maintained, while the value of old pictures increased dramatically, as these could now be rebooted as ‘classics’ (echoing

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the sense of the word that Kleine had suggested, prematurely, when he reissued his ‘Cycle of Film Classics’ in 1916 – see Chapter 5).12 It would seem that these examples of productive cross-pollinations of different, seemingly oppositional cinematic conceptions and practices affirm Hollywood’s widely recognised ability to absorb and appropriate, to flourish by coming into contact with elements initially foreign to the system – to paraphrase André Bazin’s famous description of the ‘genius’ of the Hollywood system.13 To the extent that the flow was mostly in Hollywood’s direction, one reason was very material: the control of distribution and exhibition infrastructure. The larger the distribution capacity became, the more different kinds of entertainment could be sent out.14 Some of the material disseminated through Hollywood’s distribution channels was not packaged as entertainment at all, but as art or education. Although most of the Hollywood output may have looked the same, thanks to its huge distribution capacity, there was always room for some types of products that would not have been viable in themselves, as separate enterprises, but that were profitably integrated into the system as a whole, primarily because this stimulated product innovation and differentiation. In other words, and as touched upon in Chapters 3 and 4, material dominance made it easier to accommodate new cinematic ideas and practices, and to attract talented people. It was a beneficial situation for these individuals, since they were presented with creative opportunities that might otherwise have been unavailable, and it guaranteed a certain degree of cultural diversity, but it also contributed to the reproduction of Hollywood’s dominance.

EPILOGUE In the end, and for all the reasons that have been examined at length in earlier chapters, and more briefly in this conclusion, American cinema developed mostly along other lines than those that Kleine had hoped and worked for. But we still have a lot to learn from his story – regardless of the outcome in terms of winners and losers. Arguably, who would ‘win’ and who would ‘lose’ was more relevant for the practitioners at the time than it should be for us. For Kleine, what was at stake was his own pioneer status as well as the more general issue of how the history of the motion picture would be written. When The Story of the Films, a compilation of lectures given by various film industry insiders at Harvard University, was published in 1927, Kleine read the book and found himself astonished that Harvard University should sponsor the matter contained in this volume, which is grossly inaccurate both in statement and by inference. It consists largely of a series of self-exploitations. One might write a book of equal size in refutation.15

At this point, Kleine had been toying with the idea of writing his own version of American cinema history for a while. He had even done some research to complement his own records of events, as when he wrote to George A. Blair at Eastman-Kodak in May 1925 to enquire about some correspondence between Eastman and Kalem dating from 1907. Kleine explained the purpose of his letter:

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From time to time I am making little notes of past happenings in the film business, that might be interesting in a history of my contacts with the film industry. … These notes of mine may never come to light, and it is not likely that I will take them up seriously before I reach middle age. As the contemplated WORK will have many libelous statements in honest estimates of character, and performance of individuals whom I have met; it may not be published until after I am dead and free from danger of physical destruction. I might entitle the effort ‘Putrid Pulchritudinous Personalities I Have Met in the Film Business.’16

Sadly, this history never saw the light of day. If Kleine’s drive to historicise the motion picture was propelled by a fear that Hollywood’s increasing dominance would eradicate the traces of his own efforts in the pioneer period of American cinema, he was proved both wrong and right. There is no doubt that Hollywood had an interest in presenting its own version of the past, and that numerous histories of American cinema have operated under the assumption of Hollywood’s unquestionable centrality, leaving many intriguing and important events at the wayside. At the same time, there were plenty of people around to assess Kleine’s legacy and that of the other pioneers of early cinema, from historians contemporary with Kleine to present-day cinema scholars. He would hardly be forgotten. Many aspects of Kleine’s career in the 1920s, including the title of his never-written history of the movie business, conjure an image of a man slightly out of step with the way cinema was developing, and, perhaps, with the times more generally. His activities in the commercial side of the business had been radically scaled down in 1919 when K-E-S-E/Perfection Pictures dissolved and Kleine dismantled his distribution organisation. There were occasional investments in one-off projects in the years that followed, and then a brief stint as treasurer of the Ritz-Carlton Pictures Corporation in 1923, which some writers perceived as his comeback to the commercial film business, although he had never quite left it.17 Kleine had started out as a dealer in motion picture equipment, and he was actually interested in this branch of the business well into the 1920s. He had sold his Kleine Optical Company to the United Theatre Equipment Corporation (UTE) in 1917, but became a major shareholder in the new corporation.18 UTE filed for bankruptcy in 1923.19 Kleine had sold some of the stock, but had also endorsed a note for ‘a material amount’ and suffered a ‘heavy deficit’ when UTE went out of business.20 Shortly hereafter, he nevertheless considered re-entering the equipment business, and was involved in at least two grand plans to cover non-theatrical exhibition sites with safe and portable projectors, and one that primarily targeted the theatrical market.21 These plans did not materialise (at least with Kleine’s involvement), and his work in non-theatrical cinema with the state universities remained his main preoccupation in the 1920s. In the same decade, he suffered some personal losses that also had repercussions for his business. First, on 5 February 1920, his right-hand man Merle E. Smith unexpectedly died from pneumonia.22 Smith had been groomed to take over what was left of Kleine’s business operations, but Kleine was also personally attached to the young man, to the degree that he regarded him as a son.23 The same year, a second key person within his organisation, Douglas H. Bergh, also passed away, another personal and professional blow.

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Kleine with his granddaughter (ca. late 1920s). Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

In 1924, Kleine’s wife Beatrice died.24 Shortly thereafter, Kleine moved from Chicago back to his birthplace, New York City. During the second half of the 1920s, he gradually cut back on work, preferring to spend time with his daughter, Helen, and his granddaughter (born in 1925),25 or taking the occasional fishing trip. As the end of the decade approached, Kleine reminisced with an old schoolmate about their careers: As for me, there certainly were no motion pictures in prospect, and it was the merest accident that I made contact with them at the beginning of their flamboyant history. Sometimes we build only to destroy. Having erected a complicated business structure, I decided, after about twenty-five years of strenuous activities, that the industry had become so involved that the game was not worth the candle, and I gradually liquidated the business machine.26

In 1929, he suffered a bad case of gastric ulcer and was placed on a strictly nonalcoholic regimen and a sensible diet, but he never quite recovered. George Kleine died on 8 June 1931.27

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Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. Archie Bell, ‘“Yes, Save Heathen by Movies,” Says Kleine, “But Preserve Americans’ Health as Starter”: Man Who Owns “Quo Vadis” Film Now at the Hippodrome, Consents to Talk about Latest Popular Form of Amusement Which Made Him a Millionaire’, Cleveland Plain dealer, 27 July 1913, Sunday Section, pp. 1–2. 2. Charles Henry Meltzer, ‘Movies Will Never Kill the Regular Drama, Says Kleine’, New York American, 14 June 1914, Dramatic Section, p. C6. 3. Louella Parsons, ‘In and Out of Focus’, Morning Telegraph, 12 August 1923, Motion Picture Section, p. 4. 4. The conversion to sound cinema took place during the last few years of the 1920s. For the standard account, see Donald Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1926– 1931 (New York: Scribner, 1997). For an analysis of the wide range of sound practices that were deployed in the (not so) ‘silent’ era, see Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). 5. This approach is inspired by Raymond Williams’s notion of ‘cultural materialism’. Williams discusses historical determinants in terms of ‘limits’ and ‘pressures’, and argues that the actions of real people in actual situations also exert pressure themselves. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 87–8. 6. Antonio Gramsci worked out the concept of hegemony, but I have borrowed Raymond Williams’s application of it to cultural theory. See ibid., pp. 107–22. 7. Ibid., pp. 60, 99. 8. The empirical groundwork for this book consisted of a comprehensive study of the George Kleine Papers in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress (LC). At the LC, I also studied photographs that were part of the George Kleine Papers but later transferred to the Photographs and Prints Division, and a few additional, miscellaneous items related to Kleine that are kept in other divisions. The LC also holds the George Kleine Collection of Early Motion Pictures, which I have studied selectively. Each motion picture in the collection has a corresponding file in a collection of eighteen boxes of material that are also accessible in the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room at the LC. Some of these files are literally empty, while some include promotional material, synopses, lists of titles and archivists’ notes regarding the preservation of the films. This material has been of limited use for this book, but might be relevant for more detailed case studies of specific films. Other collections consulted for this project are the George Kleine Records at the New York Public Library (NYPL) (sixty-two bookkeeping ledgers and two boxes of related material held in the Rare Books Division at the NYPL main branch); the Thomas

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9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

172

Edison Papers, held on microfilm at the Alexander Library at Rutgers University, New Brunswick; and various materials kept at the Film Study Center at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I have also relied on a range of standard sources, including the leading trade papers, and a plethora of newspapers, large and small, accessible either through ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers database, or the LC’s Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers database. Finally, the Media History Digital Library () – which makes available a growing collection of digital sources that include many of the trade papers mentioned above, but also valuable sources such as the transcript of records from the US vs. MPPC hearings – has been an indispensible tool. Harriet W. Harrison, ‘Introduction’, in Rita Horwitz and Harriet Harrison (eds), with the assistance of Wendy White, The George Kleine Collection of Early Motion Pictures in the Library of Congress: A Catalog (Washington: Library of Congress, 1980), p. ix. Richard Maltby, ‘How Can Cinema History Matter More?’, Screening the Past no. 22 (December 2007). Available at: . Ibid. See, for example, Robert Grau, The Theatre of Science: A Volume of Progress and Achievement in the Motion Picture Industry (New York, London and Paris: Broadway Publishing Co., 1914); Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture, Vol. 1–2 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926); and Benjamin B. Hampton, A History of the Movies (New York: Covici, Friede, 1931). See, for example, Lewis Jacobs, The Rise of the American Film: A Critical History (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939). See, for example, Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York: Random House, 1975); and Garth Jowett, Film: The democratic Art (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1976). For an introduction to ‘New Cinema History’, and an outline of its basic research agenda, which advocates micro-histories of moviegoing and audiences, of specific productions contexts, and of concrete networks of circulation and distribution, see Richard Maltby, ‘New Cinema Histories’, in Richard Maltby, Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers (eds), Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2011), pp. 3–40. ‘New Cinema History’ should be distinguished from what Thomas Elsaesser has called the ‘New Film History’, by which he refers to the intervention in the late 1970s and early 80s (and after) by a new generation of scholars who set out to rethink early cinema history, an effort partly inspired and made possible by the restoration and rediscovery of a large number of films made before 1906. See Thomas Elsaesser, ‘The New Film History’, Sight & Sound vol. 55 no. 4 (1986), pp. 246–51; and Thomas Elsaesser (ed.), with Adam Barker, Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI Publishing, 1990). These studies cover a variety of topics and aspects of Kleine’s career, including his importations of Italian epics in the 1910s, his cooperation with Italian film producers, his role in the rise and demise of the Motion Picture Patents Co., his battles with the Edison Company before the formation of the MPPC, his promotion of educational films, his investment in specially commissioned musical scores for early feature-length films and his contributions to the American war efforts during World War I. Work by Charles Musser and Richard Abel, respectively, gives the best overview of Kleine’s career up until 1908. Rita Horwitz’s introduction to Kleine in the catalogue to the George Kleine Collection of Early Motion Pictures at the Library of Congress offers the only survey that covers his full career, but only a few key events are highlighted, and the account includes some factual errors. Virtually nothing is written about George Kleine and American Cinema

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17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Kleine’s work after the mid-1910s, even though he remained in the movie business until his death in 1931. For a selection of the work referred to here, see William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson, ‘Italian Spectacle and the US Market’, in Roland Cosanday and François Albera (eds), Cinéma sans frontières/Images across Borders (Quebec and Lausanne: Nuit Blanche Éditeur, 1995), pp. 95–105; John P. Welle, ‘“Avoid Giving Wine to Children”: George Kleine’s Correspondence with Cines and the Discourse of Uplift’, in Frank Kessler and Nanna Verhoeff (eds), Networks of Entertainment: Early Film distribution 1895–1915 (Eastleigh, Hants., and Bloomington, IN: John Libbey; distributed in North America by Indiana University Press, 2007), pp. 21–9; Scott Curtis, ‘A House Divided: The MPPC in Transition’, in Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 239–64; Lauren Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), pp. 172–7; Jennifer Peterson, ‘Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film: Education in the School of Dreams’, in Keil and Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era, pp. 191–213; Jennifer Peterson, Education in the School of dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013); Oliver Gaycken, devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Jennifer Horne, ‘Nostalgia and Non-fiction in Edison’s 1917 Conquest Program’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television vol. 22 no. 3 (2002), pp. 315–31; James M. Doering, ‘In Search of Quality: George Colburn, George Kleine, and the Film Score for Antony and Cleopatra (1914)’, Musical Quarterly vol. 91 no. 3–4 (2008), pp. 158–99; Leslie Midkiff DeBauche, Reel Patriotism: The Movies and World War I (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997); Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribner, 1990); Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); and Rita Horwitz, ‘George Kleine and the Early Motion Picture Industry’, in Horwitz and Harrison (eds), George Kleine Collection of Early Motion Pictures, pp. xiii–xxv. Gerben Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Ibid., pp. 72–109; see also pp. 1–2 for a brief summary. For a summary, see ibid., pp. 183–4. See, for example, Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History (London: BFI Publishing, 2005); Janet Wasko, How Hollywood Works (London: Sage, 2003). See also Vincent Mosco, The Political Economy of Communication: Rethinking and Renewal (London: Sage, 1996). Gomery, Hollywood Studio System, p. 4. Wasko, How Hollywood Works, pp. 7–8. Candace Jones, ‘Co-evolution of Entrepreneurial Careers, Institutional Rules and Competitive Dynamics in American Film, 1895–1920’, Organization Studies vol. 22 no. 6 (2001), pp. 911–44. Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, p. 2. Ibid., p. 186. Douglass North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 2. Michael Pokorny and John Sedgwick, ‘Profitability Trends in Hollywood, 1929–1999: Somebody Must Know Something’, Economic History Review vol. 63 no. 1 (2010), pp. 56–7. North, Understanding the Process of Economic Change, pp. 4–5. Regarding the entrepreneurial ‘function’, see Marc Casson and Andrew Godley, ‘Entrepreneurship and Historical Explanation’,

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29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

174

in Youssef Cassis and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou (eds), Entrepreneurship in Theory and History (Basingstoke, Hants.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 26. The notion of experience goods was discussed by economist Phillip Nelson in 1970. In Nelson’s analysis, experience goods included not just goods whose quality could only be assessed through experience, but also goods whose quality it was cheaper for the consumer to assess through experience than through search. Phillip Nelson, ‘Information and Consumer Behavior’, Journal of Political Economy vol. 78 no. 2 (March–April 1970), pp. 311–29. William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting (New York: Warner Books, 1983), p. 1 and passim. Pokorny and Sedgwick, ‘Profitability Trends’, p. 56. Arthur De Vany, Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry (New York: Routledge, 2004). Ibid., pp. 2–3. Ibid., pp. 231–8. Toby Miller et al., Global Hollywood 2 (London: BFI Publishing, 2005), p. 28. Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Abacus, 2006 [1975]), p. 187. Many of these developments are discussed in Keil and Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era. See also Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (New York: Scribner, 1990). David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985). For the co-authors’ account of a ‘transitional’ period, see Kristin Thompson, ‘From Primitive to Classical’, in ibid., pp. 157–73. For their account of how storytelling works in classical Hollywood cinema, see Kristin Thompson, ‘The Formulation of the Classical Narrative’, in ibid., pp. 174–93. For a discussion about ‘classical’ vs. ‘post-classical’ film style, including a film analysis based on both terms, see Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland, Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis (London: Arnold, 2002), pp. 27–79. See also Thomas Elsaesser, The Persistence of Hollywood (New York and London: Routledge, 2012). David Bordwell makes a case for the endurance of the classical Hollywood style in The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Charlie Keil, Early American Cinema in Transition: Story, Style, and Filmmaking, 1907–1913 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001). Keil and Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era. For a summary of the debates over the notion of a ‘transitional’ era, see Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp, ‘Introduction’, in Keil and Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era, pp. 1–12. See also Ben Brewster, ‘Periodization of Early Cinema’, in Keil and Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era, pp. 66–75. Keil and Stamp, ‘Introduction’, pp. 2–3. Jan Olsson makes a similar point, arguing that the term ‘transitional cinema’ can be seen as a general rubric for a period characterised by ‘instability and fluidity’. See Jan Olsson, Los Angeles before Hollywood: Journalism and American Film Culture, 1905–1915 (Stockholm: National Library, 2009), p. 24; see also pp. 15–16. See, for example, André Gaudreault, ‘The Culture Broth and the Froth of Cultures of So-called Early Cinema’, in André Gaudreault et al. (eds), A Companion to Early Cinema (Chichester, W. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 15–31; André Gaudreault, Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema, trans. Timothy Barnard (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011); André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion, ‘A Medium Is Always Born George Kleine and American Cinema

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46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51.

52.

53. 54.

55.

Twice’, Early Popular Visual Culture vol. 3 no. 1 (2005), pp. 3–15; and André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion, ‘The Neo-Institutionalisation of Cinema as a New Medium’, in Vanessa Toulmin and Simon Popple (eds), Visual delights Two: Exhibition and Reception (Eastleigh, Hants.: John Libbey, 2005), pp. 87–95. See, for example, Gaudreault and Marion, ‘A Medium Is Always Born Twice’, pp. 4–6; Gaudreault and Marion, ‘Neo-Institutionalisation of Cinema’, p. 92; and Gaudreault, ‘Culture Broth’, p. 20. Gaudreault and Marion, ‘A Medium Is Always Born Twice’, pp. 4–5. As in the title of Gaudreault’s ‘The Culture Broth and the Froth of Cultures of So-called Early Cinema’. Noël Burch, ‘Porter, or Ambivalence’, Screen vol. 19 no. 4 (Winter 1978–9), pp. 91–105. This and other articles dealing with the ‘primitive’ and ‘institutional’ modes of representation were later revised and compiled in Burch’s Life to Those Shadows, trans. and ed. Ben Brewster (London: BFI Publishing, 1990). Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, ‘Linearity, Materialism and the Study of Early American Cinema’, Wide Angle vol. 5 no. 3 (1983), pp. 4–15. For the critique of Burch’s notion of ‘primitive’ cinema, see Tom Gunning, ‘“Primitive” Cinema: A Frame Up? Or the Trick’s on Us’, in Elsaesser, Early Cinema, pp. 95–103. For a selection of Gunning’s writing on the ‘cinema of attractions’, and for selected criticisms of the concept, see Tom Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, in Elsaesser, Early Cinema, pp. 56–67; Tom Gunning, ‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator’, in Linda Williams (ed.), Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), pp. 114–33; Charles Musser, ‘The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter’, Cinema Journal vol. 19 no. 1 (Autumn 1979), pp. 1–38; Charles Musser, Introduction to the reprint of ‘The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter [1979]’, in Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann and Art Simon (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film: Volume 1; Origins to 1928 (Chichester, W. Sussex, and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 39–86; Charles Musser, ‘Rethinking Early Cinema: Cinema of Attractions and Narrativity’, Yale Journal of Criticism vol. 7 no. 2 (Fall 1994), pp. 203–32. See also Wanda Strauven, ‘Introduction to an Attractive Concept’, in Wanda Strauven (ed.), The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), pp. 11–16. For the notion of a cinema of ‘narrative integration’, see Tom Gunning, d. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991). Gaudreault argues that before 1910, cinema was not seen as an autonomous cultural practice. Rather, motion pictures were embedded in other and previous ‘cultural series’ (e.g. photography, animation, theatre, etc.). See Gaudreault, Film and Attraction, passim; and Gaudreault and Marion, ‘A Medium Is Always Born Twice’, p. 15n10. Jonathan Auerbach, Body Shots: Early Cinema’s Incarnations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 8. This tripartite logic emanated from the post-Brighton scholarship on early American cinema as briefly outlined in this section. It also underpins the first volumes of the History of American Cinema book series, still the standard history for present-day scholars of American cinema. See Musser, Emergence of Cinema; Bowser, Transformation of Cinema; and Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928 (New York: Scribner, 1990). Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 71.

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56. Gaudreault points to a solution when he argues that periods of change were not necessarily experienced as a rupture, and that historical breaks and ruptures belong not to ‘the historical phenomena themselves’ but to ‘the world of historical understanding’. But the implication that historical understanding is not contained, caused or in some way restricted by the characteristics of historical events or the way these were experienced seems to render the theory self-refuting. Furthermore, the sharp separation of experience and explanation seems incompatible with both realism and the cultural materialism that has inspired this book. Gaudreault, Film and Attraction, pp. 84, 111.

1 FROM THE OPTICAL STORE TO THE MPPC 1. Charles Henry Meltzer, ‘Movies Will Never Kill the Regular Drama, Says Kleine’, New York American, 14 June 1914, Dramatic Section, pp. 6–7. 2. Kleine, untitled draft of article [1908?], George Kleine Papers (henceforth GKP), Box 26, file ‘Historical; General, 1900–1928’. The marginalia of this draft states that the article was ‘dictated/ written in 1908’, but the contents are nearly identical to an article that was published in the Film Index on 28 May 1910 under the title ‘Progress in Optical Projection in the Last Fifty Years’. 3. According to Kleine’s birth certificate, his father was born in Dresden, Germany. The City of New York, Department of Health, ‘Certificate and Record of Birth of George Kleine’, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; General, 1900–1928’. 4. Meltzer, ‘Movies Will Never Kill the Regular Drama’; and Kleine, untitled draft of article [1908?]. 5. Kleine to Motion Picture News (‘Commentary on article “MOTION PICTURE TRUST” by Hector Streyckmans’), 9 November 1927, GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Publicity; Correspondence and Other Documents, 1914–1927’. See also miscellaneous documents in GKP, Box 8, file ‘College of the City of New York, 1926, 1928’; and Kleine to W. J. Cameron, editor of the dearborn Independent, 21 June 1921, GKP, Box 10, file ‘The Dearborn Independent, 1921’. 6. Kleine, ‘Progress in Optical Projection in the Last Fifty Years’, p. 10. Pike Jr and Kleine’s Film Index article are referenced in Charles Musser’s account of how early cinema should be understood as part of a longer ‘history of screen practice’. Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribner, 1990), pp. 42–3. 7. Louella Parsons, ‘How the Motion Drama Studios Moved West to the Home of the Cowboy and the California Mountains and How the Pioneers Made Their Millions’, Chicago Herald [1916], undated copy in GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Publicity; Correspondence and Other Documents, 1914–1927’. 8. This point, and some of the examples mentioned here, appears in Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), p. 11. 9. Gerben Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 159–64. 10. This approach to career history is inspired by Candace Jones’s ‘co-evolutionary’ analysis of entrepreneurial careers and institutional rules in the emergent phases of the American film industry. Candace Jones, ‘Co-evolution of Entrepreneurial Careers, Institutional Rules, and Competitive Dynamics in American Film, 1895–1920’, Organization Studies vol. 22 no. 6 (2001), pp. 911–44. 11. In a letter to Robert Grau in 1914, Kleine stated that he moved to Chicago in 1890, but in all other sources I have come across, he gives 1893 as the year of the move. Kleine to Robert Grau,

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12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

21 October 1914, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Grau, Robert, 1913–1915’; and, for example, Kleine to Motion Picture News, 19 December 1919, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; General, 1900–1928’. Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Abacus, 2006 [1975]), p. 166. Advertisement for O. B. and G. Kleine, Opticians, in Kleine, ‘The Eye and Defects of Vision’, pamphlet issued by O. B. and G. Kleine, Opticians, Chicago, 1894, microfilm copy available at Library of Congress, Microfilm and Electronic Resources Center (Jefferson Building). ‘Medical News’, Cleveland Journal of Medicine vol. 3 no. 7 (July 1898), p. 329. Oscar Kleine later moved back to New York City and continued to work in the optical business. When Charles B. Kleine retired in the autumn of 1911, he gave his optical store to Oscar, the oldest son, but Oscar died only four weeks later (on 29 November 1911) of typhoid fever. ‘Death of Oscar B. Kleine’, Moving Picture World (henceforth MPW) vol. 10 no. 11 (16 December 1911), p. 894. Kleine, untitled draft of article [1908?]. On Edward H. Amet and his Magniscope, see Kirk J. Kekatos, ‘Edward H. Amet and the Spanish-American War Film’, Film History vol. 14 no. 3–4 (2002), pp. 405–17. Kleine to the Record Herald, Examiner, daily News, Evening Journal, Associated Press and City Press (letter not for publication), 21 March 1908, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, p. 162. Kleine, draft of article, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Lectures, 1910–1912 and undated’, published as ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, in Proceedings of the National University Extension Association at Lexington, Kentucky, April 20, 21, 22, 1922 (Boston, MA: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1923), pp. 27–43. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, p. 292. Patrick Loughney, ‘1898–1899: Movies and Entrepreneurs’, in André Gaudreault (ed.), American Cinema, 1890–1909: Themes and Variations (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), pp. 70–1. Charles Musser, ‘The Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter’, Cinema Journal vol. 19 no. 1 (Autumn 1979), pp. 20–1. Loughney, ‘1898–1899: Movies and Entrepreneurs’, p. 70. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, p. 292. Max Alvarez, ‘The Origins of the Film Exchange’, Film History vol. 17 no. 4 (2005), p. 433. Lauren Rabinovitz argues that with the emergence of rental exchanges in 1906–7, Chicago was potentially as important as New York. See Lauren Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998), pp. 169–70. ‘Films & Merchandise Purchased from the Edison Mfg. Co. from 1899 to 1904’, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Company, 1902–1908’. These figures are also reprinted as an appendix to Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 482–3. There are several ways of measuring historical worth, each more or less appropriate depending on what you want to measure (commodity prices, income, assets) and for what specific purpose. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is far from ideal for the figures discussed here, since they represent business rather than consumer purchases (the Producer Price Index [formerly the Wholesale Price Index] would have made more sense, but the data available via the Bureau of Labor Statistics only go back to 1913), but the point of the 2013 figures is merely to give the reader a rough idea of Kleine’s turnover in these years. I used a calculator available at .

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41.

Samuel H. Williamson, ‘Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount, 1774 to present’, MeasuringWorth, 2014. Available at: (retrieved 20 July 2014). See also Lawrence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, ‘Measures of Worth’, MeasuringWorth, 2010, available at: (retrieved 20 July 2014); US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, ‘Producer Price Indexes’, available at: (retrieved 20 July 2014); and US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, ‘Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject’, available at: (retrieved 20 July 2014). This does not take inflation into account, but the real value increase would also have been considerable. Robert C. Allen, ‘Contra the Chaser Theory’, Wide Angle vol. 3 no. 1 (1979), pp. 10–11. See also Robert Grau, The Theatre of Science: A Volume of Progress and Achievement in the Motion Picture Industry (New York, London and Paris: Broadway Publishing Co., 1914), pp. 11–12. See Robert C. Allen, Vaudeville and Film, 1895–1915: A Study in Media Interaction (New York: Arno Press, 1980). Jeffrey F. Klenotic, ‘The Place of Rhetoric in “New” Film Historiography: The Discourse of Corrective Revisionism’, Film History vol. 6 no. 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 45–58. Charles Musser, ‘Another Look at the “Chaser Theory”’, Studies in Visual Communication vol. 10 no. 4 (1984), pp. 24–44; Robert C. Allen, ‘Looking at “Another Look at the ‘Chaser Theory’”’, Studies in Visual Communication vol. 10 no. 4 (1984), pp. 45–50; and Charles Musser, ‘Musser’s Reply to Allen’, Studies in Visual Communication 10, no. 4 (1984), pp. 51–2. Musser, ‘Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter’, pp. 20–1. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, p. 278. Howard T. Lewis, The Motion Picture Industry (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1933), pp. 2–3. Gerben Bakker, ‘The Quality Race: Feature Films and Market Dominance in the US and Europe in the 1910s’, in Steve Neale (ed.), The Classical Hollywood Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), p. 34. For an overview of the exhibition contexts of early cinema, see Richard Abel, ‘From Peep Show to Picture Palace: The Early Exhibition of Motion Pictures’, in Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann and Art Simon (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film: Volume 1; Origins to 1928 (Chichester, W. Sussex, and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 87–108; and Charlotte Herzog, ‘The Archaeology of Cinema Architecture: The Origins of the Movie Theater’, Quarterly Review of Film Studies vol. 9 no. 1 (1984), pp. 11–32. Two scholars who have pioneered the study of the intermediality of early cinema are André Gaudreault and Rick Altman, the latter with a focus on film sound, and with the aim of presenting a ‘new history of American cinema reconfigured through sound’. See André Gaudreault, Film and Attraction: From Kinematography to Cinema, trans. Timothy Barnard (Urbana, Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2011); and Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004). For a selection of case studies that demonstrate the mixed-media character of motion picture shows in early cinema, and the diversity of exhibition contexts, see Marta Braun et al., Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early Cinema (New Barnet, Herts.: John Libbey, 2012). Alvarez, ‘Origins of the Film Exchange’, p. 432. Kleine, untitled draft of article [1908?]. Kleine, ‘The Old and the New Way of Making Pictures’, Morning Telegraph, Motion Picture Section, 24 September 1922, p. 4. Musser, ‘Early Cinema of Edwin S. Porter’, p. 33.

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28. 29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38. 39. 40.

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42. Alvarez, ‘Origins of the Film Exchange’, p. 432. 43. Jones, ‘Co-evolution’. See, for example, Table 1 on p. 923. 44. Kleine Optical Co., ‘Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Magic Lanterns, Accessories and Stereopticon Views’, 1902, pp. 107–8, copy in ‘Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and Distributors 1894–1908’ [microform], MoMA Manhattan Library. 45. Kimberly E. Beil, ‘Illustrating Contingency: Photographic Reproductions of Writing on the Visual Arts’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Irvine (2012), pp. 144–5. 46. Kleine Optical Co., [‘Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Magic Lanterns, Accessories and Stereopticon Views’], 1903, p. 4, copy retrieved from the New Jersey Digital Highway. Available at: . The sentence reappears verbatim in the catalogue that Beil discusses. See Kleine Optical Co., ‘Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Slides, Films’, November 1905, p. 206, copy retrieved from the New Jersey Digital Highway’. Available at: . 47. See, for example, Kleine Optical Co., [‘Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Magic Lanterns, Accessories and Stereopticon Views’], 1903, p. 6. 48. Ibid., p. 4. 49. Kleine Optical Co., ‘Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Slides, Views,’ p. 31, copy in ‘Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and Distributors 1894–1908’ [microform], MoMA Manhattan Library. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. The chase film has a special status in scholarship on early cinema, and has been the subject of many fascinating analyses. Some concentrate on the formal characteristics of the chase film, and how to make sense of these in relation to the development of narrative forms in early American cinema, but there are also accounts that contextualise the chase film more broadly, such as Jan Olsson’s discussion about chase films, race and lynching. Jan Olsson, ‘Modernity Stops at Nothing: The American Chase Film and the Specter of Lynching’, in André Gaudreault et al. (eds), A Companion to Early Cinema (Chichester, W. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 257–76. See also Tom Gunning, ‘Non-continuity, Continuity, Discontinuity: A Theory of Genres in Early Films’, in Thomas Elsaesser (ed.), with Adam Barker, Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI Publishing, 1990), pp. 86–94; and Jonathan Auerbach, Body Shots: Early Cinema’s Incarnations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), Chapter 3. 52. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, p. 389. ‘Duping’ – making and selling copies of competitors’ films without their consent – would now be considered a form of piracy. Legally, however, duping was not banned until 1903, when courts decided in favour of Edison in a lawsuit against Philadelphia manufacturer Lubin – an infamous duper. Up to this point, and for some time after, duping was a widespread practice in American cinema. See Peter Decherney, Hollywood’s Copyright Wars: From Edison to the Internet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 1–58. 53. W. E. Gilmore to Kleine, 15 February 1904; Kleine to W. E. Gilmore, 2 April 1904; J. R. Schermerhorn to Kleine, 5 April 1904; Kleine to J. R. Schermerhorn, 7 April 1904, all in the Thomas Edison Papers (henceforth TEP), reel 189, pp. 307–8, 323–5, 326, 327–8. 54. Kleine to Gilmore, 2 April 1904. 55. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, p. 389. 56. Advertisements for Kleine Optical Co., NY Clipper vol. 52 no. 24 (6 August 1904), p. 546; and NY Clipper vol. 52 no. 25 (13 August 1904), p. 576.

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57. W. E. Gilmore to Kleine, 15 August 1904, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 58. Kleine to W. E. Gilmore, 18 August 1904; and W. E. Gilmore to Kleine, 24 August 1904, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 59. Kleine to W. E. Gilmore, 24 August 1904, TEP, reel 189, pp. 359–62. 60. Kleine, circular to customers, 11 October 1904, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, pp. 277–8. 64. On Pathé’s crucial role in American cinema up to the nickelodeon era, and how American firms subsequently assumed control of the domestic market (partly through anti-French propaganda), see Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). For a recent take on how Pathé pioneered motion picture production on an industrial, mass scale, see Charles O’Brien, ‘Motion Picture Color and Pathé-Frères: The Aesthetic Consequences of Industrialization’, in Gaudreault et al., Companion to Early Cinema, pp. 298–314. 65. Kleine Optical Co., ‘Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Slides, Views’, October 1904, pp. 2–3. 66. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, p. 329. On the early years of Vitagraph, especially regarding this company’s contributions to the development of film style, see Jon Gartenberg, ‘Vitagraph before Griffith: Forging Ahead in the Nickelodeon Era’, Studies in Visual Communication vol. 10 no. 4 (Fall 1984), pp. 17–23. 67. The following figures are from ‘Purchases for 1904, ’05, ’06 & ’07’, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 68. Kleine Optical Co., ‘Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Slides, Films’, November 1905, p. 208. 69. Abel, Red Rooster Scare, p. 52; and Musser, Emergence of Cinema, p. 450. 70. Advertisement for the Kleine Optical Co., Show World, c. 1908, copy in GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Publicity; Advertisements, Ca. 1901–1905–1909–[1910?]–1917’. See also advertisement for the Kleine Optical Co., Billboard, 29 February 1908, p. 28. 71. Louis Rosenbluh, District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, The United States of America Petitioner vs. The Motion Picture Patents Company et al. defendants (henceforth US vs. MPPC), transcript of record in six volumes (New York: Appeal Printing Co., 1915), vol. 3, p. 364. These records have been digitised and made available through the Media History Digital Library’s Early Cinema Collection. Available at: . 72. Affidavit of George Kleine, Edison Manufacturing Company, Complainant vs. Charles H. Peckham, Defendant (henceforth Edison vs. Peckham), United States Circuit Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, p. 36, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. 73. Paul S. Moore, ‘The Grand Opening of the Movie Theatre in the Second Birth of Cinema’, Early Popular Visual Culture vol. 11 no. 2 (2013), p. 118. 74. Paul S. Moore, ‘Advance Newspaper Publicity for the Vitascope and the Mass Address of Cinema’s Reading Public’, in Gaudreault et al. (eds), Companion to Early Cinema, pp. 381–97. 75. Ibid., pp. 381–6. 76. Richard Abel, ‘Early Film Programs: An Overture, Five Acts, and an Interlude’, in Gaudreault et al. (eds), Companion to Early Cinema, pp. 341–4. Abel describes ‘high-class’ vaudeville as a variety show catering to a middle-class audience, offering a long (eight to fifteen acts) weekly-changed programme featuring ‘top performers in “respectable” variety acts’ (p. 341), whereas ‘family’

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77.

78. 79.

80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96. 97.

vaudeville offered shorter programmes (five to six acts) and less expensive performers in smaller venues (p. 342). André Gaudreault declares that ‘what the earliest users of the kinematograph did was simply to employ a new device within other cultural series, each of which already had its own practices’ (p. 15, italics in original). He also clarifies that the ‘“Cinématograph” and “cinema” are … not the same thing’ (p. 15, italics in original). This is difficult to refute, but if ‘cinema’ is an institution, it was shaped not only by the people who were cranking the cameras, but also by the businessmen and cultural entrepreneurs who gradually, through a process of trial and error, built various infrastructures of motion picture production, distribution and exhibition. For these people, motion pictures were a new and significantly different product, rather than a mere extension of what was already there. André Gaudreault, ‘The Culture Broth and the Froth of Cultures of Socalled Early Cinema’, in Gaudreault et al. (eds), Companion to Early Cinema, pp. 15–31. Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, pp. xx, 159, 164 and passim. bid., p. 169. Regarding the commodity form of motion pictures, also see John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny, ‘The Characteristics of Film as a Commodity’, in John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny (eds), An Economic History of Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 6–23. Motion picture projectors for home use became available almost immediately after cinema’s commercial debut in 1896, accompanied by predictions that the new technology would become an indispensable part of the home. See Ben Singer, ‘Early Home Cinema and the Edison Home Projecting Kinetoscope’, Film History vol. 2 no. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 37–69. Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of an American Mass Market (New York: Pantheon, 1989), referenced in Abel, ‘From Peep Show to Picture Palace’, p. 96. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, pp. 418–28. See also Richard Abel, ‘“Pathé Goes to Town”: French Films Create a Market for the Nickelodeon’, Cinema Journal vol. 35 no. 1 (Fall 1995), pp. 3–26. Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, pp. 272, 278, 345 and passim. ‘Routine novelty’ is from Moore, ‘Advance Newspaper Publicity’. Moore, ‘Grand Opening’, pp. 116–17. Ibid., p. 116. Abel, ‘From Peep Show to Picture Palace’, p. 94. Ibid. Abel, ‘Early Film Programs’, pp. 345–9. For an overview of the growth of film exchanges in this era, see Alvarez, ‘Origins of the Film Exchange’, pp. 435–8. Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, p. 181. On the ‘value chain’ and ‘asset specificity’ in the movie business, see ibid., pp. 179–80. Chicago had eleven film exchanges by 1906, fifteen by early 1907 and eighteen by 1908. Alvarez, ‘Origins of the Film Exchange’, p. 433. Kleine to Motion Picture News (‘Commentary on article “MOTION PICTURE TRUST” by Hector Streyckmans’), 9 November. Kleine to the Record Herald, Examiner, daily News, Evening Journal, Associated Press and City Press (letter not for publication), 21 March 1908. Regarding the trade name ‘Kosmik’, see Kleine, memo on Kosmik, undated [1919], GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; General, 1900–1928’. See also, for example, advertisement for the Kosmik Film Service, Billboard, 29 February 1908, p. 29. ‘Editorial Notes and Comments’, MPW vol. 2 no. 21 (23 May 1908), p. 456. Kleine to Gaumont Co. and Urban-Eclipse, 13 August 1909, and Kleine to Sussfeld, Lorsch & Co., 13 August 1909, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gaumont, 1909–1915 and undated’.

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98. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, pp. 372–4. 99. Ibid., pp. 372, 406–7. 100. Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 81–6 and passim (especially Chapters 1–3). 101. Rob King, The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 211, 246–50. 102. This notion of cinema as commodified ‘mass culture’ is reminiscent (if not exactly replicating) Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s notion of the ‘culture industry’, a term that also emphasised that power rests with the industry that produces mass culture, rather than with the masses that consumes it. See Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, in dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 94–136. Original German version published 1944. 103. Lee Grieveson, ‘Not Harmless Entertainment: State Censorship and Cinema in the Transitional Era’, in Leslie J. Moran et al. (eds), Law’s Moving Image (London: Cavendish, 2004), pp. 145–59. See also Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). 104. Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, pp. 183–4. 105. Peter Vorderer, ‘It’s All Entertainment – Sure. But What Exactly Is Entertainment?’, Poetics vol. 29 no. 4–5 (November 2001), pp. 247–61. 106. It is entirely possible that it was the communal experience of going to the movies that encouraged people to come back, but it is still hard to believe that they would have done so without a new and unseen picture as, at least, a pretext for meeting up at the movies rather than somewhere else. 107. This is not to subscribe to technological determinism, but merely to indicate that the basic technology had a measure of agency in determining how cinema developed as an institution. A theoretical foundation for such an approach is Bruno Latour’s ‘actor-network theory’. See Bruno Latour, ‘Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’, in Deborah G. Johnson and Jameson M. Wetmore (eds), Technology and Society: Building Our Sociotechnical Future (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), pp. 151–80; originally published in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992). 108. Sedgwick and Pokorny, ‘Characteristics of Film as a Commodity’, p. 20. 109. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood, p. 11. 110. Such dubious methods were still quite common in 1914, judging by an article in Moving Picture World, in which the formation of the Feature Film Renters’ Association was announced. The aim of this association was to ‘clean up’ the field, and its first action was directed against bicycling. Richard Abel has described how seven years earlier, the United Film Service Protection Association had also been formed to curb practices such as duping, reselling and bicycling. ‘Renters Organize for Protection. Feature Film Men Will First Turn Their Attention to the “Bicycling” Practice around New York – Other “Uplifts” Also in View’, MPW vol. 20 no. 9 (30 May 1914), p. 1242; and Abel, Red Rooster Scare, pp. 89–91. 111. Jennifer Peterson has distinguished between two ‘wings’ of reform discourse around this time, one that advocated the use of ‘repressive forces of censorship’, and one that ‘embraced cinema as a positive force’. Jennifer Peterson, ‘“The Knowledge Which Comes in Pictures”: Educational Films and Early Cinema Audiences’, in Gaudreault et al. (eds), Companion to Early Cinema, p. 280. 112. US vs. MPPC, pp. 1–6.

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113. ‘The Decision against the Patents Company’ [editorial], Motography vol. 14 no. 16 (16 October 1915), p. 806. 114. Robert Anderson, ‘The Motion Picture Patents Company: A Reevaluation’, in Tino Balio (ed.), The American Film Industry, revised edition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985 [1976]), p. 152. Anderson attributes this view of the MPPC primarily to three earlier standard histories of American cinema: Terry Ramsaye’s A Million and One Nights (1926); Benjamin Hampton’s A History of the Movies (1931); and Lewis Jacobs’s The Rise of the American Film (1939). See Anderson, ‘MPPC: A Reevaluation’, p. 133. 115. Janet Staiger has outlined some of the real reasons why the Los Angeles area became the centre of film production from the 1910s and onwards, including (a) around-the-year good weather; (b) varied exteriors; (c) good labour supply; and (d) good transportations. Janet Staiger, ‘The Director-Unit System: Management of Multiple-Unit Companies after 1909’, in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 122. After a certain point, various clustering effects (the emergence of service industries, a rapidly growing talent pool, etc.) strengthened Los Angeles’ position as the centre of production even further. See Allen J. Scott, On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). 116. Jeanne Thomas, ‘The Decay of the Motion Picture Patents Company’, Cinema Journal vol. 10 no. 2 (Spring 1971), pp. 34–40; and Anderson, ‘MPPC: A Reevaluation’, pp. 133–52. 117. Anderson, ‘MPPC: A Reevaluation’, p. 146. 118. Ibid., pp. 144–6. 119. Ibid., p. 150. 120. Michael Quinn, ‘Early Feature Distribution and the Development of the Motion Picture Industry: Famous Players and Paramount, 1912–1921’, PhD dissertation, University of Madison-Wisconsin (1998); and Michael Quinn, ‘Distribution, the Transient Audience, and the Transition to the Feature Film’, Cinema Journal vol. 40 no. 2 (Winter 2001), p. 51. 121. Scott Curtis, ‘A House Divided: The MPPC in Transition’, in Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 239–64. 122. For a summary and analysis, see Janet Staiger, ‘Combination and Litigation: Structures of U.S. Film Distribution 1896–1917’, Cinema Journal vol. 23 no. 2 (Winter 1983), pp. 41–72. 123. Ibid., p. 45. 124. Kleine to Frank Marion, 21 January 1907, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 125. Kleine to Frank Marion, 26 January 1907, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 126. Frank Marion to Kleine, 24 January 1907; and Marion to Kleine, 29 January 1907, both in GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 127. Memo of agreement, 15 February 1907, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 128. Robert S. Birchard, ‘Kleine, George’, in Richard Abel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 361. 129. Kleine to Ramsaye, 22 February 1923; and Kleine to Motion Picture News, 9 November. 130. These details refute previous misleading accounts of Kalem’s financial beginnings, including the assertion that Kalem was built on an investment of merely $600. Early cinema may have been an ‘entrepreneurial delight’, but not that delightful. Janet Wasko, Movies and Money: Financing the American Film Industry (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982), p. 2. 131. Gary W. Harner, ‘The Kalem Company, Travel and On-location Filming: The Forging of an Identity’, Film History vol. 10 no. 2 (1998), pp. 188–209.

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132. Tom Gunning, ‘The Intertextuality of Early Cinema: A Prologue to Fantômas’, in Robert Stam and Allesandra Raengo (eds), A Companion to Literature and Film (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 127–43. See also Decherney, Hollywood’s Copyright Wars, Chapter 1. 133. Staiger, ‘Combination and Litigation’, p. 45. 134. Kleine to William Gilmore, 14 March 1907, TEP, reel 191, p. 579. 135. Kleine to William Gilmore, 5 May 1907, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 136. Ibid. 137. Ibid. 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid. 140. Ibid. 141. Ibid.; and Kleine, ‘Tentative Proposition Made to Mr. Pelzer 5/6/07’, 7 May 1907, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 142. Kleine to William Pelzer, 8 May 1907, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’; and Kleine to William Pelzer, 11 May 1907, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902– 1908’. 143. William Pelzer to Kleine, 14 May 1907, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 144. Kleine to William Pelzer, 21 May 1907; Kleine to Vitagraph, 21 May 1907; and Kleine to Jacques Berst, 21 May 1907, all in GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 145. Kleine to Ramsaye, 22 February 1923. 146. William Pelzer to Kleine, 18 June 1907; and Albert Smith (Vitagraph) to Kleine, 22 June 1907, both in GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 147. Kleine to William Pelzer, 29 July 1907, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 148. The details of these meetings and conventions are documented in Curtis, ‘A House Divided’, pp. 241–3. Curtis’s account draws partly on Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, pp. 376–7. 149. Kleine to Alex Moore, 6 January 1908, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. 150. Alex Moore to Kleine, 8 January 1908, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Edison Manufacturing Co., 1902–1908’. The UFSPA was an organisation of rental exchanges formed in November 1907 to function as a kind of cooperative counterpart to the licensed manufacturers. See Curtis, ‘A House Divided’, pp. 242–3. 151. Curtis, ‘A House Divided’, p. 243. 152. Ibid., p. 243. 153. Unsent letter from Kleine to Frank Marion, 2 March 1908, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem 1906–1927’. 154. Ibid. 155. Ibid. 156. Kleine to Edison Manufacturing Co., 19 February 1908, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. 157. Kleine to Motion Picture News, 9 November 1927. 158. Curtis, ‘A House Divided’, pp. 247–8. 159. Abel, Red Rooster Scare, pp. 89–91. 160. Ibid., p. 91. 161. Staiger, ‘Combination and Litigation’, pp. 45–6. 162. Memo of agreement between Biograph (1); Williams, Brown and Earle (2); Kleine Optical Co. (3); and Charles E. Dressler (4), 18 February 1908, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’.

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163. Kleine, circular to customers, 25 February 1908, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. 164. Ibid. 165. See, for example, Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure, pp. 172–7; and Anderson, ‘MPPC: A Reevaluation’, p. 136. Several of Kleine’s initial attacks on the Edison licence group appeared in Show World. See, for example, ‘Kleine Talks – Biograph Company Denies Validity of Patents’, Show World, 7 March 1908; and ‘Edison Fires Second Gun in Film Battle’, Show World, 28 March 1908. 166. Edison Manufacturing Co., Complaint to the Circuit Court of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, 4 March 1908. See also ‘The Answer of Kleine Optical Company, Defendant, to the Bill of Complaint of Edison Manufacturing Company, Complainant’, United States Circuit Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division [1908], GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. 167. Frank Marion to Kleine, 26 February 1908, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 168. Kleine to Frank Marion and Samuel Long, 28 February 1908, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 169. Ibid. 170. Kleine to Henry Lorsch, 4 April 1908, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 171. Ibid. 172. Telegram from Samuel Long to Kleine, 6 April 1908, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kalem, 1906–1927’. 173. Frank J. Marion to the Edison Manufacturing Co., 9 April 1908, TEP, reel 215, p. 177. 174. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, pp. 433–4. 175. André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning, ‘Introduction: American Cinema Emerges (1890–1909)’, in Gaudreault (ed.), American Cinema, p. 17. 176. Rabinovitz, For the Love of Pleasure, pp. 176–7. 177. Kleine to Ramsaye, 22 February 1923; and Kleine to Benjamin Hampton, 19 September 1927, GKP, Box 25, file ‘Hampton, Benjamin B., 1916–1917, 1927’. 178. Curtis’s discussion about this phase draws on Musser’s work, and Musser in turn builds on the records from the later US vs. MPPC court hearings, trade press sources and earlier survey histories such as Terry Ramsaye’s A Million and One Nights. 179. A handwritten draft of this document – including a clause about Edison and Biograph’s royalty split that was removed in later versions – is preserved in the Thomas Edison Papers. Presumably, this is the original, although it appears to be misdated (to 1 February 1908 – July would have made more sense). A verbatim copy, minus the royalty clause, included as an addendum to correspondence between Dyer and Marvin on 29 July 1908, is located at MoMA’s Film Study Center, and reprinted in full in Musser’s book Before the Nickelodeon. The Kleine Papers at the LC has a copy that is identical with the exception of the date (Kleine dated his copy 28 July 1908) and some marginalia that Kleine added. ‘Proposed Scheme’, TEP, reel 215, pp. 008–011; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, pp. 434–6; and ‘Proposed Scheme’ [28 July 1908], GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. 180. ‘Proposed Scheme’. 181. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, pp. 436–8. See also Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, pp. 28–31. 182. Ibid., p. 438. See also ‘License Agreement’ between the Motion Picture Patents Co. and George Kleine, 18 December 1908, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Film Study Center Special Collections, George Kleine Collection, file ‘KLEINE, George: Film Lists’. 183. Kleine to Frank L. Dyer, 16 December 1908 [not sent], GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. 184. Ibid.

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185. Anderson, ‘MPPC: A Reevaluation’, pp. 138–9. 186. The document I have studied at the Library of Congress matches exactly the sections that Anderson quotes, and the date Anderson gives – May 1908 – matches the version I have studied. Still, it is possible that there are different versions. Anderson references Box 37 of the Kleine Papers, whereas I found ‘A Plan to Reorganize’ in Box 26, but I have come up blank when looking for the plan in Box 37. Either way, the earlier cited ‘Proposed Scheme’ is the relevant source to study with regard to the formation of the MPPC, although the sections of ‘A Plan’ that did, in fact, concern the patents agreement between Edison and Biograph might have been used when the ‘Proposed Scheme’ was put together. 187. Anderson, ‘MPPC: A Reevaluation’, p. 139. 188. Ibid., p. 140. 189. ‘A Plan to Reorganize the Motion Picture Business of the United States’, quoted in Anderson, ‘MPPC: A Reevaluation’, p. 139. 190. ‘A Plan to Reorganize the Motion Picture Business of the United States’, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Distribution, 1908–1910’. 191. Ibid. 192. Ibid. 193. Addendum to ‘A Plan’, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Distribution, 1908–1910’. 194. Ibid. 195. Kleine to Henry Melville, 11 March 1914, GKP, Box 37, file ‘Motion Picture Patents Co. Litigation (cont.); U.S. Government, 1912–1919’, 196. Kleine to Record Herald, Examiner, daily News, Evening Journal, Associated Press and City Press, 21 March 1908. 197. Kleine, affidavit to the United States District Court, Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division (Edison vs. Peckham), 13 June 1908, p. 38. 198. ‘The Film daily Question Box’, The Film daily, 3 May 1927, p. 2.

2 THE BREAKTHROUGH OF THE MULTI-REEL FEATURE FILM 1. Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (New York: Scribner, 1990), p. 56. 2. Richard Abel, ‘Early Film Programs: An Overture, Five Acts, and an Interlude’, in André Gaudreault et al. (eds), A Companion to Early Cinema (Chichester, W. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 345–9. 3. Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, Chapter 1. On illustrated songs in particular, and the ‘combination show’ character of nickelodeon exhibition, see Richard Abel, Americanizing the Movies and ‘Movie-Mad’ Audiences, 1910–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), pp. 127–38. 4. ‘Release Day Schedule, Licensed Manufacturers’, 31 July 1911, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Motion Picture Patents Co., 1909–1913’. 5. These examples are from the MPPC licence agreement of January 1909, just after it began operations. Circular and licence agreement sent to film rental exchanges, 12 January 1909, Defendants’ Exhibit No. 8, District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, The United States of America Petitioner vs. The Motion Picture Patents Company et al. defendants (henceforth US vs. MPPC), transcript of record in six volumes (New York: Appeal Printing Co., 1915), vol. 1, p. 43. These records have been digitised and made available through the Media History Digital Library’s Early Cinema Collection. Available at: .

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6. It was said that by late 1911, the GFC had acquired all licensed exchanges except William Fox’s Greater New York Film Rental Exchange. Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, p. 82. 7. Ibid., p. 31. 8. Charles Musser, ‘The Nickelodeon Era Begins’, in Thomas Elsaesser (ed.), with Adam Barker, Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI Publishing, 1990), p. 257. 9. For a succinct account of the Sales Co., see Abel, Americanizing the Movies, pp. 15–21. For more details, see Max Alvarez, ‘The Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company’, Film History vol. 19 no. 3 (2007), pp. 247–70. 10. The notion of ‘programme cinema’ is borrowed from Michael Quinn, ‘Early Feature Distribution and the Development of the Motion Picture Industry: Famous Players and Paramount, 1912– 1921’, PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998). See also Michael Quinn, ‘Distribution, the Transient Audience, and the Transition to the Feature Film’, Cinema Journal vol. 40 no. 2 (Winter 2001), pp. 35–56. 11. Kleine to Gaumont Co. and Urban-Eclipse, 13 August 1909, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gaumont, 1909– 1915 and undated’. 12. Robert S. Birchard, ‘Kleine, George’, in Richard Abel (ed.), Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 360–1. 13. ‘Terms under which the General Film Company has purchased the film rental business of the Kleine Optical Company at Chicago, New York, Boston and Denver’; ‘Bill of Sale, George Kleine (New York) to General Film Company, 1910’; and Kleine, untitled memo regarding sale of exchanges to the General Film Co., 3 December 1910, all in GKP, Box 24, file ‘General Film, 1910–1911’. 14. Petitioner’s Exhibit No. 128, US vs. MPPC, vol. 1, pp. 541–5. 15. For example, this error appears in Rita Horwitz, ‘George Kleine and the Early Motion Picture Industry’, in Rita Horwitz and Harriet Harrison (eds), with the assistance of Wendy White, The George Kleine Collection of Early Motion Pictures in the Library of Congress: A Catalog (Washington: Library of Congress, 1980), p. xiv; and Anthony Slide, The American Film Industry: A Historical dictionary (New York: Limelight Editions, 1990 [1986]), p. 144. 16. Carl Wilson to Thomas Edison, 14 May 1914, TEP, reel 214, pp. 1032–3. 17. Regarding the Gaumont dispute, see, for example, Kleine to Harry N. Marvin, 13 February 1909, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Motion Picture Patents Co., 1909–1913’. In December 1911, Kleine announced that he would stop marketing Gaumont films at some point prior to 1 February 1912, and switch to Cines after 20 January 1912, substituting two Cines reels for the two weekly Gaumont reels. See Kleine to the MPPC, 29 December 1911, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Motion Picture Patents Co., 1909–1913’. 18. Hugh Gray, ‘When in Rome … (Part 1)’, The Quarterly of Film, Radio and Television vol. 10 no. 3 (Spring 1956), p. 262. 19. For a history of the term ‘blockbuster’ and its historically variable meaning, see Charles Acland, ‘Senses of Success and the Rise of the Blockbuster’, Film History vol. 25 no. 1–2 (2013), pp. 11–18. 20. On the mediation between Italian high culture in these films and American tastes, see William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson, ‘Italian Spectacle and the U.S. Market’, in Roland Cosanday and François Albera (eds), Cinéma sans frontières/Images across Borders (Quebec and Lausanne: Nuit Blanche Éditeur, 1995), pp. 95–105. In the case of Quo Vadis?, there was also a legacy of historical painting. See Ivo Blom, ‘Quo Vadis? From Painting to Cinema and Everything in Between’, in Leonardo Quaresima and Laura Vichi (eds), La decima musa: il cinema e le altre arti/The Tenth Muse: Cinema and Other Arts (Udine: Forum, 2001), pp. 281–92.

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21. Baron Fassini to Kleine, 5 July 1912, GKP, Box 49, file ‘Quo Vadis; Copyright, 1912–1921’; and Kleine to Mario A. Stevani, 9 September 1912; Kleine to Stevani, 11 September 1912; and Stevani to Kleine, 19 September 1912, all in GKP, Box 9, file ‘Copyright, Quo Vadis, 1911–1925’. 22. Kleine to Benjamin Hampton, 19 September 1927, GKP, Box 25, file ‘Hampton, Benjamin B., 1916–1917, 1927’. 23. MeasuringWorth website. Available at: (accessed 9 June 2014). 24. Kleine to Mario A. Stevani, 8 February 1913, GKP, Box 9, file ‘Copyright; Quo Vadis, 1911–1925’. 25. Kleine to Henry Lorsch, 6 March 1913, GKP, Box 49, file ‘Quo Vadis; Copyright, 1912–1921’. 26. Kleine to George F. Scull, 25 February 1913, GKP, Box 9, file ‘Copyright; Quo Vadis, 1911–1925’. 27. Ibid. 28. George F. Scull to Kleine, 28 February 1913, GKP, Box 9, file ‘Copyright; Quo Vadis, 1911–1925’. 29. In a letter to the MPPC dated 1 March 1913, Kleine states that he received a licence for Quo Vadis? ‘several days ago’. Kleine to the MPPC, 1 March 1913, GKP, Box 9, file ‘Copyright; Quo Vadis, 1911–1925’. 30. Kleine to Scull, 25 February 1913. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Kleine to A. H. Woods (Eltinge Theatre, New York City), 17 February 1913, GKP, Box 7, file ‘Cines, Jan–June 1913’. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. The list of contents to Robert Grau’s Theatre of Science stated that Quo Vadis? was ‘the first photoplay to be booked in the best theatres in the same manner as a spoken play’, although Grau’s actual description of the film’s influence was more nuanced. Robert Grau, The Theatre of Science: A Volume of Progress and Achievement in the Motion Picture Industry (New York, London and Paris: Broadway Publishing Co., 1914), pp. xviii, 114. 37. Abel, ‘Early Film Programs’, p. 351 (dante’s Inferno); and p. 358n109 (Paul J. Rainey’s African Hunt). 38. Kleine to the MPPC, 1 March 1913. 39. Ibid. 40. Kleine to Woods, 17 February 1913. 41. Telegram from Kleine to Kleine head offices in Chicago, 14 March 1913, GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Quo Vadis, The Last Days of Pompeii and Other Films, 1912–1913’. 42. Telegram from George Kleine to Kleine head offices in Chicago, 18 March 1913, GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Quo Vadis, The Last Days of Pompeii and Other Films, 1912–1913’. 43. Ibid. 44. Kleine to Hampton, 19 September 1927. 45. Kleine to Scull, 25 February 1913. 46. Kevin Brownlow, Hollywood: The Pioneers (New York: Knopf, 1979), p. 57. 47. The Goat Man, ‘On the Outside Looking In’, Motography vol. 9 no. 6 (15 March 1913), p. 194. 48. Kleine to Hampton, 19 September 1927. 49. Undated memo [c. June 1913], GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Motion Picture Patents Co., 1909– 1913’. See also Frank L. Dyer (president of the General Film Co.) to Kleine, 24 June 1913, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Motion Picture Patents Co., 1909–1913’. 50. Kleine to Hampton, 19 September 1927. A telegram dated 31 March 1913 to Kleine from his employee Harry J. Cohen, starting with the words ‘Harris makes the following proposition’, and in

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51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

which Cohen reiterated Harris’s suggested terms for the Astor engagement, seems to corroborate Kleine’s recollection of the sequence of events, and hereby later histories which draw on Kleine’s account of how Quo Vadis? ended up at the Astor (e.g. those by Hampton, and Hall and Neale). Telegram from Harry J. Cohen to Kleine, 31 March 1913, GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Quo Vadis, The Last Days of Pompeii and Other Films, 1912–1913’. See also, Benjamin Hampton, A History of the Movies (New York: Covici, Friede, 1931), pp. 106–8; and Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), p. 30. ‘Statement of all Quo Vadis engagements from April 21st, 1913 to October 4th, 1913’, GKP, Box 49, file ‘Quo Vadis; Cash Summaries, 1913’. ‘Memorandum of agreement’ between Kleine and Cohan and Harris, 24 April 1913, GKP, Box 8, file ‘Cohan and Harris, 1913, 1917’; and Hall and Neale, Epics, p. 30. Frank L. Dyer, US vs. MPPC vol. 3, pp. 1521–2. Kleine to Hampton, 19 September 1927. Ibid. Horace G. Plimpton, ‘The Development of the Motion Picture’, MPW vol. 21 no. 2 (11 July 1914), p. 198. Hugh Hoffman, ‘The Father of the Feature: A Glance Back to the Origin of the Multiple Reel Production as We Know It Now and a Few Words by the Bright Mind that Conceived It’, MPW vol. 21 no. 2 (11 July 1914), p. 272. In his book about boxing and early cinema, Dan Streible discusses prizefight pictures in terms of a feature-length format in several passages. Dan Streible, Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 5, 18, 186–8. Some of the most influential accounts of American cinema history include discussions about boxing films, passion plays and certain travel films as precursors to the multi-reel feature format. See Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribner, 1990), pp. 193–224; Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, pp. 201–2; and Robert Sklar, Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York: Random House, 1975), pp. 21–2. Musser discusses prizefight films, passion plays and travel films not in terms of feature-length but of ‘full-length programs’, a concept that nevertheless signals its continuity with the later practice of ‘an evening’s entertainment’ built around a single feature-length film. Frank E. Woods, ‘What Are We Coming To?’, MPW vol. 21 no. 3 (18 July 1914), pp. 442–3. W. Stephen Bush, ‘The Dreary Commonplace’, MPW vol. 21 no. 11 (12 September 1914), p. 1484. Frank L. Dyer, US vs. MPPC vol. 3, pp. 1548–9. On the development of the multi-reel feature in France, partly as a solution to problems of cultural legitimacy, partly as a response to American companies’ dominance of the one-reel market, see Richard Abel, The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema, 1896–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 299–358. Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, p. 198. Ibid., p. 199. W. Stephen Bush, ‘The Demand for Variety’, MPW vol. 20 no. 8 (23 May 1914), p. 1088. Frank E. Woods, ‘Pictures Divided into Three Grades: How the Demands of Varied Audiences Are Being Met by Manufacturers’, New York dramatic Mirror vol. 70 no. 1803 (9 July 1913), p. 25. William Fox, US vs. MPPC vol. 2, p. 697. ‘Specialty Theaters Soon, Says Lubin’, Motion Picture News (henceforth MPN) vol. 9 no. 17 (2 May 1914), p. 28.

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69. See, for example, The Photoplay Philosopher [pseud.], ‘Musings of the Photoplay Philosopher’, Motion Picture Magazine vol. 8 no. 12 (January 1915), p. 124. 70. John J. Coleman, ‘The Ultimate Triumph of the Single Reel Production’, MPW vol. 22 no. 3 (17 October 1914), p. 323. 71. W. Stephen Bush, ‘Gradation in Service’, MPW vol. 20 no. 5 (2 May 1914), p. 645. 72. Epes Winthrop Sargent, ‘Handling Feature/The Remedy’, MPW vol. 20 no. 6 (9 May 1914), p. 812. 73. Harry N. Marvin, US vs. MPPC, vol. 3, p. 1285. 74. William N. Selig, ‘Present Day Trend in Film Lengths’, MPW vol. 21 no. 2 (11 July 1914), pp. 181–2. 75. W. Stephen Bush, ‘The Day of the Expert’, MPW vol. 19 no. 10 (7 March 1914), p. 1213. 76. ‘One-Reel and Six-Reel Audiences’, Reel Life vol. 3 no. 18 (17 January 1914), p. 32. 77. ‘Observations by Our Man About Town’, MPW vol. 21 no. 9 (29 August 1914), p. 1227. 78. Jesse L. Lasky, ‘The Accomplishments of the Feature’, MPW vol. 21 no. 2 (11 July 1914), p. 214. 79. ‘Observations by Our Man About Town’, p. 1227. 80. William L. Sherry, ‘Do Features Pay?’, MPN vol. 9 no. 11 (21 March 1914), pp. 19–20. 81. The Film Man [pseudo.], ‘Uplifting the Feature Film: An Interview with E. Mandelbaum, Film Idealist’, New York dramatic Mirror vol. 70 no. 1822 (19 November 1913), p. 30. 82. Quinn, ‘Distribution’, p. 45. 83. See, for just a few examples, ‘Much Oratory on the Multiple Reel Question’, MPW vol. 20 no. 12 (20 June 1914), p. 1695; Chester W. Sawin, US vs. MPPC vol. 4, p. 2296; and Ike van Ronkel, US vs. MPPC vol. 4, p. 2238. 84. Van Ronkel, USA vs. MPPC, vol. 4, p. 2238. 85. ‘Much Oratory’, p. 1695. 86. Frederick Talbot argued that this was the main reason why many exhibitors in the earliest days of the feature were prone to stick to a varied programme of one-reelers. Frederick A. Talbot, Moving Pictures: How They Are Made and Worked (London: William Heinemann, 1912), pp. 169–78. 87. W. Stephen Bush, ‘The Quest of Quality’, MPW vol. 22 no. 3 (17 October 1914), p. 308. 88. Quinn, ‘Early Feature Distribution’, pp. 59, 49–50. 89. ‘Features, or Program, or Both?’, Motography vol. 14 no. 18 (30 October 1915), pp. 911–12. See, for a few other examples, ‘The Exhibitor’s End of It’, Reel Life vol. 4 no. 22 (15 August 1914), p. 20; Frederick James Smith, ‘The Evolution of the Motion Picture: X; The Feature Picture and Exhibiting Methods; An Interview with Tom Moore, the Exhibitor of Washington, D.C’, New York dramatic Mirror vol. 70 no. 1811 (3 September 1913), p. 25; John Freuler, ‘President Freuler’s Message to Exhibitors’, Reel Life vol. 6 no. 26 (11 September 1915), p. 3; Charles J. Giegerich, ‘The Function of Feature Productions’, Motography vol. 14 no. 8 (21 August 1915), p. 357; ‘Booming the Feature Film: An Exposition of the Methods Employed by Marcus Loew in Advertising the Big Film Productions Shown at His Chain of Theatres’, MPN vol. 9 no. 2 (17 January 1914), p. 32; ‘Breaking Feature Records in Detroit: Keeping a Five-Reel Picture at One Theatre for Two Weeks, in a Town Where It Had Never Been Done Before, Is an Achievement – Pierce and Personal Appeal Did It’, MPN vol. 9 no. 22 (6 June 1914), pp. 43–4; ‘Irwin of V.L.S.E. Thinks Small Theaters Can Show Features’, Motography vol. 14 no. 8 (21 August 1915), p. 358; and ‘Fitting a Big Feature to a Small House’, MPN vol. 9 no. 23 (13 June 1914), p. 55. 90. Ben Singer, ‘Feature Films, Variety Programs, and the Crisis of the Small Exhibitor’, in Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 89–93. 91. Harry Marsey, US vs. MPPC vol. 4, p. 2002. 92. William F. Kertscher, US vs. MPPC vol. 4, p. 1943.

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93. Joseph P. Morgan, US vs. MPPC vol. 4, p. 2314. 94. My description of the ‘footage basis’ release system draws on Frank L. Dyer, US vs. MPPC vol. 3, pp. 1537–41. 95. Frank L. Dyer, memo to Thomas A. Edison, 17 April 1912, TEP, reel 214, pp. 947–58. 96. Kleine to Henry Lorsch, 13 September 1911, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Sussfeld, Lorsch, and Schimmel, 1908–1924’. 97. In early 1913, Frank Dyer estimated that a film that cost $2 per negative foot could turn a profit, whereas one that cost $2.50 per negative foot could not – the crucial break-even point was somewhere in between. US vs. MPPC vol. 3, p. 1538. 98. Ibid., p. 1539. 99. Quinn, ‘Early Feature Distribution’, pp. 102–220. 100. Cinema [pseud.], ‘From Our London Correspondent’, Reel Life vol. 4 no. 10 (23 May 1914), p. 26. 101. Cinema [pseud.], ‘From Our London Correspondent’, Reel Life vol. 4 no. 8 (9 May 1914), p. 26. 102. Singer, ‘Feature Films’, p. 77. Singer’s key example of the tendency to exaggerate the swiftness of the shift to feature dominance is David A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film, 3rd edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), and, indeed, the ‘feature craze’ trope turns up in the passage that Singer is citing. 103. Abel, Americanizing the Movies, pp. 40, 260n7, 274n208. 104. Singer, ‘Feature Films’, p. 79. 105. Ad for Quo Vadis? screening at McVicker’s, Chicago Tribune, 1 June 1913, p. B3. 106. Ibid. 107. ‘Neronian Films Still Delight’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 8 July 1913, p. 5. 108. Inventory of Kleine business records donated to the New York Public Library, 17 April 1930, p. 3, GKP, Box 39, file ‘The New York Public Library, 1925–1936’. See also GKP, Box 69, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Master Inventory of Kleine Records, 1919, 1924’. 109. Ad for Quo Vadis? screening at the Tabb Opera House in Mt Sterling, KY, Mt. Sterling Advocate, 6 August 1913, p. 4. 110. ‘Plays and Players’, Salt Lake Tribune, 17 August 1913, magazine section, p. 44; ad for Quo Vadis? at the Alhambra, Evening World, 29 July 1913, final extra, p. 11; ad for Quo Vadis? at the Bronx, NY Sun, 17 August 1913, p. 8; ‘Crescent Theatre’, At the Play-Houses, The Herald (New Orleans), 25 September 1913, p. 5; ‘Tulane Theatre’, At the Play-Houses, The Herald (New Orleans), 28 August 1913, p. 5; ‘Highest Praise for “Quo Vadis” Movies Is Given by Julia Murdock’, Washington Times, 15 September 1913, last and home edition, p. 8; and R. W. Horn, ‘Report for week ending 8 August 1913’, GKP, Box 7, file ‘Cines, July–Dec, 1913’. For a complete list of roadshow engagements from April to early October 1913, see ‘Statement of all Quo Vadis engagements from April 21st, 1913 to October 4th, 1913’. 111. For just a few examples, see ‘“Quo Vadis,” Religious Play, Film at Star’, Medford Mail Tribune, 18 February 1914, second edition, p. 3; ad for Quo Vadis? at the Orient Theatre in American Fork, UT, American Fork Citizen, 28 February 1914, p. 8; and ads for Quo Vadis? at the Scenic in Leavenworth, Washington, Leavenworth Echo, 27 March 1914, pp. 1, 5. 112. ‘Kleine Optical Company, Quo Vadis Department, Companies’ Income and Profit & Loss Statement, from Beginning of Operations to October 4, 1913’, GKP, Box 49, file ‘Quo Vadis; Audit of Accounts, 1913’. 113. Ibid. 114. Inventory of Kleine business donated to the New York Public Library, 17 April 1930, p. 3. See also GKP, Box 69, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Master Inventory of Kleine Records, 1919, 1924’.

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115. Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King, ‘Introduction’, in Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King (eds), Early Cinema and the ‘National’ (New Barnet, Herts.: John Libbey, 2008), p. 7n10. 116. Telegram from Kleine offices to George Kleine, 6 October 1913, GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Quo Vadis, The Last Days of Pompeii and Other Films, 1912–1913’. 117. Frank McCarahan, memo to Kleine, 16 October 1913, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Last Days of Pompeii and Quo Vadis; Distribution in the US, 1913–1926’. 118. Ibid. 119. Frank McCarahan, memo to Kleine, 6 October 1913, GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Quo Vadis, The Last Days of Pompeii and Other Films, 1912–1913’. 120. Kleine to Benjamin Hampton, 12 September 1927, GKP, Box 25, file ‘Hampton, Benjamin B., 1916–1917, 1927’. 121. McCarahan, memo to Kleine, 16 October 1913. 122. The full list of territories covered by roadshow companies distributing The Last days of Pompeii by mid-October 1913 included Washington and Oregon; Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana; Minnesota, North and South Dakota; Iowa; Wisconsin and Michigan; Missouri; Illinois; Chicago; Indiana; Ohio; Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana; Virginia, North and South Carolina; Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey; Pennsylvania; New York; New York City; Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut; Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont; and Eastern Canada. 123. Ibid. 124. Frank McCarahan, memo to Kleine, 21 October 1913, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Last Days of Pompeii and Quo Vadis; Distribution in the US, 1913–1926’. 125. ‘Feature Films Turned Down on Klaw and Erlanger Time’, Variety vol. 32 no. 7 (17 October 1913), p. 15. 126. Frank McCarahan, memo to Kleine, 5 November 1913, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Last Days of Pompeii and Quo Vadis; Distribution in the US, 1913–1926’. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid. 129. Frank McCarahan, memo to Kleine, 20 November 1913, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Last Days of Pompeii and Quo Vadis; Distribution in the US, 1913–1926’. 130. Memo to Kleine, 18 December 1913, GKP, Box 49, file ‘Quo Vadis; Cash Summaries, 1913’. 131. Memo to Kleine, 24 December 1913, GKP, Box 49, file ‘Quo Vadis; Cash Summaries, 1913’. 132. Advertisement for George Kleine, MPN vol. 9 no. 2 (17 January 1914), p. 6. 133. These findings add some nuance to accounts that give the impression that all of the multi-reel films Kleine imported and marketed in this period were distributed as roadshow attractions. See, for example, Hall and Neale, Epics, p. 29. 134. All figures in this section are from GKP, Box 21, file ‘Finances; Kleine Attractions (Key to Expenses for Branches), 1913–1919’. 135. David Robinson, From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 136. 136. See, for example, ‘Kleine’s “Julius Caesar”’, Motography vol. 11 no. 12 (13 June 1914), p. 416; and ‘Julius Caesar Next’, Motography vol. 12 no. 18 (31 October 1914), p. 586. 137. On the Candler Theatre and Kleine’s involvement, see ‘Harris, Bloom and Kleine to Build Theatre in 42nd Street’, Morning Telegraph, 23 August 1913, p. 4, clipping in GKP, Box 1, file ‘Advertising; Misc., 1913–1928’; Kleine to Robert Grau, 29 April 1914, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Grau, Robert, 1913– 1915’; and Kleine, drafts of affidavit to the Circuit Court of Cook County, April 1914, GKP,

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138. 139.

140.

141. 142.

143. 144.

145. 146. 147. 148.

149.

150. 151.

152.

Box 33, file ‘Litigation; Payne, Caroline L. D. vs. Kleine, 1914’. See also GKP, Box 4, file ‘Bloom, Sol’. On the delayed production of Julius Caesar, see Kleine to Cines, 19 July 1914, GKP, Box 7, file ‘Cines, May–July, 1914’. Ad for the Candler Theatre, New York Times, 4 May 1914, p. 18; and ‘Candler Theatre Opens with Antony and Cleopatra’, NY Clipper vol. 62 no. 14 (16 May 1914), p. 21. Ben Singer and Charlie Keil, ‘Introduction: Movies and the 1910s’, in Charlie Keil and Ben Singer (eds), American Cinema in the 1910s: Themes and Variations (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), p. 19. This list – and this brief case study of the circulation of Kleine features in general – is mainly the result of the study of newspaper ads and articles culled through keyword searches (using the films’ titles) of Chronicling America, the Library of Congress’ database Historic American Newspapers and in selected newspapers in ProQuest’s Historical Newspapers database, but I’ve also used various documents in the George Kleine Papers as well as trade press sources. See, for example, Ben Brewster, ‘Traffic in Souls: An Experiment in Feature-Length Narrative Construction’, Cinema Journal vol. 31 no. 1 (Autumn 1991), pp. 37–56. Recent scholarship shows that lecturers were much more frequent for far longer than was previously assumed, prompting calls for a reconfiguration of film history from the perspective of ‘oral cinema’. See Germain Lacasse, ‘The Film Lecturer’, in Gaudreault et al., Companion to Early Cinema, pp. 487–97. ‘Julius Caesar at the Cumberland’, MPW vol. 22 no. 11 (12 December 1914), p. 1535. For the most vehement formulations along these lines, see Robert C. Allen, ‘Reimagining the History of the Experience of Cinema in a Post-moviegoing Age’, in Richard Maltby, Daniel Biltereyst and Philippe Meers (eds), Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2011), pp. 41–57. ‘For 100 years, individual films were among the most ephemeral aspects of the experience of cinema. Any particular film was but one part of an event that also involved other people, performances (cinematic and non-cinematic), things (furniture, architecture), spaces, technologies and experiences: tastes, smells, sounds and sights’ (pp. 54–5). As in Marcus Loew’s ‘We Sell Tickets to Theaters, Not Movies’. Quoted in Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd edn (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), p. 113. Ross Melnick, American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Ibid., pp. 91–3. For one of many examples, see W. Stephen Bush, ‘The Art of Exhibition: Rothapfel’s Ideas on How the Best Program May Be Secured under Present Conditions – “Features” and “Variety”’, MPW vol. 22 no. 2 (17 October 1914), pp. 323–4. See, for example, ad for Spartacus at the Auditorium (Chicago), Chicago Tribune, 6 May 1914, p. 26; ‘This, That, and the Other about the Players’, News of the Theaters, Chicago Tribune, 8 May 1914, p. 11; and ad for Pierrot, the Prodigal (Celio Film, 1914) and The Naked Truth (Cines, 1914) at the Candler Theatre, New York Times, 11 June 1914, p. 20. See also, Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 254. ‘Facts and Comments’, MPW vol. 15 no. 5 (1 February 1913), p. 440. Ad for Last days of Pompeii at Brinkman’s Theatre in Bemidji, Minnesota, Bemidji daily Pioneer, 29 December 1913, p. 3; and Grace Kingsley, ‘Republic’, Vaudeville and Films, LA Times, 11 November 1914, section II, p. 6. Melnick, American Showman, pp. 2–4.

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153. Ibid., pp. 12–13. Gregory A. Waller, Main Street Amusements: Movies and Commercial Entertainment in a Southern City, 1896–1930 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995). 154. Melnick, American Showman, pp. 9, 23. 155. We are here following Jacob Smith, who has argued that there is an inherently reflexive dimension to ‘performance’. Jacob Smith, ‘Kissing as Telling: Some Thoughts on the Cultural History of Media Performance’, Cinema Journal vol. 51 no. 3 (Spring 2012), pp. 123–8. 156. ‘Those Arena Scenes in Quo Vadis?’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 13 July 1913, p. 10. 157. Gerben Bakker, ‘The Quality Race: Feature Films and Market Dominance in the US and Europe in the 1910s’, in Steve Neale (ed.), The Classical Hollywood Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 31–42. See also Gerben Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 185–228. 158. Plimpton, ‘Development of the Motion Picture’, p. 198. 159. Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, p. 212. 160. This discussion draws on Arthur De Vany, Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry (New York: Routledge, 2004). 161. Kleine to Scull, 25 February 1913. 162. Ibid. 163. Kleine to Hampton, 19 September 1927.

3 AFTER THE FEATURE, PART 1: STANDARDISATION, DIFFERENTIATION AND BRANDING (AND THE SEARCH FOR THE ‘PUNCH’) 1. The descriptions of ‘Hollywood’ and the ‘Hollywood studio system’ here and later in the text draw on some of the standard works, including Tino Balio, Grand design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 (New York: Scribner, 1993); David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985); Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History (London: BFI Publishing, 2005); Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd edn (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003); Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988); and Allen J. Scott, On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry (Princeton; NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). As these works demonstrate, ‘Hollywood’ can refer to an actual place and a mythical space, to an industry, an institution and an aesthetic, or to all of the above (and more). Or, as Thomas Schatz and Alisa Perren put it, it refers to (at least) three interrelated aspects of American cinema: the industrial, the institutional and the formal-aesthetic. Accordingly, I have tried to be cautious and make clear in the text exactly what components of this complex idea and material arrangement I am referring to. Thomas Schatz and Alisa Perren, ‘Hollywood’, in John Downing, Denis McQuail and Philip Schlesinger (eds), The Sage Handbook of Media Studies (London: Sage, 2004), pp. 495–515. 2. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 23 February 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., January–April 1918’. 3. ‘Memorandum of an Agreement Made and Entered into by and between the Societa Anonima Ambrosio and the Photo-Drama Company’, GKP, Box 1, file ‘Ambrosio, 1913–1920’. In March 1913, when Kleine considered acquiring the rights to make a new motion picture version of the stage play Ben Hur, a similar clause was part of his tentative proposition. Kleine to Sam Harris, 26 March 1913, GKP, Box 3, file ‘Ben Hur, 1913, 1923’.

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4. These quotes are from Andrew Tudor’s discussion of cyclical production in Hollywood. Tudor, quoted in Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, p. 78. 5. On the formal codes and conventions of ‘classical Hollywood cinema’, see Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema. 6. Rob King, ‘The Discourses of Art in Early Film, or, Why Not Rancière?’, in André Gaudreault et al. (eds), A Companion to Early Cinema (Chichester, W. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 143–5. 7. Ibid., p. 147. 8. Ibid., p. 155. 9. Ibid., p. 157. 10. George Kleine, telegram to Kleine main office in Chicago, 12–13 December 1913, GKP, Box 44, file ‘Photodrama Producing Co.; General, 1913–1917’. 11. John P. Welle, ‘“Avoid Giving Wine to Children”: George Kleine’s Correspondence with Cines and the Discourse of Uplift’, in Frank Kessler and Nanna Verhoeff (eds), Networks of Entertainment: Early Film distribution 1895–1915 (Eastleigh, Hants., and Bloomington, IN: John Libbey; distributed in North America by Indiana University Press, 2007), pp. 21–9; and William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson, ‘Italian Spectacle and the U.S. Market’, in Roland Cosanday and François Albera (eds), Cinéma sans frontières/Images across Borders (Quebec and Lausanne: Nuit Blanche Éditeur, 1995), pp. 95–105. In the case of Quo Vadis?, there was also a legacy of historical painting. See Ivo Blom, ‘Quo Vadis? From Painting to Cinema and Everything in Between’, in Leonardo Quaresima and Laura Vichi (eds), La decima musa: il cinema e le altre arti/The Tenth Muse: Cinema and Other Arts (Udine: Forum, 2001), pp. 281–92. 12. Kleine to Henry Melville, 29 May 1913, GKP, Box 37, file ‘Motion Picture Patents Co. Litigation (cont.); Travels, 1911–1913’. 13. Paolo Cherchi Usai, ‘Un américain à la conquête de l’Italie (George Kleine à Grugliasco, 1913– 1914)’, Archives no. 22–3 (1989), pp. 10–11. 14. Not to be confused with the Photo Drama Company of Illinois, which Kleine and Mario A. Stevani had set up to import Italian feature films. Stevani was originally Kleine’s contact at Cines, but also the president of the Raw Film Company in the US. Gondolfi was with the Italian film company Ambrosio. 15. Confirmation of verbal agreement, 1 November 1913, GKP, Box 44, file ‘Photodrama Producing Co., General, 1913–1917’; telegram from Kleine to Kleine main office, 12–13 December 1913; and ‘Constitution of Partnership’, 19 March 1914, GKP, Box 44, file ‘Photodrama Producing Co., Original Charter, 1914’. 16. Usai, ‘Un américain à la conquête de l’Italie’, pp. 10–18. See also Uricchio and Pearson, ‘Italian Spectacle’, p. 103. 17. Undated and unsigned memo, GKP, Box 44, file ‘Photodrama Producing Co., General, 1913–1917’. 18. See, for example, Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (New York: Scribner, 1990), p. 233. 19. See Kleine to Jacques Berst, 2 March 1914, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Berst, J. A., 1914’. 20. For more details, see memo of agreement regarding The Kleptomaniac (aka Stop Thief!) between Cohan and Harris (1st part), Carlyle Moore (author) and George M. Cohan (collaborator) (2nd part), and George Kleine and Jacques Berst (3rd part), 7 July 1914, GKP, Box 25, file ‘Harris, Sam H. (Officer 666 and Stop Thief), 1914–1920 and undated’; memo of agreement regarding Officer 666 between Cohan and Harris (1st part), Augustin MacHugh (author) and William Smith (collaborator) (2nd part), and George Kleine and Jacques Berst (3rd part), 7 July 1914, GKP,

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21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

196

Box 42, file ‘Officer 666, 1912–1920’; O’Brien, Malevinsky & Driscoll to George Kleine and Jacques Berst, 1 July 1914, GKP, Box 42, file ‘O’Brian, Malevinsky and Driscoll, 1914–1924’; Jacques Berst to Kleine, 25 June 1914, GKP, Box 36, file ‘Motion Picture Industry, 1914–1926’; and Kleine to Jacques Berst, 28 August 1914; and copy of receipt of payment, 27 January 1915, both in GKP, Box 4, file ‘Berst, J. A., 1914’. ‘Chicago Manufacturers in New York’, MPW vol. 13 no. 22 (26 December 1914), p. 1822; ‘Kleine Release Dates’, Motography vol. 13 no. 2 (9 January 1915), p. 58; and ‘Feature Releases: Current and Coming’, MPN vol. 11 no. 19 (15 May 1915), p. 88. Financial statement for Officer 666, 30 June 1919; financial statement for Stop Thief!, 30 June 1919; and financial statement for Who’s Who in Society, 30 June 1919, all in GKP, Box 21, file ‘Finances; Kleine Attractions (Key to expenses for branches), 1913–1919’. Kleine to E. H. Montagu, 10 November 1914, GKP, Box 36, file ‘Montagu, E. H. (Mr and Mrs), 1910–1929’. See miscellaneous invoices in GKP, Box 4, file ‘Biograph Company, 1914–1926’. See, for example, W. E. Raynor (NYC branch manager of George Kleine Attractions), circular letter, 24 July 1915, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Film Study Center Special Collections, Bartlett Collection, file ‘Kleine-Edison-Selig-Essanay Service – Sales Materials 1915–1917; (1) Correspondence (form letters); (2) Lists’. Kleine, memorandum, 19 June 1915, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1915’. The terms Kleine had outlined in this and another memo (see Kleine, memorandum, 23 June 1915 in the same GKP box) were formalised in slightly revised form in an agreement that was signed and sent to Kleine by Edison’s vice president and general manager, Carl Wilson, in July 1915. Kleine accepted and signed the agreement on 7 August 1915. See Carl Wilson to Kleine, July [no day given], 1915, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1915’. James McQuade, ‘Kleine-Edison Merger Formed: The Feature Productions of Kleine and Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Will Be Handled by the Kleine-Edison Feature Film Service’, MPW vol. 25 no. 4 (24 July 1915), pp. 626–7. ‘Kleine and Edison Combine for Features’, Motography vol. 14 no. 5 (31 July 1915), p. 197. For the exact terms, see Wilson to Kleine, July 1915. Kleine, memorandum for Mr Smith, 25 June 1915, GKP, Box 53, file ‘Smallwood Case (Ethel Grandin), 1915–1919’. ‘Change in Release of Edison’s “Vanity Fair”’, MPW vol. 25 no. 9 (28 August 1915), p. 1498. ‘Kleine to Show “Woman Next Door”’, MPW vol. 25 no. 7 (14 August 1915), p. 1172; ad for The Woman Next door, MPW vol. 25 no. 10 (4 September 1915), p. 1593; ad for The Money Master, MPW vol. 25 no. 10 (4 September 1915), p. 1594; and ‘“The Fixer” New Title for “Hello Bill”’, MPW vol. 25 no. 10 (4 September 1915), p. 1658. Charles Musser states that Vanity Fair ‘inaugurated’ the KleineEdison Feature Service. This was the plan, but as trade press sources reveal, these plans were altered and the release of Vanity Fair postponed. Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 472. Ad for Vanity Fair/Kleine-Edison Feature Service, MPW vol. 25 no. 13 (25 September 1915), p. 2143; and ad for The Magic Skin/Kleine-Edison Feature Service, MPW vol. 26 no. 5 (30 October 1915), p. 751. ‘Miscellaneous Feature Films: Kleine-Edison Feature Service’, MPW vol. 26 no. 6 (30a October, 1915), pp. 1030, 1032. Gerben Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 220. George Kleine and American Cinema

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36. Ibid., p. 225. 37. For details about the production history, see miscellaneous documents in GKP, Box 12, file ‘Du Barry, 1913–1929’; and GKP, Box 33, file ‘Litigation; Payne, Caroline L. D. vs. Kleine, 1914’. 38. Kleine to Mario A. Stevani, 23 February 1914, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Stevani, Mario, 1913–1914’. In April 1914, Mrs Carter sued Kleine for ‘cutting out’ parts of the play in the film version. The Chicago Tribune reported that Carter ‘maintained that she knew the strong parts of the play, as she had played “Madame Du Barry” 3,600 times. Kleine, it is asserted, said he knew what the public wanted, and went ahead with his “cutting”.’ (The courts ultimately favoured Kleine’s side, but the case delayed the release.) ‘Mrs Carter Objects to “Cut”’, Chicago Tribune, 15 April 1914, p. 13. 39. See, for example, Mario A. Stevani to Kleine, 27 May 1914, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Stevani, Mario, 1913–1914’. 40. Kleine to J. J. Thompson, 9 November 1920, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Branches; Inter Office, New York and Chicago, July–Dec 1920’; and J. J. Thompson to Kleine, 17 November 1920, GKP, Box 3, file ‘Bech, Van Siclen and Co., 1919–1920’. 41. Record of production costs, George Kleine Records, vol. 302, New York Public Library Rare Books Division. 42. Rob King, ‘“A Purely American Product”: Tramp Comedy and White Working-Class Formation in the 1910s’, in Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King (eds), Early Cinema and the ‘National’ (New Barnet, Herts.: John Libbey, 2008), pp. 238–9. 43. Ad for The Mishaps of Musty Suffer, MPW vol. 27 no. 4 (22 January 1916), p. 552. 44. Ibid. 45. George Blaisdell, ‘“The Mishaps of Musty Suffer”: George Kleine Completes Series of Ten SingleReel Comedies in Which Harry Watson Is Featured’, MPW vol. 27 no. 4 (22 January 1916), p. 619. 46. Ad for The Mishaps of Musty Suffer, MPW vol. 27 no. 12 (25 March 1916), p. 1965. 47. ‘Kleine’s Watson Comedies Prove Genuine Innovation’, MPW vol. 27 no. 7 (19 February 1916), p. 1153. See also George Kleine Attractions, circular to exhibitors, 4 February 1915, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Film Study Center Special Collections, Bartlett Collection, file ‘Kleine-EdisonSelig-Essanay Service – Sales Materials 1915–1917; (1) Correspondence (form letters); (2) Lists’. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Kleine to Guido Serra, 16 February 1916, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Serra, Guido, 1912–1916’. 51. Ad for The Mishaps of Musty Suffer, MPW vol. 27 no. 9 (4 March 1916), p. 1427. 52. ‘List of Current Film Release Dates’, MPW vol. 29 no. 4 (22 July 1916), p. 702. 53. Gloria arrived at a fairly late stage in the film serial production cycle, which dated back to What Happened to Mary? (Edison, 1912), The Adventures of Kathlyn (Selig, 1913) and the subsequent slew of ‘serial-queen’ melodramas that circulated in 1914. For a book-length study of serialqueen melodrama, see Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). On their popularity in the mid-1910s, see also Rob King, ‘1914: Movies and Cultural Hierarchy’, in American Cinema of the 1910s: Themes and Variation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), p. 123. 54. Agreement between the Randolph Film Corp. and George Kleine, 23 September 1915; and supplement to agreement between the Randolph Film Corp. and George Kleine, 10 December 1915, both in GKP, Box 56, file ‘The Tribune Co. and Randolph Film Corp., 1915–1916’. 55. Kleine to Messrs Duer, Strong & Whitehead, att. Mr H. S. Bacon, 15 May 1917, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gloria’s Romance (The Randolph Film Corp.), 1915–1920’.

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56. Kleine to Jas. A. Sheldon (president of Randolph Film Corp.), 21 December 1916; and Jas. A. Sheldon to Kleine, 26 December 1916, both in GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gloria’s Romance (The Randolph Film Corp.), 1915–1920’. 57. ‘Randolph Film Corporation, Statement of Income and Expenses, W/E 5/19/17’, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gloria’s Romance (The Randolph Film Corp.), 1915–1920’. 58. James M. Sheldon to the stockholders of the Randolph Film Corp., 11 August 1917, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gloria’s Romance (The Randolph Film Corp.), 1915–1920’. 59. Agreement between the Tribune Co. and John Sidney Burnet, GKP, Box 56, file ‘The Tribune Co. and Randolph Film Corp., 1915–1916’. 60. See undated memorandum to Mr Sheldon, GKP, Box 56, file ‘The Tribune Co. and Randolph Film Corp., 1915–1916’. 61. ‘Grand Annual Report 1 January–31 December 1916; Kleine Edison and Kleine Edison Selig Essanay Services Combined’, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Accounting; Branches, 1914, 1916’. 62. All figures here are from James Sheldon to stockholders, 11 August 1917. 63. Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928 (New York: Scribner, 1990), p. 114. 64. ‘Estimate of the expenses in connection with Billie Burke feature before returns begin to come in’, GKP, Box 56, file ‘The Tribune Co. and Randolph Film Corp., 1915–1916’. 65. Ibid. 66. Inventory of Kleine business records donated to the New York Public Library, 17 April 1930, p. 6, GKP, Box 39, file ‘The New York Public Library, 1925–1936’. See also GKP, Box 69, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Master Inventory of Kleine Records, 1919, 1924’. 67. ‘Estimate of the expenses in connection with Billie Burke feature.’ 68. As a programme leaflet from the screening of episodes eight and nine at the Globe Theatre in New York City stated: ‘Miss Burke’s gowns especially designed by Henri Bendel, Lucile and Balcom.’ GKP, Box 5, file ‘Burke, Miss Billie, 1916’. The significance of the gowns, with regard to Burke’s career as well as the serial’s combining of haute couture and action and adventure (featuring Burke as an emblematic ‘American Girl’), is discussed in Leslie Midkiff DeBauche, ‘High Fashion, Costume Design and Character Type: How Clothes Helped Billie Burke Become an “American Girl”’, in Leonardo Quaresima and Laura Vichi (eds), La decima musa: il cinema e le altre arti/The Tenth Muse: Cinema and Other Arts (Udine: Forum, 2001), pp. 163–9. 69. Kleine to Guido Serra, 14 April 1916, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Serra, Guido, 1912–1916’. 70. Ibid. 71. David Walls and Arthur De Vany found more conclusive evidence of this several decades later. This research was subsequently recounted in a book by De Vany. About the all-importance of audience acceptance, see De Vany, Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 92 and Chapter 4. 72. James Sheldon to Kleine, 19 April 1917, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gloria’s Romance (The Randolph Film Corp.), 1915–1920’. 73. Randolph hired authors Mr and Mrs Rupert Hughes as scenario writers. See GKP, Box 56, file ‘The Tribune Co. and Randolph Film Corp., 1915–1916’. Jerome Kern composed the ‘Little Billie Fox-Trot’ especially for the release of Gloria’s Romance. The sheet music can be studied at the Library of Congress. 74. The November–February releases were The Politicians (Kleine, 3 November); The Children of Eve (aka Purple dawn; Edison, 10 November); The Sentimental Lady (Kleine, 17 November); The danger Signal (Kleine, 1 December); The destroying Angel (Edison, 8 December); Bondwomen (Kleine, 15

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75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85.

86.

87. 88.

89.

December); The devil’s Prayer Book (Kleine, 5 January); The Catspaw (Edison, 12 January); The Innocence of Ruth (Edison, 26 January); The Final Curtain (Kleine, 2 February); When Love Is King (Edison, 9 February); and The Scarlet Road (Kleine, 16 February). In sum, K-E released eighteen feature films over a period of six months – eleven Kleine films and seven from Edison. For release dates and other information about the features mentioned here, see ad for the Kleine-Edison Feature Service, MPW vol. 25 no. 13 (25 September 1915), p. 2142; ‘Kleine-Edison Holiday Program: One Comedy and Five Dramas Already Listed for Coming Releases’, MPW vol. 26 no. 7 (6 November 1915), p. 1149; ‘Edison to Make the Destroying Angel’, MPW vol. 26 no. 6 (October 30a, 1915), p. 980; ‘“The Devil’s Prayer Book” Finished’, Motography vol. 15 no. 2 (8 January 1916), p. 74; ‘Edison Out of General Film: Will Release Five-Reel Features Through the Kleine-Edison Feature Service and May Perhaps Make Shorter Films’, Motography vol. 15 no. 1 (1 January 1916), p. 1; ‘Miscellaneous Features: Kleine-Edison’, Motography vol. 15 no. 8 (19 February 1916), p. 434; and ‘Feature Programs: Kleine-Edison’, Motography vol. 15 no. 8 (19 February 1916), p. 437. ‘Kleine-Edison to Quit’, Variety vol. 41 no. 11 (11 February 1916), p. 31. Ibid.; and ‘Kleine-Edison Quits’, NY Clipper vol. 64 no. 2 (19 February 1916), p. 34. J. J. Kennedy to Kleine, 10 June 1916, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. Kleine to Eastman-Kodak, 10 October 1916, GKP, Box 13, file ‘Eastman Kodak Co.; General, 1908–1928’. Kleine to Serra, 16 February 1916. Kleine to Robert Lieber, 21 February 1917, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Leslie, Amy, 1914–1927 and undated’. ‘George Kleine Talks on the Trade Outlook’, MPW vol. 31 no. 2 (12 January 1917), p. 214. Carl Wilson, memo to Thomas A. Edison, Charles Edison, Mr Mambert, and L. W. McChesney, 26 April 1916, TEP, reel 214, p. 1075. For some documentation of the struggle to turn the General Film Co. profitable, see miscellaneous documents in TEP, reel 214, pp. 1075–94, 1147–64. Carl Wilson, memo to Mr Edison, 14 November 1916, TEP, reel 214, pp. 1091–4. ‘George Kleine Talks on the Trade Outlook’, p. 214. Selig and Essanay were supposed to join the newly formed Greater Vitagraph, but were unhappy with the terms and decided to combine with Kleine instead. See Wilson, memo to Mr Edison, 14 November 1916. See, for example, ‘Kleine, Edison, Selig and Essanay in Combination’, MPW vol. 29 no. 12 (16 September 1916), p. 1807; and ‘New Distributing Company Born’, Motography vol. 16 no. 12 (16 September 1916), pp. 633–4. ‘Kleine, Edison, Selig and Essanay in Combination’, p. 1807. The full list of key cities included Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Montreal, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, St Louis, Toronto and Washington, DC. See ‘New Distributing Company Born’, p. 633; and ad for the K-E-S-E Service, MPW vol. 30 no. 4 (28 October 1916), p. 513. For some details about the transfer of prints from V-L-S-E to K-E-S-E, see telegram from George K. Spoor (Essanay) to W. W. Irwin (V-L-S-E), 6 September 1916, GKP, Box 20, file ‘Essanay Film Manufacturing Co., 1916–1927 and undated’. Kleine to Selig Polyscope Co., 30 September 1916 (confirmation of verbal agreement), GKP, Box 52, file ‘Selig, William N. (Selig Polyscope Co.); General, 1911–1930’; and Kleine to Essanay Film Manufacturing Co., 30 September 1916 (confirmation of verbal agreement), GKP, Box 20, file ‘Essanay Film Manufacturing Co., 1916–1927 and undated’.

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90. Confirmation of verbal agreement between George Kleine and Essanay, addendum to letter from Kleine to Essanay, 30 September 1916. 91. Ad for the K-E-S-E Service’, p. 513. 92. ‘New Distributing Company Born’, p. 633. The same statements reappear verbatim (plus a few additional comments) in ‘Spoor Comments on New Service’, MPW vol. 29 no. 13 (23 September 1916), p. 1955. 93. ‘New Distributing Company Born’, p. 633. 94. Ibid. 95. ‘Spoor Outlines Essanay Productions: Chicago Manufacturer Also Says K-E-S-E Will Release Forty Features in Coming Year’, MPW vol. 30 no. 6 (11 November 1916), p. 869. 96. ‘Paramount Pictures Corporation. Marketing Plan on Novel Lines, as Regards Photoplay Producers, Expected to Accomplish Wonders’, MPW vol. 21 no. 2 (11 July 1914), p. 264. See also Michael Quinn, ‘Early Feature Distribution and the Development of the Motion Picture Industry: Famous Players and Paramount, 1912–1921’, PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998), pp. 130–46. 97. Michael Quinn, ‘Distribution, the Transient Audience, and the Transition to the Feature Film’, Cinema Journal vol. 40 no. 2 (Winter 2001), p. 37. 98. W. Stephen Bush, ‘New Blood in New Programs: Hopes and Projects of the Men Who Have Joined Hands in the Name of Quality; The Paramount Picture Corporation Aims to Supply the Big Theatres; Will Assure a Sale of Their Feature for the Whole World’, MPW vol. 20 no. 10 (6 June 1914), p. 1394. 99. For a discussion about the different terms and categories, see Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), pp. 1–5. 100. ‘First Selig on K-E-S-E’, Motography vol. 16 no. 14 (30 September 1916), p. 782; and ad for K-E-SE, MPW vol. 29 no. 14 (30 September 1916), p. 2059. 101. The Return of Eve (Essanay, release date 16 October 1916); Heart of the Hills (Edison, 30 October); The Prince of Graustark (Essanay, 6 November); The Cossack Whip (Edison, 13 November); The Chaperon (Essanay, 20 November); The Breaker (Essanay, 4 December); Message to Garcia (Edison, 11 December); The Phantom Buccaneer (Essanay, 18 December); and The Truant Soul (Essanay, 25 December). See ‘Exhibitors See Return of Eve’, Motography vol. 16 no. 15 (7 October 1916), p. 822; ‘New Essanay Releases’, Motography vol. 16 no. 18 (28 October 1916), p. 986; ‘New Edison Play’, Motography vol. 16 no. 19 (4 November 1916), p. 1034; ‘Complete Record of Current Films’, Motography vol. 16 no. 24 (9 December 1916), p. 1302; ‘Special Christmas Release’, Motography vol. 16 no. 26 (23 December 1916), p. 1374; and ‘Complete Record of Current Films’, Motography vol. 16 no. 26 (23 December 1916), p. 1401. 102. ‘The Essanay-Chaplin Revue of 1916’, Current Releases Reviewed, Motography vol. 16 no. 18 (28 October 1916), p. 990; and ‘Complete Record of Current Films’, Motography vol. 16 no. 21 (18 November 1916), p. 1154. 103. ‘Grand Annual Report January 1–December 31, 1916; Kleine Edison and Kleine Edison Selig Essanay Services Combined’. 104. Ibid. 105. See, for example, ‘“The Cossack Whip” in Demand’, MPW vol. 31 no. 2 (13 January 1917), p. 203; and ‘“The Cossack Whip” Rebooking’, MPW vol. 32 no. 1 (7 April 1917), p. 130. 106. Kleine to L. W. McChesney (Edison, Inc.), 8 October 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 107. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 12 October 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’.

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108. For a statement of income that includes information on negative and positive costs of The Cossack Whip, see Kleine to Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 17 October 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 109. ‘Schedule of Releases’ [January 1914–April 1918], GKP, Box 69, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Schedule of Releases, 1913–1918’. 110. Kleine to Dr A. J. Lauch, 31 July 1917, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Lauch, Dr. A. J., 1913–1922’. 111. For release dates, see ‘Schedule of Releases’ [January 1914–April 1918]. 112. ‘K-E-S-E Increases Output’, Variety vol. 46 no. 1 (2 March 1917), p. 24. See also ‘K-E-S-E Feature Every Week: Increase Service Will Begin April 2 – Kleine Promises High Class Subjects’, MPW vol. 31 no. 11 (17 March 1917), p. 1784. 113. K-E-S-E Feature Every Week’, p. 1784. 114. ‘New Distributing Company Born’, p. 633. 115. ‘K-E-S-E Feature Every Week’, p. 1784. 116. Ibid. 117. The Essanay features included Skinner’s Bubble (release date 23 April 1917); The Saint’s Adventure (7 May); The Trufflers (9 May); Night Workers (21 May); Filling His Own Shoes (11 June); Land of Long Shadows (18 June); The Man Who Was Afraid (2 July); The Range Boss (16 July); The Golden Idiot (23 July); Skinner’s Baby (6 August); Open Places (20 August); Efficiency Edgar’s Courtship (3 September); Pants (10 September); and Men of the desert (23 September). The Edison features included Law of the North (2 April); Builders of Castles (16 April); The Tell Tale Step (28 May); The Ghost of Old Morro (25 June); Light in darkness (9 July); One Touch of Nature (30 July); Lady of the Photograph (27 August); and The Awakening of Ruth (17 September). The Selig features included The danger Trail (30 April); The Lad and the Lion (14 May); The Mystery of No. 47 (4 June); and The Barker (13 August). See ‘Schedule of Releases, Essanay Subjects’ [April 1915–April 1919]; ‘Schedule of Releases, Edison Subjects’ [October 1915–December 1917]; and ‘Schedule of Releases, Selig Subjects’ [May 1915–January 1918], all in GKP, Box 69, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Schedule of Releases, 1913–1918’. 118. By September 1921, Kleine had spent $32,000 to produce and market The Fixer, but his share of the box-office returns still only amounted to roughly half of these costs. Audiences rejected the follow-up, The Politicians, even more harshly. Kleine’s receipts were a meagre $5,500, against a total cost of $22,000, bringing the total net loss of the two films to over $32,000. See George Kleine Records, vol. 302, New York Public Library Rare Books Division. 119. The full series included A Fried Egg Hero (Essanay, release date 1 April 1917); The Soda Jerker (Kleine, 8 April); Wet and dry (Essanay, 15 April); Truly Rural (Kleine, 22 April); The Ladder of Fame (Essanay, 29 April); Pure and Simple (Kleine, 6 May); Spliced and Iced (Essanay, 13 May); Starlight Sleep (Kleine, 20 May); Musty B. Young (Essanay, 27 May); and Musty’s Vacation (Kleine, 3 June). See ad for The Mishaps of Musty Suffer, MPW vol. 32 no. 1 (7 April 1917), p. 56. 120. ‘Selig to Release Hoyt Comedies’, MPW vol. 32 no. 8 (26 May 1917), p. 1311. 121. The full Hoyt series included these releases: A Hole in the Ground (28 May 1917); A Brass Monkey (11 June); A day and a Night (25 June); A Rag Baby (9 July); A Runaway Colt (23 July); A dog in the Manger (6 August); A Trip to Chinatown (20 August); A Midnight Bell (3 September); A Contented Woman (17 September); and A Bear Fact (24 September). See ‘Schedule of Releases, Selig Subjects’ [May 1915–January 1918]. 122. ‘Essanay Exploiting “Do Children Count?”: Supplying a Completely Outlined Advertising Campaign – Cooperating with Welfare Boards’, MPW vol. 32 no. 12 (23 June 1917), p. 1968.

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123. For a list of the original twelve Conquest programmes and the films included, see [‘Original 12 Programs’], GKP, Box 8, file ‘Conquest Films, 1917–1928 and undated’. For an analysis of the programmes, and some information regarding their original commercial distribution, see Jennifer Horne, ‘Nostalgia and Non-fiction in Edison’s 1917 Conquest Program’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television vol. 22 no. 3 (2002), pp. 315–31. 124. L. W. McChesney to Mr Meegan [of Kleine’s publicity department], cc. Messrs Kleine, Smith, Scott and Pearson, 3 July 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 125. Ibid. 126. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 24 July 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 127. Ad for K-E-S-E, MPW vol. 33 no. 1 (7 July 1917), p. 47. 128. Ibid., p. 50; and ‘K-E-S-E Now Releasing 15 Reels Weekly’, MPW vol. 33 no. 2 (14 July 1917), p. 268. 129. See, for example, ad for K-E-S-E, MPW vol. 33 no. 1 (7 July 1917), p. 50; and ‘K-E-S-E Now Releasing 15 Reels Weekly’, p. 268. 130. Ad for K-E-S-E, MPW vol. 33 no. 1 (7 July 1917), p. 48. 131. Ibid., p. 50. 132. Ibid., p. 49. 133. Ibid., p. 48. 134. Ibid. 135. Ibid., p. 49. 136. Ibid., p. 48. 137. Ibid., p. 49. 138. Ibid., p. 79. 139. Ibid. 140. Ibid., p. 47. 141. Ibid., p. 46. 142. ‘Fred’, ‘The Tell Tale Step’, Variety vol. 46 no. 12 (18 May 1917), p. 23. 143. Ibid. 144. ‘Mark’, ‘The Man Who Was Afraid’, Variety vol. 47 no. 6 (6 July 1917), p. 24. 145. See, for example, ‘Big Business for K-E-S-E’, MPW vol. 30 no. 4 (28 October 1916), p. 579; James McQuade, ‘Chicago Newsletter’, MPW vol. 30 no. 6 (11 November 1916), p. 832; ‘Good Business with Higher Rate’, MPW vol. 30 no. 7 (18 November 1916), p. 1042; ‘Kleine Enthusiastic over 1917 Outlook’, MPW vol. 30 no. 13 (30 December 1916), p. 1940; ‘Notes of the Trade’, MPW vol. 31 no. 10 (10 March 1917), p. 1640; and ‘K-E-S-E Idea Catches On’, MPW vol. 32 no. 2 (14 April 1917), p. 295. 146. Kleine to Dennis O’Brien (O’Brien, Malevinsky & Driscoll, Attorneys and Counsellors at Law), 12 August 1915, GKP, Box 10, file ‘Davis, Owen (Stories), 1915–1925’. 147. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 31 December 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid. 150. Ibid. Kleine’s awareness of the fundamental uncertainty of the movie business is also evident from trade press interviews. See, for example, ‘The Weak Spots in a Strong Business – III’, MPN vol. 11 no. 6 (13 February 1915), p. 31; and W. Stephen Bush, ‘Kleine Exalts Quality’, MPW vol. 27 no. 12 (25 March 1916), pp. 1984–5. 151. De Vany, Hollywood Economics, passim.

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152. Kleine to Harry H. Buckwalter, 24 September 1924, GKP, Box 5, file ‘Buckwalter, H. H., 1924–1926’. 153. ‘K-E-S-E Program: Releases Announced for the Fall and Early Winter Months – Include Many Five-Reelers – Also Conquest Programs’, MPW vol. 33 no. 8 (25 August 1917), p. 1240. 154. William N. Selig to Kleine, 9 August 1917, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Selig, William N. (Selig Polyscope Co.); General, 1911–1930’. 155. Kleine to William N. Selig, 16 August 1917, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Selig, William N. (Selig Polyscope Co.); General, 1911–1930’. 156. ‘K-E-S-E Patrons Want Scenics: Essanay Will Supply the Demand in a New Series of One-Reel Subjects’, MPW vol. 33 no. 8 (25 August 1917), p. 1243. 157. Ibid. 158. James McQuade, ‘“Perfection Pictures”: The Highest Standard in Moving Picture Art Yet Reached Most Likely to Be Announced in the Near Future’, Chicago Newsletter, MPW vol. 33 no. 9 (1 September 1917), p. 1379. 159. Ad for Perfection Pictures, MPW vol. 33 no. 10 (8 September 1917), ad appears following p. 1462. 160. Ad for Perfection Pictures, MPW vol. 33 no. 11 (15 September 1917), first of two ads following p. 1618. 161. Ibid., second of two ads following p. 1618. 162. Ads for Perfection Pictures, MPW vol. 33 no. 12 (22 September 1917), ads appear following p. 1798. 163. Ibid., first of eight ads following p. 1798. 164. Ibid. 165. Ibid. 166. Ibid. See also last of eight ads following p. 1798. 167. ‘Perfection Pictures Announces Plans: High-Class Stories by Known Authors Will Be Produced – New Process of Manufacture Utilized – Ample Advertising Aids Proposed’, MPW vol. 33 no. 13 (29 September 1917), pp. 1977–8; and ‘Perfection Pictures, New De Luxe Brand: For Exhibitors of High Standing – Deposits Not Required’, Motography vol. 18 no. 13 (29 September 1917), p. 665. 168. ‘Perfection Pictures, New De Luxe Brand’, p. 665. 169. Ibid. 170. ‘Perfection Pictures Announces Plans’, p. 1977; and ‘Perfection Pictures, New De Luxe Brand’, p. 665. 171. McQuade, ‘“Perfection Pictures”’, p. 1379. 172. Perfection Pictures Announces Plans’, p. 1977. 173. Ibid., p. 1978. 174. Ibid. 175. James McQuade, ‘Douglas Bergh Talks of His Six Months’ Trip’, Chicago Newsletter, MPW vol. 34 no. 3 (20 October 1917), p. 387. 176. ‘Perfection Pictures, New De Luxe Brand’, p. 665. 177. Ibid. 178. See, for example, ‘Facts and Comments’, MPW vol. 22 no. 3 (17 October 1914), p. 307; and W. Stephen Bush, ‘Stop the Vandals’, MPW vol. 22 no. 9 (28 November 1914), p. 1210. 179. ‘Perfection Pictures, New De Luxe Brand’, p. 665. 180. Ad for Perfection Pictures, MPW vol. 33 no. 12 (22 September 1917), last of eight ads following p. 1798. 181. Ad for Perfection Pictures, MPW vol. 34 no. 3 (20 October 1917), first of the ads following p. 344. Original italics.

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182. For instance, advertisements for The Goldwyn Pictures Corporation’s alleged $250,000 production Polly of the Circus stated that the film was released with ‘the hope and the certain knowledge that every exhibitor playing it will reap immense profits’. Ad for Goldwyn Pictures Corp., MPN vol. 16 no. 10 (8 September 1917), p. 1535. Original italics. 183. Ad for Perfection Pictures, Times-Picayune, 7 October 1917, p. C-11 (clipping found in GKP, Box 56, file ‘Times-Picayune, The, New Orleans, 1917–1919’). Original italics. 184. This draws on Scott Lash and Celia Lury, Global Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), pp. 4–7. 185. Gerben Bakker, ‘Stars and Stories: How Films Became Branded Products’, in John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny (eds), An Economic History of Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 48–85. 186. Regarding the ‘value chain’ in the motion picture business, see Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, pp. 179–82. 187. See, for example, Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, pp. 74, 114–16, 266. 188. ‘Addresses of Home Offices and Film Exchanges’, MPW vol. 33 no. 12 (22 September 1917), p. 1875. 189. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 2 February 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April, 1918’. 190. See, for example, L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 27 December 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 191. See, for example, Kleine to McChesney, 2 February 1918. 192. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 29 December 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 193. Ibid. 194. Ibid. 195. Ibid. 196. The exhaustive list includes The Apple Tree Girl (Edison, 1 October 1917); Fools for Luck (Essanay, 8 October); Fibbers (Essanay, 15 October); Cy Whittaker’s Ward (Edison, 22 October); Young Mother Hubbard (Essanay, 29 October); Two Bit Seats (Essanay, 5 November); The Courage of the Commonplace (Essanay, 12 November); The Kill-Joy (Essanay, 19 November); Gift o’ Gab (Essanay, 26 November); The Small Town Guy (Essanay, 3 December); The dream doll (Essanay, 10 December); Salt of the Earth (Edison, 17 December); and Sadie Goes to Heaven (Essanay, 24 December). See ‘Schedule of Releases’ [January 1914–April 1918]. 197. See ‘Kleine-Edison-Selig-Essanay’, Comments on the Films, MPW vol. 33 no. 12 (22 September 1917), p. 1861; and ad for Perfection Pictures, MPW vol. 33 no. 13 (29 September 1917), p. 1947. 198. See ‘K-E-S-E Program’, MPW vol. 33 no. 8 (25 August 1917), p. 1240; and ads for Perfection Pictures, MPW vol. 34 no. 1 (6 October 1917), ads inserted between pp. 18 and 19. 199. ‘Complete Record of Current Films’, Motography vol. 19 no. 3 (19 January 1918), p. 145. 200. Agreement between George Kleine and William N. Selig, 24 January 1918, GKP, Box 5, file ‘“Brown of Harvard”, 1917–1920’. 201. Income statement for Brown of Harvard, 29 May 1920, GKP, Box 5, file ‘“Brown of Harvard”’, 1917–1920’. For more detailed figures, see miscellaneous documents in GKP, Box 52, file ‘Selig, William N. (Selig Polyscope Co.); Brown of Harvard, 1917–1920’. 202. For release dates of the ‘Girls You Know’ series, see ‘James Montgomery Flagg Series – ‘Girls You Know’ – One-Reelers’, GKP, Box 69, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Feature Releases, [1913?], 1917’. 203. Kleine to E. F. Warner, 27 August 1918, GKP, Box 56, file ‘Town and Country Films, Inc., 1917–1919’.

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204. ‘Complete Record of Current Films’, Motography vol. 19 no. 9 (2 March 1918), p. 441; and ‘Complete Record of Current Films’, Motography vol. 19 no. 17 (27 April 1918), p. 829. 205. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 21 December 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 206. Ibid. Further details about Kleine’s branch office expenses for 1914–18 are available in three separate ledgers in the George Kleine Records, vols. 78–80, New York Public Library Rare Books Division. 207. Ibid. 208. Ibid. 209. Ibid. 210. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 28 January 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., January–April 1918’. 211. De Vany, Hollywood Economics, pp. 3, 231–8. 212. Kleine to Marcus Loew, 27 April 1916, GKP, Box 5, file ‘Burke, Miss Billie, 1916’. 213. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 17 October 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 214. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 20 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 215. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 29 January 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 216. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 20 February 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 217. Ibid. 218. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 22 December 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 219. Kleine to McChesney, 29 December 1917. 220. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 25 January 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas, A.), Inc., Jan–April, 1918’. 221. Kleine to McChesney, 17 October 1917. 222. De Vany, Hollywood Economics, p. 223. 223. Kleine to McChesney, 17 October 1917. 224. Kleine to McChesney, 29 December 1917. 225. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 10 January 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 226. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 1 August 1917, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 227. The figures are from Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised, p. 288; and Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, pp. 111–16. 228. McChesney to Kleine, 1 August 1917. 229. Ibid. 230. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 26 January 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan– April 1918’. 231. Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, p. 132. For a more detailed discussion about portfolio theory in Hollywood, and an applied analysis of movie production as a kind of investment portfolio, see Michael Pokorny and John Sedgwick, ‘Profitability Trends in Hollywood, 1929–1999: Somebody Must Know Something’, Economic History Review vol. 63 no. 1 (2010), pp. 56–84. See also John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny, ‘The Risk Environment of Film Making: Warner Bros. in the Inter-war Years’, Explorations in Economic History vol. 35 no. 2 (April 1998), pp. 196–220. 232. Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, p. 132. 233. Ibid., p. 133.

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234. Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, Chapter 6. 235. For a profile of MacLane, see Julie Buck, ‘Mary MacLane’, in Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal and Monica Dall’Asta (eds), Women Film Pioneers Project, Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (New York: Columbia University Libraries, 2013), 27 September 2013. Available at: (accessed 24 April 2014). 236. Kleine to McChesney, 25 January 1918. 237. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 4 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 238. Promotional folder for Perfection Pictures, undated [1918?], GKP, Box 20, file ‘Essanay Film Mfg. Co., 1916–1927 and undated’. 239. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 2 March 1918, GKP, Box 66, file ‘World War I; Misc., 1918’; contract between Cines and George Kleine, March 1918, GKP, Box 3, file ‘Behind the Lines in Italy, 1918’; and contract between George Kleine and Ivan Film Productions, Inc., 31 May 1918, GKP, Box 28, file ‘Ivan Film Productions, Inc., 1918–1920 and undated (The Unchastened Woman and Conquered Hearts)’. 240. ‘“Behind the Lines in Italy” – Collections to Nov 2, 1918’; ‘“Behind the Lines” – Production Cost’; and ‘“Behind the Lines in Italy” – Special Engagement’, all in GKP, Box 65, file ‘World War I: Italian War Pictures (Films), 1918 and undated’. See also miscellaneous documents in George Kleine Records, Box 1, no. 805, New York Public Library Rare Books Division. 241. Undated circular to branches [1919?], GKP, Box 8, file ‘Circular Letters, 1917–1926 and undated’. 242. [Memorandum of] ‘Contract with Ivan Film Productions, Inc.’, GKP, Box 8, file ‘Contract Memo File, 1919’. 243. Several titles were suggested, including ‘The Furnace of the Front’, ‘The Steel of Character’ and ‘The Dawning’, before Edison settled on ‘A Soul in the Forge’. Kleine then suggested ‘The Unbeliever’, which he argued had more drawing power. McChesney at Edison found this too religious, but apparently caved in. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 16 November 1917; L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 22 November 1917; Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 24 November 1917; and L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 27 November 1917, all in GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1917’. 244. Kleine to Mr Hinton G. Glabaugh, 6 March 1918, GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; The Unbeliever, 1918’. 245. Kleine, memo to Messrs Smith and Scott, 16 March 1918, GKP, Box 66, file ‘World War I; Misc., 1918’. 246. See, for example, Leslie Midkiff DeBauche, Reel Patriotism: The Movies and World War I (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 125–34; and Elizabeth Clarke, ‘War and the Sexes: Gender and American Film, 1898–1927’, PhD dissertation, Wilfrid Laurier University (2013), pp. 195–8. 247. ‘“Biggest Patriotic Punch” on Record Shown in Rivoli Presentation of “The Unbeliever”’, MPN vol.17 no. 9 (2 March 1918), p. 1280; and ‘Music at the Rivoli’, MPW vol. 35 no. 10 (9 March 1918), p. 1373. 248. Ross Melnick, American Showman: Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel and the Birth of the Entertainment Industry (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 174. 249. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 18 January 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April, 1918’. 250. Telegram from Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 16 January 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April, 1918’. 251. Melnick, American Showman, pp. 152–3.

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252. For details about some of The Unbeliever’s early engagements in various theatres, see L. W. McChesney to Merle E. Smith, 15 February 1918; Kleine to Major Parker, US Marine Corps, 15 February 1918; Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 4 March 1918; and Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 21 March 1918, all in GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 253. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 15 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 254. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 19 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. See also, L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 3 June 1918, GKP, Box 57, file ‘The Unbeliever, 1918–1922 and undated’. 255. Telegram from Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 19 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 256. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 20 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 257. Kleine to McChesney, 20 March 1918. 258. Carl Wilson to Kleine, 23 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 259. Kleine to Carl Wilson, 25 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 260. Charles Edison to Carl Wilson, 27 March 1918, quoted in Carl Wilson to Kleine, 30 March 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 261. Wilson to Kleine, 30 March 1918. 262. Kleine to Carl Wilson, 1 April 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 263. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 2 April 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 264. Carl Wilson to Kleine, 14 April 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 265. Kleine to Carl Wilson, 18 April 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 266. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 29 April 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April 1918’. 267. See, for example, Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 2 May 1918; and Carl Wilson to Kleine, 4 May 1918, both in GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 268. ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ between George Kleine and Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 10 May 1918; and ‘Memorandum of Agreement’ between George Kleine and Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 25 May 1918, both in GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 269. ‘Memorandum of Agreement’ between Kleine and Edison, 25 May 1918. 270. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 6 June 1918, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 271. Kleine to Carl Wilson, 7 August 1918; and L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 7 August 1918, both in GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 272. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 9 August 1918, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 273. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 30 August 1918, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 274. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 5 September 1918, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 275. Kleine to Edison, Inc., 21 November 1918, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’. 276. L. W. McChesney to Kleine, 2 December 1918, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’.

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277. Edison had sold its studio in the Bronx, including equipment as well as all negatives the firm produced before entering into the cooperation with Kleine, to the Lincoln & Parker Co. in May 1918. ‘Edison Studio and Film Plant Sold’, MPW vol. 36 no. 6 (11 May 1918), p. 837. 278. ‘Cuts and Flashes’, Wid’s daily vol. 6 no. 56 (3 December 1918), p. 2. 279. Kleine to Lt V. W. Castleberry, 20 November 1918, GKP, Box 65, file ‘World War I; Employees in the U.S. Military and Other Service, 1917–1919’. 280. Ibid. 281. Kleine to Mr R. Berger, 21 November 1918, GKP, Box 65, file ‘World War I; Employees in the U.S. Military and Other Service, 1917–1919’. 282. On the closing and liquidation of the GFC, see, for example, Kleine to William N. Selig, 21 April 1919, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Selig, William N. (Selig Polyscope Co.); General, 1911–1930’; and Kleine to the Collector of Internal Revenue, Chicago, IL, 12 June 1919, GKP, Box 55, file ‘Taxes, 1910– 1925’. 283. Henry Melville to Kleine, statement of account, 1 July 1919, GKP, Box 35, file ‘Melville, Henry, 1914–1927’; Kleine to Ted Hardcastle, 21 August 1919, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Steiner, Wm (Sky Eye), 1919’; and Kleine to J. J. Kennedy, 17 June 1919, GKP, Box 55, file ‘Syndicate Superfeatures, Inc., 1919–1920’. See also miscellaneous documents in GKP, Box 55, file ‘Syndicate Superfeatures, Inc., 1919–1920’. 284. ‘Evolution’, ad for Syndicate Superfeature, Inc. in MPW vol. 40 no. 13 (28 June 1919), pp. 1876–7. See also ‘Evolution: Number Two’, ad for Syndicate Superfeature, Inc. in MPW vol. 41 no. 3 (19 July 1919), pp. 332–3; and ‘Kleine Strikes New Exchange Angle’, MPW vol. 40 no. 13 (28 June 1919), p. 1953. 285. Kleine, ‘Memorandum to Mr. Hinckley’, 1 November 1919, GKP, Box 11, file ‘Deliverance; Correspondence, 1919–1930’. 286. Kleine to John Roach Straton, 4 March 1922, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Straton, John Roach, 1922’. 287. For details about this venture, see miscellaneous documents in GKP, Box 28, file ‘The Hope Diamond Mystery, 1919–1924, 1930’. 288. Kleine, memo to Motion Picture News regarding Kosmik [1919], GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; General, 1900–1928’. For further details, see miscellaneous documents in GKP, Box 31, files ‘Kosmik Films, Inc., 1919–1920’, ‘Kosmik Films, Inc., 1919–1924’, ‘Kosmik Films, Inc., 1920–1924’ and ‘Kosmik Films, Inc., 1920’. 289. Kleine to Louis B. Epstein, 6 December 1922, GKP, Box 31, file ‘Kosmik Films, Inc., 1919–1924’. 290. See GKP, Box 20, file ‘Evolutional System, Applicants’.

4 AFTER THE FEATURE, PART 2: GEORGE KLEINE’S CONSERVATISM AND THE AMERICAN MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY’S ECONOMY OF ‘RECKLESSNESS’ 1. Kleine to Caryl B. Storrs, 29 October 1914, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Better and Highbrow Film Movements, 1914–1923’. 2. Gerben Bakker, ‘The Quality Race: Feature Films and Market Dominance in the US and Europe in the 1910s’, in Steve Neale (ed.), The Classical Hollywood Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), pp. 31–3. 3. Richard E. Caves, Switching Channels: Organization and Change in TV Broadcasting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 6. See also Richard E. Caves, Creative Industries: Contracts between Art and Commerce (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 4. ‘The Weak Spots in a Strong Business – II’, MPN vol. 11 no. 5 (6 February 1915), p. 29.

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5. Kleine to Guido Serra, 7 July 1915, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Serra, Guido, 1912–1916’. 6. Kleine to Ed. E. Bender (Lyceum Theatre in Canton, OH), 16 February 1916, GKP, Box 20, file ‘Exhibitors Advertising, 1916’. 7. Kleine to Baron A. Zezza, 16 February 1916, GKP, Box 67, file ‘Zezza, Baron A., 1914–1916’. 8. Kleine, undated [c. 1916] draft of affidavit regarding the ‘Case of Richard A. Rowland against Various General Film Directors, District Court of the United States’, GKP, Box 37, file ‘Motion Picture Patents Co. litigation (cont.); Roland [sic], Richard A., 1913–1918’. 9. A National Committee for Better Films was inaugurated by the National Board of Review in 1916 to coordinate various community groups that were striving to improve the movies. Jennifer Horne, ‘A History Long Overdue: The Public Library and Motion Pictures’, in Charles R. Acland and Haidee Wasson (eds), Useful Cinema (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2011), p. 169. 10. Wid Gunning, ‘No Jokes about It – There Are Breakers Ahead! A Suggestion – Radical but Possible’, Wid’s daily vol. 3 no. 7 (15 February 1917), pp. 97–8. See also Wid Gunning to Kleine, K-E-S-E Service, 24 February 1917, GKP, Box 25, file ‘Gunning, Wid., 1917’. 11. Leslie Midkiff DeBauche, Reel Patriotism: The Movies and World War I (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), pp. 124–5. 12. W. Stephen Bush, ‘The National Association of the Motion Picture Industry’, MPW vol. 29 no. 7 (12 August 1916), p. 1077; ‘The Great Get-Together Meeting’, MPW vol. 29 no. 7 (12 August 1916), p. 1079; ‘National Association Meeting’, Variety vol. 43 no. 12 (18 August 1916), p. 20; and ‘The N.A. of M.P.I. Elects Officers’, MPW vol. 29 no. 10 (2 September 1916), p. 1517. 13. ‘Board of Trade Dissolving: New Organization Forming’, Variety vol. 43 no. 3 (16 June 1916), p. 18. 14. Frederick H. Elliott, executive secretary of NAMPI to Kleine, 31 August 1916, GKP, Box 20, file ‘Exhibitors Associations, 1916–1926’. 15. See, for example, Frederick H. Elliott, executive secretary of NAMPI to Kleine, 27 October 1916, GKP, Box 38, file ‘National Association of the Motion Picture Industry, Inc., 1916–1918’. 16. Executive secretary of NAMPI, quoted in I. E. Chadwick (Ivan Film Productions) to Kleine, 3 February 1917; and Kleine to Chadwick, 8 February 1917, GKP, both in Box 20, file ‘Exhibitors Associations, 1916–1926’. 17. ‘The N.A. of M.P.I. Elects Officers’, p. 1517. 18. Kleine to Robert Lieber, 9 January 1918, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Leslie, Amy, 1914–1927 and undated’. 19. Ibid. 20. Kleine to J. S. Connelly, Exhibitors’ League of Maryland, 15 January 1918, GKP, Box 55, file ‘Taxes, 1910–1925’. 21. Ibid. 22. Kleine to Frank Rembusch, 3 April 1918 [not sent], GKP, Box 20, file ‘Exhibitors Associations, 1916–1926’. 23. Kleine to Judge Edwin B. Parker, Priorities Committee, War Industries Board, 14 September 1918, GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. For an analysis of the properties of movies as commodity form, see John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny, ‘The Characteristics of Film as a Commodity’, in John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny (eds), An Economic History of Film (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 6–23. 27. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, 24 September 1918, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., May–Dec 1918’.

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28. Kleine, ‘An Open Letter to Executives of Production and Distribution in the Film Industry and Recommendations to the Priorities Committee of the War Industries Board to Conserve Men and Material’, undated [September 1918], GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 29. Ibid. The full list of names to which Kleine addressed his open letter included William A. Brady, Paul Brunet, William Fox, Samuel Goldfish, Ricord Gradwell, W. H. Hodkinson, Carl Laemmle, Jesse L. Lasky, R. A. Rowland, James Sheldon, Albert E. Smith, Lewis Selznick, Frank Tichenor and Adolph Zukor. 30. ‘Special Mailing List Mr. Kleine’s Open Letter’, and ‘Open letter was sent to the following’, both in GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 31. ‘Kleine’s Letter Is a Scorcher’, MPN vol. 18 no. 16 (19 October 1918), p. 2518; ‘Would Curtail Production’, Variety vol. 52 no. 7 (11 October 1918), p. 47; and reprint of ‘An Open Letter’, Sunday Morning Telegraph, 29 September 1918, clipping in GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 32. James L. Hoff, ‘Conservation – But Not Stagnation’, MPW vol. 38 no. 2 (12 October 1918), p. 237. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Kleine to the editor of Moving Picture World, 26 October 1918, GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 38. The same quotes, and similar lines of reasoning, were used in a letter to the Exhibitors Trade Review. Kleine to the editor of the Exhibitors Trade Review, 26 October 1918, GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 39. ‘To Provide Revenue for War Purposes’, Record of Hearings before the Committee on Finance, US Senate, Sixty-Fifth Congress, Second Session on H. R. 12863, To Provide Revenue, and for Other Purposes (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), copy in GKP, Box 58, file ‘U.S. Treasury Department, 1918–1921’. 40. Hearings before the Committee of Ways and Means, House of Representatives, with Reference to The New Revenue Bill [This Print of the Hearings Is Subject to Revision before the final Print], 18 June 1918 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), copy in GKP, Box 57, file ‘U.S. Congress; House; Committee of Ways and Means; Hearings on New Revenue Bill and H.R. 12863 (An Act), 1918’. 41. Walter W. Irwin, Hearings before the Committee on Finance, US Senate, Sixty-Fifth Congress, Second Session on H. R. 12863, quoted in Kleine to the editor of Moving Picture World, 26 October 1918. 42. Ibid. 43. Patrick A. Powers, Hearings before the Committee of Ways and Means, House of Representatives, with Reference to The New Revenue Bill, 18 June 1918, quoted in Kleine to the editor of Moving Picture World, 26 October 1918. 44. Irwin, Hearings before the Committee on Finance. 45. Kleine to the editor of Moving Picture World, 26 October 1918. 46. ‘Discussing the Situation’, MPW vol. 38 no. 7 (16 November 1918), p. 733. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. ‘Let’s Start Right! Mr. Kleine Suggests We Cure Toothache by Removing the Head’, MPN vol. 18 no. 16 (19 October 1918), pp. 2513–14. 50. ‘Quirk Takes Exception to Kleine Statements’, Wid’s daily vol. 6 no. 25 (31 October 1918), pp. 6–7.

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51. See, for example, Frank A. Tichenor (General Film Co.) to Kleine, 3 October 1918, GKP, Box 66, file ‘World War I; Misc., 1918’; and William Wright (Kalem Company) to Kleine, 30 September 1918; Elisabeth R. Dessez (Community Motion Picture Bureau) to Kleine, 16 October 1918; and Rex Film Renovator to Kleine, 18 October 1918, all three in GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 52. Louis F. Blumenthal to Kleine, 30 September 1918, GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 53. Kleine to Louis F. Blumenthal, 3 October 1918, GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 54. Ibid. 55. ‘Producers Decide to Close up Shop’, MPW vol. 38 no. 4 (26 October 1918), p. 491; and ‘Shutdown Extended One Week’, MPW vol. 38 no. 7 (16 November 1918), p. 731. 56. Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London: Abacus, 2006 [1975]), pp. 251–2. 57. Alfred D. Chandler Jr, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977). 58. Ibid., p. 9. 59. ‘Kleine Strikes New Exchange Angle’, MPW vol. 40 no. 13 (28 June 1919), p. 1953. 60. Inventory of Kleine business records donated to the New York Public Library, 17 April 1930, p. 1, GKP, Box 69, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Master Inventory of Kleine Records, 1919, 1924’; and Kleine to Motion Picture News, 19 December 1919, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; General, 1900– 1928’. 61. Kleine, unsent letter to the Ways and Means Committee, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, 9 July 1918, GKP, Box 66, file ‘World War I; Misc., 1918’. 62. Kleine to Lawrence Reid (MPN), 18 October 1919, GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; General, 1900– 1928’. 63. See, for example, Kleine to Horace Latimer, Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia), 9 July 1920, GKP, Box 27, file ‘Historical; Publicity; Correspondence and Other Documents, 1914–1927’. 64. The documents Kleine collected regarding the size of the motion picture industry are scattered over the George Kleine Papers, but most of the relevant documents are in Box 54 in two files labelled ‘Statistics (Production Costs, Distribution Costs, etc.), 1917–1922’ and ‘Statistics (Production Costs, Distribution Costs, etc.), 1923–1927 and undated’. 65. Kleine to Universal Film Exchanges, Inc. (Chicago), 7 May 1919, GKP, Box 66, file ‘World War I; Liberty Loan, 1919–1920 and undated’. 66. Richard Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915–1928 (New York: Scribner, 1990), p. 93. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., p. 94. 69. Kleine to Mr. Dana Jones, Publicity Department, Guaranty Trust and Savings Bank, 25 August 1920, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Statistics (Production Costs, Distribution Costs, etc.), 1917–1922’. 70. Kleine to W. C. Crosby, 17 August 1922, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Crosby, W. C. (N.C. State Dept. of Education and Carolina Film Corporation), 1921–1923’. 71. Kleine to The Camera, Motion Picture Department, 13 July 1915, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Scripts, 1911–1932’. 72. Kleine, draft of unpublished article titled ‘What’s Wrong with the Film Business’, 20 December 1919, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Better and Highbrow Film Movements, 1914–1923’.

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73. See Kleine, untitled and undated article draft [1917], GKP, Box 4, file ‘Better and Highbrow Film Movements, 1914–1923’. 74. Kleine, ‘Big Profits Ten Years Ago’, MPW vol. 31 no. 10 (10 March 1917), p. 1511. 75. Kleine to James McQuade, Moving Picture World, 1 March 1917, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Julius Caesar, 1914–1930’. 76. Kleine to H. V. Day, Essanay (Los Angeles), 16 March 1918, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Stars, 1916–1922’. 77. Kleine, draft of trade press ad [unpublished?], undated [1918], GKP, Box 67, file ‘World War I; War Industries Board, 1917–1918’. 78. Kleine, unsent letter to the Ways and Means Committee, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, 9 July 1918, GKP, Box 66, file ‘World War I; Misc., 1918’. 79. Ibid. Elsie Ferguson, Mae Murray, Alice Brady, Geraldine Farrar, Pauline Frederick, Viola Dana, Anita Stewart and Francis X. Bushman completed the list, although Kleine noted that there were many other stars who earned ‘inflated’ salaries. 80. Ibid. 81. Ibid. 82. Gerben Bakker, ‘Stars and Stories: How Films Became Branded Products’, in Sedgwick and Pokorny (eds), Economic History of Film, p. 76. 83. Kleine, draft of trade press ad [unpublished?], undated [1918]. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 86. Kleine to MPW, att. Mr. Milligan, 16 December 1920, GKP, Box 54, file ‘Statistics (Production Costs, Distribution Costs, etc.), 1917–1922’. 87. Ibid. 88. Kleine, draft of trade press ad [unpublished?], undated [1918]. 89. Kleine to MPW, att. Mr. Milligan, 16 December 1920. 90. Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, speech at the Seventh Annual Meeting National University Extension Association at Lexington, KY, 22 April 1922, reprinted in Proceedings of the National University Extension Association at Lexington, Kentucky, April 20, 21, 22, 1922 (Boston, MA: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1923), p. 34. 91. Janet Wasko, Movies and Money: Financing the American Film Industry (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1982), pp. 31–2. 92. Adolph Zukor, quoted in ibid., p. 18. 93. Popular movie stars are still the most conspicuous ambassadors of the movie kurtocracy, but most people know of a few directors, screenwriters, producers and executives who belong to the same elite. Research suggests that the Hollywood kurtocrats have become better and better at skimming from the top, raking in an extremely large part of all the revenues generated in the industry. Adam Leaver, ‘A Different Take: Hollywood’s Unresolved Business Model’, Review of International Political Economy vol. 17 no. 3 (August 2010), p. 472. 94. Kleine to Peter B. Kyne, 22 November 1922, GKP, Box 31, file ‘Kyne, Peter B., 1922–1930’. 95. Danny Miller and Jamal Shamsie, ‘Strategic Responses to Three Kinds of Uncertainty: Product Line Simplicity at the Hollywood Film Studios’, Journal of Management vol. 25 no. 1 (1999), pp. 97–116. 96. Wasko, Movies and Money, pp. 22–4; and Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, pp. 91–4. 97. Wasko, Movies and Money, pp. 17–24. The transformation of the movie industry into ‘big business’ involved processes of ‘professionalisation’ that (re)masculinised the industry. The movies had offered an unusually wide range of job opportunities for women, but the mounting economic stakes meant that their presence came under increased scrutiny. As a result, many female film-

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98. 99. 100.

101.

102.

103.

104. 105.

106.

107. 108. 109.

110. 111.

makers disappeared or were marginalised in the 1920s. Karen Ward Mahar, Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), Chapter 7. Arthur De Vany, Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry (New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 153. Ibid. A revival of the traditional roadshow distribution method occurred in 1921 due to the successful roadshowing of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Metro, 1921) and other big films. Later, the term changed meaning, signifying pre-release in selected theatres at advanced prices, rather than a national circulation in legitimate theatres and such venues. Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2010), pp. 52–4, 118. Kleine’s analysis of the harmful effects of what he thought of as local movie theatre monopolies evolved for several years. For a few examples of his views on the matter over the years, see Kleine to Eugene Levy, 21 September 1916, GKP, Box 1, file ‘Amalgamated Film Exchange, 1909–1918 and undated’; Kleine to the editor of the Exhibitors Trade Review, 26 October 1918; Kleine to the Federal Trade Commission, 12 March 1920, GKP, Box 58, file ‘U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 1915–1927’; Kleine, ‘Memo In Re Theatre Monopoly’, 1 December 1923, GKP, Box 57, file ‘United Artists Studios, 1923–1929 and undated’. Regarding the Mastbaums, see Joel Frykholm, ‘Local Showmanship in the Early Feature Era: The Case of Stanley Mastbaum’, in Marta Braun et al. (eds), Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks, and Publics of Early Cinema (New Barnet, Herts.: John Libbey, 2012), pp. 263–70; and Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), pp. 38–40. ‘Mastbaum and Metro Sued in Philadelphia, As Trust: Some Amusement Company Charges They Conspired with Exchanges to Oppress Independent Exhibitors along Coast’, NY Clipper vol. 66 no. 4 (27 February 1918), p. 32. Andrew J. Callaghan to Kleine, 18 February 1918, GKP, Box 58, file ‘U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 1915–1927’. Essanay to Kleine, 21 September 1918, GKP, Box 58, file ‘U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 1915–1927’; and ‘Continued Fight against Monopolies Promised by President of Essanay’, Exhibitors Herald vol. 7 no. 15 (5 October 1918), p. 23. Kleine to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 3 September 1921; the FTC to Kleine, 7 September 1921; Kleine to J. J. Thompson, 9 September 1921; Kleine to the FTC, 10 September 1921; Kleine to the FTC, 21 September 1921; Kleine to the FTC, 20 March 1922; memo of meeting between Kleine and Marvin Farrington and Gaylord Hawkins of the FTC in Chicago on 1 and 3 May 1922, all in GKP, Box 58, file ‘U.S. Federal Trade Commission, 1915–1927’. Koszarski, An Evening’s Entertainment, p. 79. Kleine, unsent letter to W. R. Fraser, general manager of the (Harold) Lloyd Corp., undated [October 1923], GKP, Box 33, file ‘Lloyd (Harold) Corp., 1923’. William Marston Seabury, ‘Booking Combinations and Theatre Circuits in the Motion Picture Industry’, 5 January 1923; and William Marston Seabury, ‘The Star Theatre Corporation’, 23 September 1924, copies of both in GKP, Box 56, file ‘Theaters; Mergers and Monopolies, 1912–1928’. William Marston Seabury to Kleine, 24 October 1924, GKP, Box 56, file ‘Theaters; Mergers and Monopolies, 1912–1928’. See, for example, Kleine to George Blair, 13 August 1921, GKP, Box 50, file ‘Raw Film Stock (Eastman Kodak, etc.), 1909–1921’; Kleine to Amy Leslie, 31 October 1923, GKP, Box 32,

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file ‘Leslie, Amy, 1914–1927 and undated’; and Kleine to William H. Tuohy, 7 July 1925, GKP, Box 56, file ‘Tuohy, William H., 1925’. 112. Michael Pokorny and John Sedgwick, ‘Profitability Trends in Hollywood, 1929–1999: Somebody Must Know Something’, Economic History Review vol. 63 no. 1 (2010), p. 73. 113. Ibid. 114. Michael Pokorny and John Sedgwick, ‘The Financial and Economic Risks of Production’, in Mette Hjort (ed.), Film and Risk (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2012), p. 182.

5 ‘THE PURER ETHER OF SELECTIVE CINEMA’: GEORGE KLEINE, NON-THEATRICAL CINEMA AND EARLY HOLLYWOOD 1. GKP, Box 44, file ‘“The Photoplay” by Prof. Munsterberg (Article)’. 2. Excerpts from Münsterberg, The Photoplay, ibid. Cf. Hugo Münsterberg, The Photoplay: A Psychological Study (New York and London: D. Appleton and Co., 1916), p. 231. 3. Münsterberg, Photoplay, p. 220. Original italics. 4. Noël Carroll, ‘Film/Mind Analogies: The Case of Hugo Münsterberg’, in Marc Furstenau (ed.), The Film Theory Reader: debates and Arguments (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 61. 5. Richard Abel speaks of four main ‘discourse modes’ in French film theory and criticism in the 1910s and 20s: motion pictures as (a) science and industry; (b) education; (c) entertainment; and (d) art. These were common in the US, too, in this period. Richard Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism: A History/Anthology: Vol. 1, 1907–1929 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 8–23. 6. Münsterberg, Photoplay, p. 221. 7. Ibid., pp. 221–2. 8. Ibid., p. 223. 9. Jennifer Peterson, ‘“The Knowledge Which Comes in Pictures”: Educational Films and Early Cinema Audiences’, in André Gaudreault et al. (eds), A Companion to Early Cinema (Chichester, W. Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), pp. 279–80. 10. Ibid., pp. 279–81. Peterson’s own research has mostly focused on how early non-fiction genres – travel films in particular – figured into the embrace of cinema as a positive force. This, she argues, complements related scholarly work on other types of motion pictures, such as Vitagraph’s early ‘quality films’, ‘uplift dramatic films’ and boxing films, and counterbalances a previous overemphasis on the negative modes of reform and regulation. See also Jennifer Peterson, Education in the School of dreams: Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). 11. William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson, Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 12. Charles R. Acland and Haidee Wasson, ‘Introduction: Utility and Cinema’, in Charles R. Acland and Haidee Wasson (eds), Useful Cinema (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 1–14. 13. Robert Grau, The Business Man in the Amusement World: A Volume of Progress in the Field of the Theatre (New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1910), p. 122. 14. Ibid., image inserted between pp. 122 and 123. 15. See, for example, Robert Grau, The Theatre of Science: A Volume of Progress and Achievement in the Motion Picture Industry (New York, London and Paris: Broadway Publishing Co., 1914); Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture, Vol. 1–2 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926); and Benjamin Hampton, A History of the Movies (New York: Covici, Friede, 1931).

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16. Anthony Slide, Before Video: A History of the Non-theatrical Film (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992). 17. The first instalment was Arthur Edwin Krows, ‘Motion Pictures – Not for Theaters’, Educational Screen vol. 17 no. 7 (September 1938), pp. 211–15. 18. Krows, ‘Motion Pictures’ (September 1938), p. 212; and Krows, ‘Motion Pictures – Not for Theaters’, Educational Screen vol. 17 no. 9 (November 1938), p. 291. See also Krows, ‘QuarterCentury of Non-theatrical Films’, Educational Screen vol. 15 no. 6 (June 1936), pp. 169–73. 19. Paul Saettler, The Evolution of American Educational Technology (Greenwich, CN: IAP, 2004), p. 98; and ‘Urban to Introduce Photography on This Side’, Variety vol. 15 no. 3 (26 June 1909), p. 13. For an account of Urban’s career, see Luke McKernan, Charles Urban: Pioneering the Non-fiction Film in Britain and America, 1897–1925 (Exeter, Devon: University of Exeter Press, 2013). 20. Catalogue of Educational Motion Picture Films, issued by George Kleine (1910). 21. See, for example, Acland and Wasson (eds), Useful Cinema; and Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron and Dan Streible (eds), Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 22. Oliver Gaycken, ‘A Note on the National Character of Early Popular Science Films’, in Richard Abel, Giorgio Bertellini and Rob King (eds), Early Cinema and the ‘National’ (New Barnet, Herts.: John Libbey, 2008), p. 264n19. 23. Oliver Gaycken, devices of Curiosity: Early Cinema and Popular Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and Oliver Gaycken, ‘The Cinema of the Future: Visions of the Medium as Modern Educator, 1895–1910’, in Orgeron et al. (eds), Learning with the Lights Off, pp. 84–5. 24. Peterson, Education in the School of dreams, pp. 122–3. The labelling of the catalogue as ‘influential’ is from Peterson, ‘“The Knowledge Which Comes in Pictures”’, p. 284. 25. Peterson, Education in the School of dreams, p. 124. 26. See, for example, Kleine to Robert G. Weyh Jr (Western Travel Lectures), 21 November 1910; Kleine to C. E. Terry, City Board of Health, Jacksonville, FL, 21 November 1910; and Kleine to N. P. Heffley (Heffley Institute, Brooklyn, NY), 19 November 1910, all in GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1909–1910’. 27. Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, speech at the Seventh Annual Meeting National University Extension Association at Lexington, KY, 20 April 1922, reprinted in Proceedings of the National University Extension Association at Lexington, Kentucky, April 20, 21, 22, 1922 (Boston, MA: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1923), p. 29. 28. Peterson, Education in the School of dreams, pp. 124–5. 29. Ibid., p. 21. 30. Kleine to Sussfeld, Lorsch & Co., 13 August 1909, GKP, Box 24, file ‘Gaumont, 1909–1915 and undated’. The cost of the catalogue came in at approximately $2,900 rather than $2,000. See General Ledger, 1909–1912, George Kleine Records, vol. 1, New York Public Library Rare Books Division. The ‘competent man’ mentioned was Walter L. Brind. See Walter L. Brind to Thomas A. Edison, 16 February 1914, TEP, reel 257, pp. 529–32. 31. Peterson, Education in the School of dreams, p. 66. 32. Jennifer Peterson, ‘Travelogues and Early Nonfiction Film: Education in the School of Dreams’, in Charlie Keil and Shelley Stamp (eds), American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 202–3. 33. Ben Singer also makes a connection between educational film, the MPPC and the ‘uplift movement’. Ben Singer, ‘Early Home Cinema and the Edison Home Projecting Kinetoscope’, Film History vol. 2 no. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 53–4.

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34. Kleine, marginalia, Kleine to Frank L. Dyer, 16 December 1908 [not sent], GKP, Box 26, file ‘Historical; Patent Fight, 1908–1916 and undated’. 35. Kleine to Frank L. Dyer, 1 June 1909, TEP, reel 194, p. 026. 36. Ibid. 37. See, for example, ‘Chicago’, MPW vol. 8 no. 21 (27 May 1911), p. 1189; and James McQuade, ‘Chicago Letter’, MPW vol. 14 no. 9 (30 November 1912), p. 865. 38. Peterson, Education in the School of dreams, p. 118. 39. Kleine, ‘The Old and the New Way of Making Pictures’, Morning Telegraph, 24 September 1922, Motion Picture Section, p. 4. 40. Ibid. 41. See Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, pp. 27–43. A document that Peterson refers to as an ‘unnamed’ and ‘untitled’ lecture (Peterson, Education in the School of dreams, pp. 135–6) is, in fact, a draft of this speech. The document Peterson has studied is in GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Lectures, 1910–1912 and undated’. A copy of the proceedings in which the speech was later published in printed form is in GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Catalogs, 1920–1927 (2)’. 42. Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, p. 31. 43. Ibid., p. 32. 44. Ibid. 45. Kleine to H. F. Moore, 11 August 1910, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1909–1910’. 46. Kleine to Henry Melville, 3 February 1913, GKP, Box 37, file ‘Motion Picture Patents Co. litigation (cont.); U.S. Government, 1912–1919’. 47. See Singer, ‘Early Home Cinema’, p. 51. 48. Kleine, report to the Committee of Ways and Means, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, 15 February 1913, pp. 3–4, GKP, Box 57, file ‘U.S. Congress; House; Committee of Ways and Means; Report by George Kleine etc., 1913–1916’. 49. Ibid., p. 3. 50. Kleine to the Department of Education, Division of Film Censorship, Columbus, OH, 18 March 1922, GKP, Box 6, file ‘Censorship, Ohio, 1912–1927’. 51. Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, pp. 30–1. 52. Peterson, ‘“The Knowledge Which Comes in Pictures”’, p. 284. 53. Kleine to Miss Florence E. Bate, 29 February 1916, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921 (2)’. 54. Ibid. 55. ‘Facts and Comments’, MPW vol. 28 no. 8 (20 May 1916), p. 1303. 56. ‘An Excellent Step Forward’, editorial, MPN vol. 13 no. 22 (3 June 1916), p. 3376; and William A. Johnston (MPN) to Kleine, 9 May 1916, GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; References, 1910–1922’. 57. Kleine’s own promotion of certain films as ‘classics’ based on their source material and subject matter dated back (at least) to 1912, when some of the Cines films he imported were advertised as ‘Kosmik Classics’. See, for example, ad for ‘Coming Kosmik Classics’, MPW vol. 11 no. 2 (13 January 1912), p. 101. 58. Uricchio and Pearson, Reframing Culture. 59. Rupert Hughes, George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics, issued by George Kleine (1916), p. 3. 60. Ibid., p. 4. 61. Ibid., p. 5. 62. Rob King, ‘The Discourses of Art in Early Film, or, Why Not Rancière?’, in Gaudreault et al. (eds), Companion to Early Cinema, p. 143.

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63. Ibid. 64. Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 65. John Guillory, ‘The Ordeal of Middlebrow Culture’, Transition no. 67 (1995), p. 83. 66. Hughes, ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’, p. 5. 67. Ibid., pp. 4–5. 68. Ibid., p. 4. 69. Ibid., pp. 59–62. 70. See, for example, Edna E. Wall to Kleine, 12 May 1930, GKP, Box 68, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Educational Distribution; Campbell County High School, Gillette, Wyo., 1930’; and Kleine to Abe L. Plotkin, 9 April 1930, GKP, Box 68, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Educational Distribution; Central High School, Scranton, PA, 1929–1930’. 71. Purchase order to Republic Laboratory, 9 September 1921, GKP, Box 48, file ‘Publicity, 1915–1921’. 72. Jennifer Horne, ‘A History Long Overdue: The Public Library and Motion Pictures’, in Acland and Wasson (eds), Useful Cinema, p. 170. 73. Haidee Wasson, Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 1–7. 74. See, for example, Kleine to R. W. Pettengill, 5 March 1929, GKP, Box 74, file ‘Distribution File; States; New York, 1928–1930’; and Kleine to Ellsworth C. Dent (field organiser, Bureau of Visual Instruction, University of Kansas, Lawrence), 10 January 1930, GKP Box 18, file ‘Educational Films, 1916, 1920–1930’. 75. Paula Amad, Counter-Archive: Film, the Everyday, and Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), p. 20. 76. See, for example, Wasson, Museum Movies; and Peter Decherney, Hollywood and the Culture Elite: How the Movies Became American (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). 77. See, for example, Anthony Slide, Nitrate Won’t Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 1992); Penelope Houston, Keepers of the Frame: The Film Archives (London: BFI Publishing, 1994); and Stephen Bottomore, ‘“The Sparkling Surface of the Sea of History”: Notes on the Origins of Film Preservation’, in Roger Smither (ed.) and Catherine A. Surowiec (assoc. ed.), This Film Is dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film (Brussels: FIAF, 2002), pp. 86–97. 78. This particular phrase is from Bottomore, ‘“Sparkling Surface”’, p. 88. 79. Caroline Frick, Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 9. 80. Kleine to Jane Stannard Johnson, 27 October 1916, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921 (2)’. 81. I have analysed this experiment in non-theatrical distribution elsewhere, and parts of what follows overlaps with that essay. The focus here, however, is the wider context of Kleine’s career, whereas the essay deals primarily with how the experiment fitted into the institutional matrix that defined non-theatrical cinema at the time. See Joel Frykholm, ‘George Kleine and The Institutional Film Exchange: An Experiment in Nontheatrical Film Distribution, 1921–1929’, in Marina Dahlquist and Joel Frykholm (eds), The Institutionalization of Educational Cinema: North America and Europe in the 1910s and 1920s (forthcoming). 82. Kleine to Moore, 11 August 1910. 83. Kleine to Wallace W. Atwood at University of Chicago, 9 February 1911, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921 (2)’.

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84. Kleine to B. W. Davidson, 16 March 1912, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921 (2)’. 85. Kleine to John J. Stevens, High School, Ansonia, CT, 22 September 1919, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Educational Use of Films, 1919–1922’. 86. Ibid. 87. C. P. Cary to Kleine, 24 September 1919; and William H. Dudley to Kleine, 24 September 1919, both in GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Educational Use of Films, 1919–1922’. 88. Alex Kupfer, ‘Cinema and the Service Ideal: Nontheatrical Film Distribution and the University of Wisconsin Bureau of Visual Instruction, 1910–1930’, chapter from forthcoming PhD dissertation. 89. Kleine to L. W. McChesney, Edison, Inc., 27 February 1918, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., Jan–April, 1918’. 90. I have detailed the preambles to the experiment in Frykholm, ‘George Kleine and the Institutional Film Exchange’. 91. ‘National Academy of Visual Instruction: History’, GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; National Academy of Visual Instruction, 1921 and undated’. 92. Kleine to William H. Dudley, 27 June 1921, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921’. 93. William H. Dudley to F. F. Nalder, State College of Washington at Pullman, General College Extension, 15 July 1921, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921 (2)’. This was also sent to eleven additional institutional members of NAVI. 94. Unless otherwise noted, details and aims of the plan are from Kleine’s letter to Dudley on 27 June 1921 and Dudley’s letter to the institutional members on 15 July 1921. 95. The ‘classical’ subjects might have worked as a special draw for some of the state universities. Latin scholar Maria Wyke has pointed out that the reissuing of Kleine’s ‘classical’-historical films coincided with a declining interest in classical education. Wyke probably overestimates the impact of Kleine’s films in this context. The fact that they somehow figured into a struggle between modernisation of the school system and the enduring belief in the value of classical education might have facilitated his contacts with the state universities, especially to the extent that professors of Latin and other classical subjects were involved. This was indeed the case in, at least, the states of Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio. Maria Wyke, ‘Caesar, Cinema, and National Identity in the 1910s’, in Maria Wyke (ed.), Julius Caesar in Western Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), p. 182. 96. The correspondence between Kleine and L. W. McChesney and others at the Edison Co., primarily found in Boxes 16 and 17 of the George Kleine Papers, and other sources in the same collection, offer an abundance of information about the Conquest pictures. About the original theatrical release of the Conquest pictures, also see Jennifer Horne, ‘Nostalgia and Non-fiction in Edison’s 1917 Conquest Program’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television vol. 22 no. 3 (2002), pp. 315–31. 97. Kleine to Dudley, 27 June 1921. 98. Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, p. 42. 99. Ibid., p. 41. 100. Kleine to W. J. Cameron, editor, dearborn Independent, 15 November 1921, GKP, Box 10, file ‘The Dearborn Independent, 1921’. 101. Some examples are referenced in Thomas Simonet, ‘George Kleine’s Effort in Non-theatrical Film Distribution, 1921–1928’, Educational Broadcasting Review vol. 7 no. 3 (June 1973), pp. 178–9.

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102. ‘Moving Pictures in Schools’, Stevens Point daily Journal, 27 June 1914, p. 15, cited in Kupfer, ‘Cinema and the Service Ideal’; and William H. Dudley, ‘Organization for Visual Instruction’, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Bulletin, 1921, no. 7 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921). 103. Kleine, ‘The Old and the New Way of Making Pictures’, Morning Telegraph, 1 October 1922, Motion Picture Section, p. 2. 104. Ibid. 105. Kleine to J. C. Zeller, Senate Chamber, State of Mississippi, Jackson, MS, 13 November 1923, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, Sept 1921–1924 and undated’. 106. Kleine to State University Film Exchange, State University of Montana, Missoula, 18 November 1921, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, 1920–June 1922’. 107. Ibid. 108. Kleine, draft of a ‘Plan for Co-ordinating the Operations of University Departments of Visual Education Extension through the United States and to Increase the Volume of Their Operations’, undated, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, July 1922–1923 and undated’. See also Kleine to Dudley, 27 June 1921. Kleine sometimes used variants of ‘sound commercial basis’, such as ‘sane commercial operations’. See, for example, Kleine to J. O. Pettiss, Extension Division at the State Normal College of Louisiana, Natchitoches, 11 August 1922, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, July 1922–1923 and undated’. 109. Kleine to Thomas A. Edison, 7 June 1921, GKP, Box 15, file ‘Edison, Thomas A.; Correspondence, 1921, 1929’. 110. Kleine to Dudley, 27 June 1921. 111. Ibid. 112. Kleine to State University Film Exchange, State University of Montana, Missoula, 18 November 1921. 113. Kleine to Thomas A. Edison, 4 November 1921, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Educational Films, 1916, 1920–1930’. 114. W. H. Dudley to Kleine, 10 August 1921, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Dudley, W. H., and Reynolds, F. W., 1921–1923’. See also correspondence between W. H. Dudley and institutional members of NAVI in GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921’. 115. Advertisement for Julius Caesar, Classical Weekly vol. 15 no. 16 (27 February 1922), n.p. Copy in GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, printed matter’. 116. ‘Territories Covered by Institutional Exchanges’, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; Visual Instruction Association of New York and National Academy of Visual Instruction, 1922 and undated’. 117. ‘List of Institutional Exchanges Handling George Kleine Films, 1 December 1923 (Corrected to April 24, 1927)’, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, September 1921–1924 and undated’. 118. All information about the rental income from distribution by the institutional exchanges has been derived from comparison and cross-referencing of figures appearing in the following sources: ‘Cash Collected from Universities, Season 1921–1922 and season 1922–1923’; ‘George Kleine’s Share of College Collections, 31 Nov 31 [sic], 1922’; ‘Summary Cash Collection – University Rentals – Fiscal Year Sept 1, 1923 to Aug 31, 1924’; ‘Non-theatrical Institutional Film Rental Receipts, 1925–1926, 1926–1927’; and ‘Non Theatrical Institutional Film Rental Receipts (Season 1927–1928)’; all from GKP, Box 18, file ‘Educational Distribution to Universities, 1921–1928’; and ‘Collections from Institutional Exchanges on “Julius Caesar” from 9/1/21 to 1/15/23’, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Julius Caesar, 1914–1930’; Kleine to F. W. Reynolds and W. H. Dudley, 17 January 1923, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Dudley, W. H., and Reynolds, F. W., 1921–1923’; ‘George Kleine

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119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124.

125.

126. 127.

220

Share – College Collections – Oct. 1, 1923’, GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; Lists of Universities and Schools Using Films’; ‘George Kleine Share – College Collections – Nov. 1, 1923’, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, Sept. 1921–1924 and undated’; and ‘George Kleine Share – Collections – April 1, 1924’, GKP, Box 68, file ‘Inventories and Lists; Educational Distribution; University of California, 1922–1930’. See also, Simonet, ‘George Kleine’s Effort’, p. 177. Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, p. 40. Kleine, circular to institutional exchanges, 10 July 1922, GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Engagements, 1922–1924’. Ibid. Other documents in the George Kleine Papers indicate a slightly higher number of bookings of Julius Caesar over the 1921–2 season. Kleine, ‘Co-operation in Visual Instruction’, p. 40. Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron and Dan Streible, ‘History of Learning with the Lights Off’, in Orgeron et al. (eds), Learning with the Lights Off, pp. 26–30. Thomas Simonet’s 1973 article in the Educational Broadcast Review scrutinises Kleine’s own views on the economic failure of the experiment, and argues that he saw ‘commercial sabotage’ (i.e. interferences from the theatrical-commercial film industry) and hardware problems as the two main causes, while he failed to recognise that there might have been problems with the content and style of his films. While this is not entirely misleading, I would argue that there are more nuances to Kleine’s discourse. Simonet, ‘George Kleine’s Effort’, pp. 174–82. In 1925, Kleine acknowledged that ideally, all films should be transferred to non-flammable film stock, but he argued that the meagre income he had received from the institutional exchanges so far did not warrant the expense of ‘recall and replacement’. He polled the institutional exchanges about their interest in 16mm films at least twice, receiving lukewarm responses. A 16mm version of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (one-reel version, first released as part of Conquest programme no. 12 in September 1917, original two-reel version produced by Edison in 1914) was issued in 1929 ‘as an experiment’, and in 1930 he also released a 16mm version of Julius Caesar, offering this film as well as Paul Revere for outright sale. Neither seems to have had wide circulation. Kleine to George Eastman, Eastman-Kodak, 7 January 1925, GKP, Box 13, file ‘Eastman-Kodak; General, 1908–1925’ [about ‘recall and replacement’]; Kleine, circular/ questionnaire sent to institutional exchanges in California, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin, 31 August 1927, GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; Questionnaire, 1927’ [about the questionnaire]; Edward Mayer, University of California, Berkeley, to Kleine, 6 September 1927; Lelia Trolinger, University of Colorado, Boulder, to Kleine, 6 September 1927; F. F. Nalder, State College of Washington, Pullman, to Kleine, 9 September 1927; H. W. Norman, Indiana University, Bloomington, to Kleine, 13 September 1927; and W. H. Dudley, University of Wisconsin, Madison, to Kleine, 13 October 1927; all in GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; Questionnaire, 1927’ [replies to the questionnaire]; Kleine (by K. Nolan, secretary), circular letter, 28 August 1929, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Educational Films, 1916, 1920–1930’ [about the Paul Revere ‘experiment’]; and Kleine to W. W. Withinghill, Detroit Public Schools, 21 January 1930; and Kleine to Monongahela Township High School, 3 March 1930; both in GKP, Box 18, file ‘Educational Films, 1916, 1920–1930’ [about the outright sale of Paul Revere and Julius Caesar in 1930]. Russell F. Egner to W. H. Dudley, 3 September 1925, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University of Wisconsin’. Sources in the Kleine Papers indicate a spirit of cooperation rather than conflict between the institutional exchanges and commercial film distributors in most states, and make clear that George Kleine and American Cinema

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128. 129. 130. 131.

132.

133.

134. 135. 136. 137.

138. 139. 140. 141.

142.

143.

several of the institutional exchanges were supplied with entertainment films from theatrical exchanges after these films had completed their theatrical runs. See, for example, Ellsworth C. Dent, University of Kansas, Lawrence, to Kleine, 2 November 1923; R. F. Egner, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, to Kleine, 6 November 1923; W. T. Wilt, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, to Kleine, 9 November 1923; and J. M. Shepard, University of Oklahoma, Norman, to Kleine, undated [1923], all in GKP, Box 18, file ‘Educational Institutions, 1913–1930’. Kleine to Eastman, 7 January 1925. Kleine to Professor R. D. Williams, Pomona College, 25 March 1921, GKP, Box 39, file ‘Nontheatrical; General, 1911–Aug 1921’. Krows, ‘Motion Pictures – Not for Theatres’ (November 1938), p. 291. This discussion draws on Kari Karppinen and Hallvard Moe, ‘What We Talk about When We Talk about “The Market”: Conceptual Contestation in Contemporary Media Policy Research’, Journal of Information Policy vol. 4 (2014), pp. 327–41. The issues addressed here, including how the simultaneous empirical and metaphorical meanings of the term ‘the market’ figured into Kleine’s approach to non-theatrical cinema, are explored at greater length in Frykholm, ‘George Kleine and the Institutional Film Exchange’. Kleine to L. R. Abbott, 5 September 1924, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Seabury and Binder, 1924 and undated’. The Kleine Papers abound with similar complaints regarding missing reports, mishandling of prints and other offences that the institutional exchanges allegedly committed. See, for example, Kleine to William H. Dudley, 1 March 1924; and Kleine to the University of Wisconsin, 17 December 1924, both in Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Film Study Center Special Collections, George Kleine Collection, file ‘Wisconsin Documents 11/1920–12/1924’. Kleine to Eastman, 7 January 1925. Kupfer, ‘Cinema and the Service Ideal’. Ibid. This is borrowed from Roman Lobato, who in turn draws on Franco Morretti’s notion of the ‘slaughterhouse of literature’. Roman Lobato, Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film distribution (London: BFI Publishing, 2012), Chapter 2. George Kleine Motion Picture Films, Chicago, IL, ‘Conquest Films’ [promotional folder], copyright 1921 by George Kleine, GKP, Box 8, file ‘Conquest Films, 1917–1928 and undated’. Kleine, ‘Old and the New Way of Making Pictures’, 24 September 1922, p. 4. Kleine to Dudley, 27 June 1921. For some examples, see John Trumpbour, Selling Hollywood to the World: U.S. and European Struggles for Mastery of the Global Film Industry, 1920–1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 70–1. One account of regulation and reform in pre-Hollywood cinema is Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004). Grieveson argues that 1905–15 was the defining period when it comes to the regulation of cinema, as shaped through the interplay between state forces, reformers and the film industry. For a summary, see Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (New York: Scribner, 1990), Chapter 3. See also Nancy Rosenbloom, ‘Progressive Reform, Censorship, and the Motion Picture Industry, 1909–1917’, in Ronald Edsforth and Larry Bennett (eds), Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 41–59; and Myron Lounsbury, ‘“Flashes of Lightning”: The Moving Picture in the Progressive Era’, The Journal of Popular Culture vol. 3 no. 4 (Spring 1970), pp. 769–97. For a

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144. 145. 146. 147. 148.

149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166. 167. 168. 169. 170. 171. 172.

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history of the National Board of Review, see Charles Matthew Feldman, The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures, 1909-1922 (New York: Arno, 1977). On the cooperation between the film companies and the Board, see, for example, ‘National Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures’, MPW vol. 5 no. 16 (16 October 1909), pp. 524–5. Kleine to William A. Johnston, editor of MPN, 21 November 1922, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Johnston, William A. (Motion Picture News), 1921–1929’. Charles Henry Meltzer, ‘Movies Will Never Kill the Regular Drama, Says Kleine’, New York American, 14 June 1914, Dramatic Section, p. 7-C. Ibid. The Commission was partly the result of a campaign in the Chicago Tribune, in which the efficacy of the Police Censor Board was called into question. See Grieveson, Policing Cinema, p. 211. There was also an internal power struggle. Major M. L. C. Funkhauser, the Chicago censor, was fired on 30 July 1918, and was replaced by one of his most vocal detractors, Charles Frazier. Kleine, quoted in Raymond J. Haberski Jr, It’s Only a Movie! Films and Critics in American Culture (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001), p. 40. Ibid. Ibid. Kleine to Mr Caryl B. Storrs, 29 October 1914, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Better and Highbrow Film Movements, 1914–1923’. Kleine to Charles Edison, 4 February 1924, GKP, Box 16, file ‘Edison, Thomas A.; Luncheon, 1924’. Kleine to Mary F. Towne, 8 November 1922, GKP, Box 41, file ‘Nontheatrical; University of Kansas, 1921–1923’. Kleine to Sumner Williams, Edison, Inc., 11 August 1922, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1922–1924’. Kleine to Miss Carrie Maclay, State University of Montana, Missoula, 22 February 1922, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, 1920–June 1922’. Kleine, circular to institutional exchanges, 10 July 1922. Kleine to Maclay, 22 February 1922. Kleine to A. P. Hollis, North Dakota Agricultural College, Fargo, 1 August 1922, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, July 1922–1923 and undated’. Ibid. Ibid. Haberski Jr, It’s Only a Movie!, p. 18. Ibid., p. 21. Kleine to Storrs, 29 October 1914. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Janet Staiger, ‘The Politics of Film Canons’, Cinema Journal vol. 24 no. 3 (Spring 1985), pp. 4–8. Kleine to A. J. Lauch, 31 July 1917, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Lauch, Dr. A. J., 1913–1922’. Kleine to A. J. Lauch, 7 June 1921, GKP, Box 32, file ‘Lauch, Dr. A. J., 1913–1922’. Rob King, ‘“Made for the Masses with an Appeal to the Classes”: The Triangle Film Corporation and the Failure of Highbrow Film Culture’, Cinema Journal vol. 44 no. 2 (Winter 2005), p. 26. Kleine to Mae Tinee (Chicago Tribune), 16 January 1923, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Better and Highbrow Film Movements, 1914–1923’. George Kleine and American Cinema

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173. Kleine to the Editorial Department of the New York Times, 29 December 1922, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Educational Use of Films, 1919–1922’. 174. Wasson, Museum Movies, p. 65. 175. Ben Singer has pointed out that the people who gathered for ‘non-theater modes of film consumption’ could be considered ‘groups’ in a sociological sense, each with a specific and homogenous identity. Singer, ‘Early Home Cinema’, p. 63n3. 176. Kleine to Sumner Williams, 4 November 1921, GKP, Box 17, file ‘Edison (Thomas A.), Inc., 1921’. 177. Kleine to Peter Kyne, 21 February 1923, GKP, Box 31, file ‘Kyne, Peter B., 1922–1930’. 178. Vachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (New York: Macmillan, 1915). The two other wellknown examples are Münsterberg, Photoplay; and Victor Freeburg, The Art of Photoplay Making (New York: Macmillan, 1918). On the legacy of these books, see Jonathan Auerbach, ‘American Studies and Film, Blindness and Insight’, American Quarterly vol. 58 no. 1 (March 2006), pp. 31–50; and Dana Polan, Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), pp. 5–6, 8–10, 19–20 and Chapter 1. 179. Lindsay, Art of the Moving Picture, pp. 65–6, 262–3. 180. Haberski Jr, It’s Only a Movie!, p. 25. See also Charles Jameson, ‘The Endowed Photoplay’, Motion Picture Classic, May 1919, pp. 26, 77. 181. Jameson, ‘Endowed Photoplay’, p. 26. 182. Ibid. 183. Ibid. 184. Ibid., p. 77. 185. Ibid. 186. Ibid. 187. Ibid., p. 26. 188. Eric Hoyt notes that reissuing made perfect sense for inactive producers, since ‘each film negative was an asset in which the production costs were already fixed and the marginal costs of reissuing the film were low’. Conditions were completely different for active producers, who had to cover much larger fixed costs, and, in relevant cases, the cost of expansion towards vertical integration. Eric Hoyt, ‘Hollywood Vault: The Business of Film Libraries, 1915–1960’, PhD dissertation, University of Southern California (2012). 189. Decherney, Hollywood and the Culture Elite, p. 107. 190. Ibid., p. 113. 191. For a discussion of competing reception theories in this period, see John Nichols, ‘Countering Censorship: Edgar Dale and the Film Appreciation Movement’, Cinema Journal vol. 46 no. 1 (Fall 2006), pp. 3–22. 192. Ibid. 193. Ibid., p. 6. 194. Kleine to Hazel Williams, 21 March 1922, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, 1920–June 1922’. 195. See, for example, Kupfer, ‘Cinema and the Service Ideal’. 196. Dudley, ‘Organization for Visual Instruction’, p. 16. 197. W. H. Dudley to Kleine, 11 September 1922, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Dudley, W. H., and Reynolds, F. W., 1921–1923’. 198. Anthony Slide notes that with the exception of Siegmund Lubin, none of the members of the Motion Picture Patents Co. were Jewish, and he singles out the Vitagraph directors and George Kleine as being especially hostile to Jewish people. Anthony Slide, Early American Cinema,

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199. 200. 201.

202. 203. 204. 205. 206. 207. 208. 209. 210. 211. 212. 213. 214. 215. 216. 217. 218.

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rev. edn (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994 [1970]), p. 49. See also Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 126–7, 256n83. For some examples of anti-Semitic remarks made by Kleine in the post-MPPC period, see Kleine to Arthur F. Warde, 15 October 1920, GKP, Box 64, file ‘World Film Corp.; General, 1920–1925’; Kleine to J. J. Thompson, 15 November 1920, GKP, Box 4, file ‘Branches; Inter Office, New York and Chicago, July–Dec 1920’; Kleine to Ted Hardcastle, 29 April 1921, GKP, Box 25, file ‘Hardcastle, B. T. (Ted), 1920–1921’; Kleine to W. C. Crosby, 31 August 1922, GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Crosby, W. C. (N.C. State Dept. of Education and Carolina Film Corporation), 1921–1923’. Kleine to Edison, 7 June 1921. Kleine to George Blair, Eastman-Kodak Co., 25 September 1922, GKP, Box 13, file ‘Eastman Kodak Co., General, 1908–1928’. For Kleine’s comments regarding Levey and his company, see, for example, Kleine to W. H. Dudley, 22 August 1922, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, July 1922– 1923 and undated’; and the correspondence between Kleine and W. C. Crosby (at the Institutional Exchange in North Carolina) found in GKP, Box 40, file ‘Nontheatrical; Crosby, W. C. (N.C. State Dept. of Education and Carolina Film Corporation), 1921–1923’, in particular Crosby to Kleine, 26 August 1922, and Kleine to Crosby, 31 August 1922. Crosby to Kleine, 26 August 1922. Kleine to Dudley, 22 August 1922. Trumpbour, Selling Hollywood to the World, pp. 21–2, 75–7. See, for example, Adrienne L. McLean and David A. Cook (eds), Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001). Kleine to J. W. Shepherd, University of Oklahoma, 21 September 1922, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, July 1922–1923 and undated’. Kleine to W. C. Crosby, 9 February 1922, GKP, Box 42, file ‘Nontheatrical; University Propaganda, 1920–June 1922’. Trumpbour, Selling Hollywood to the World, p. 71. Quoted in ibid., p. 120. George Kleine Motion Picture Films, ‘Conquest Films’ [promotional folder]. See, for example, Sumiko Higashi, Cecil B. deMille and American Culture: The Silent Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Lisa Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 2. This draws on Jacobson’s more general discussion. See ibid., p. 12. Horne, ‘Nostalgia and Non-fiction’, pp. 315–31. Ibid., pp. 317–23 Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through 20th-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harry Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 12. Ibid., p. 304. The Americanisation of the motion picture market and culture in the United States is documented and analysed in Abel, Red Rooster Scare; and Richard Abel, Americanizing the Movies and ‘Movie-Mad’ Audiences, 1910–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Kristin Thompson has detailed the global expansion of American film companies from World War I on. Kristin Thompson, Exporting Entertainment: America in the World Film Market 1907–1934 (London: BFI Publishing, 1985). George Kleine and American Cinema

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219. On the ‘quality race’, see Gerben Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). On global distribution, see Thompson, Exporting Entertainment. 220. The designation of the classical Hollywood style as ‘excessively obvious’ is from David Bordwell, ‘An Excessively Obvious Cinema’, in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985), pp. 3–11. 221. Scott Robert Olson, Hollywood Planet: Global Media and the Competitive Advantage of Narrative Transparency (Mahwah, NJ, and London: Erlbaum, 1999). 222. Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd edn (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 580–1 and passim. 223. For a brief overview, see Dan Streible, Martina Roepke and Anke Mebold, ‘Introduction: Nontheatrical Film’, Film History vol. 19 no. 4 (2007), pp. 339–43. 224. Making a similar point, but with regard to the history of 16mm film, Greg Waller argues that a ‘fuller history’ needs to take into account the different roles played by various agents, including ‘commercial distributors, Hollywood studios, government agencies, non-profit film libraries, and foundations’. Gregory A. Waller, ‘Projecting the Promise of 16mm, 1935–45’, in Acland and Wasson (eds), Useful Cinema, pp. 144–5. 225. Ronald Walter Greene, ‘Pastoral Exhibition: The YMCA Motion Picture Bureau and the Transition to 16mm, 1928–39’, in Acland and Wasson (eds), Useful Cinema, pp. 205–29; Lee Grieveson, ‘The Work of Film in the Age of Fordist Mechanization’, Cinema Journal vol. 51 no. 3 (Spring 2012), pp. 25–51; Lee Grieveson, ‘Visualizing Industrial Citizenship’, in Orgeron et al. (eds), Learning with the Lights Off, pp. 107–23; Streible, Roepke and Mebold, ‘Introduction: Nontheatrical Film’, pp. 339–43; and Jennifer Zwarich, ‘The Bureaucratic Activist Federal Filmmakers and Social Change in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Tick Eradication Campaign’, The Moving Image vol. 9 no. 1 (Spring 2009), pp. 19–53. See also Slide, Before Video. 226. An achievement of studies in ‘useful cinema’, as suggested by Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson, is precisely that they capture the diversity of cinema. Acland and Wasson, ‘Utility and Cinema’, p. 13. 227. Kleine to Samuel Datlowe (Fifth Avenue Playhouse Group, NYC), 3 July 1929, GKP, Box 10, file ‘Datlowe, Samuel, 1929’.

CONCLUSION 1. Lee Grieveson, Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early Twentieth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 5, 34. 2. Ibid., pp. 35–6. See also Lee Grieveson, ‘Not Harmless Entertainment: State Censorship and Cinema in the Transitional Era’, in Leslie J. Moran et al. (eds), Law’s Moving Image (London: Cavendish, 2004), p. 159. 3. Kleine to Thomas A. Edison, 20 April 1921, GKP, Box 18, file ‘Educational Films, 1916, 1920–1930’. 4. Eric Hoyt, ‘Hollywood Vault: The Business of Film Libraries, 1915–1960’, PhD dissertation, University of Southern California (2012). On the lack of infrastructure to show old motion pictures before the 1930s, see Haidee Wasson, Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 3–4. See also the discussion in Chapter 5 about Kleine’s practices of reissuing, rebranding and repackaging. 5. Wasson, Museum Movies, p. 65. 6. This discussion draws on John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny, ‘Consumers as Risk Takers: Evidence from the Film Industry during the 1930s’, Business History vol. 52 no. 1 (February

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22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

2010), pp. 74–99. We should note that before the 1930s, admission prices were not as uniform as in the classical Hollywood era or after. Nevertheless, in periods of relative standardisation and stability, the consumer price of moviegoing was more or less uniform (for comparable films in comparable venues). This term is from Jonathan Beller, The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2006). Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd edn (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 46–52. For a representative example, see Burton Rascoe, ‘The Motion Pictures: An Industry, Not an Art’, The Bookman vol. 54 no. 3 (November 1921), pp. 193–9. See Wasson, Museum Movies; and Peter Decherney, Hollywood and the Culture Elite: How the Movies Became American (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Some later critics, however, maintained that it would serve critical purposes much better to discuss the pleasures people derive from motion pictures without relying on the ready-made categories of cultural respectability. See Pauline Kael, ‘Art, Trash, and the Movies’, in Going Steady (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970). Originally published in Harper’s Magazine, February 1969. Much later, in the VHS and DVD periods, the commercial motion picture industry even managed to establish a collection culture that was rooted, at least partly and for many, in a cinephilic ethos. Sometimes, cinephilia and technophilia interacted, as in the construction of masculinised, hightech, ‘home theatre’ environments. Barbara Klinger, Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), Chapter 2. André Bazin, ‘On the politique des auteurs’, in Jim Hillier (ed.), Cahiers du cinéma, Vol. 1: The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 248–59. See also Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era (New York: Pantheon, 1988). Gerben Bakker, Entertainment Industrialised: The Emergence of the International Film Industry, 1890–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 30. Kleine to John A. Haeseler, 21 February 1928, GKP, Box 25, file ‘Harvard University, 1928–1930’. Kleine to George A. Blair, 18 May 1925, GKP, Box 13, file ‘Eastman Kodak Co., General, 1908–1928’. See, for example, ‘George Kleine to Join Ritz Pictures’, The Morning Telegraph, 12 August 1923, section five, pp. 1, 3. ‘Pictures and People’, MPN vol. 28 no. 8 (25 August 1923), p. 878. Contract between United Theatre Equipment Corp. and Kleine Optical Co., 24 March 1917, GKP, Box 60, file ‘United Theatre Equipment Corp.; Contracts, 1916–1919’. About UTE’s financial troubles and the bankruptcy, see miscellaneous documents in GKP, Box 61, file ‘United Theatre Equipment Corp.; Stockholders, Directors, Minutes, Etc., 1922–1924’. Kleine to A. C. Roebuck, 7 January 1925, GKP, Box 51, file ‘Roebuck, A. C., 1925’. Joseph P. Day Industrial Department, Inc., prospectus [Kinereflex Paper Film Projector, 1924], copy in GKP, Box 43, file ‘Paper Film, 1922 and undated’; agreement between George Kleine and Proctor, 10 September 1924, GKP, Box 47, file ‘Proctor Automatic Projectors, 1919–1924’; and Kleine to L. R. Abbott, 5 September 1924, GKP, Box 52, file ‘Seabury and Binder, 1924 and undated’. Ted Hardcastle to Kleine, 5 February 1920, GKP, Box 53, file ‘Smith, Merle E., 1920’. Kleine to Sam Werner, 9 February 1920, GKP, Box 53, file ‘Smith, Merle E., 1920’. Amy Leslie, ‘Mrs. Kleine Passes Away’, Chicago daily News, 19 January 1924, p. 16. Kleine to William H. Tuohy, 24 June 1925, GKP, Box 56, file ‘Tuohy, William H., 1925’. Kleine to J. M. Kieran, 14 January 1929, GKP, Box 29, file ‘Kieran, J. M., 1928–1929’. Obituary for George Kleine, New York Times, 10 June 1931, p. 24.

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

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Index

Page numbers in bold indicate detailed analysis; those in italics denote illustrations; n = endnote. A Hole in the Ground (1917) 87 Abel, Richard 26, 28, 29, 37, 182n110 on French film theory 214n5 on ‘high-class’ vaudeville 180n76 Acland, Charles 131, 225n226 actors see stars admission, politics of 153 admission prices for feature films 50, 68 nickelodeons 29 standardisation of 165, 226n6 by venue type 52–3 Adorno, Theodor 182n102 Agricultural College of Mississippi 149 Allen, Robert C. 20–1 alternative film 4–5, 10, 15, 129, 155–6 see also educational film; non-theatrical film Altman, Rick 12, 178n37 Altschuler, Modest 66 Alvarez, Max 21, 24 Amad, Paula 141 American Mutoscope and Biograph Company see Biograph Company Amet Magniscope 18, 19

Index

Anderson, Robert 34, 39–40, 183n114, 186n186 anti-Semitism 2, 113, 157–8 Antony and Cleopatra (1913) 62–3, 102, 137 archival imaginary 141 art, film as 5, 8, 110, 130–1, 153 classics as 139, 142 Hollywood 166 regimes 73–4 The Art of the Moving Picture (Lindsay) 155–6 Association of Edison Licensees (AEL) 37 Astor Theatre (NY) 50, 58, 189n50 audiences cinema history and 6 class and 53, 138 dis/interest in motion pictures 20–1, 22–3, 81 for feature films 44, 54 film quality and 71, 73–4, 94, 163 live entertainment and 28 mass 30–2, 71–2, 93, 152–4, 156, 165 motion picture’s influence on 130–1 for non-theatrical films 150, 154, 160, 165–6, 223n175 pleasure of 32, 166, 226n11

audiences cont. preferences 89–90, 93, 125–6, 150, 156 urban and rural 152, 153 Auerbach, Jonathan 12 Bakker, Gerben 7–8, 28, 31, 68, 77 The Barker (1917) 91 Bazin, André 167 Beban, George 121 Behind the Lines in Italy (1918) 102 Beil, Kimberly E. 22–3 Ben-Hur (1907) 35, 194n3 Bergh, Douglas H. 75, 93, 168 Berst, Jacques 36–7, 75, 106 Bertellini, Giorgio 59 Better Films Movement 111 ‘bicycling’ 33, 182n110 Biograph Company 21, 22, 82 Kleine Co.’s purchases from 24–5, 26 licensing agreements 37–9, 41, 185n179 patent issues 35, 40 Blackton, J. Stuart 36–7 Blair, George A., Kleine’s letters to 157, 167–8 Bordwell, David 10–11, 12, 174n40, 225n220 Bowser, Eileen 51 Brady, William A. 111, 114–15

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branding identity and 94–5 K-E-S-E Service 88–9 Perfection Pictures 92–4, 95–6 Brinkman Theatre (MN) 67 Brown of Harvard (1918) 96 bubble economy 109, 121–2 Buckwalter, Harry 90 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East (1910) 51 Burch, Noël 12, 175n49 Burke, Miss Billie 123, 124, 198n68 in Gloria’s Romance 80, 81 Bush, W. Stephen 51–4, 55, 152 business history 6, 10, 16–17, 118 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) 153 California, Berkeley, University of 146 Callaghan, Andrew J. 127 Candler Theatre (NY) 63, 64 capital 108, 109, 117, 120, 122, 128 forms of 125 see also Wall Street Carroll, Noël 130 Carter, Mrs Leslie 77, 197n38 Catalogue of Educational Motion Picture Films (Kleine) 132–5 censorship 136, 151–2, 222n148 Chaplin, Charlie 79, 84, 95, 121 chaser theory 20–1, 23, 179n51 Chicago Motion Picture Commission 151, 222n148

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Chicago population 18 children’s programmes 87, 134 Christian Herald 158 cinema, conceptions of 12–13, 17, 68, 131 alternative and dominant 4–5, 163–4 cinema history 172n15, 175n54, 193n142 continuity in 10, 12, 17 feature craze in 56–7, 68 Kleine Optical Co.’s 23 Kleine’s attempt to write 167–8 Maltby’s notion of 6 transition and institutionalisation in 10–13 cinephilia and technophilia 226n12 Cines 59–60, 69 Kleine’s switch to 46–7, 187n17 war films 102 class 52–4, 152, 154 middle 138, 180n76 working 31 classics, film cultural and historical value of 141–2, 159, 166 exhibition of 140 Kosmik 216n57 term usage 137–9 see also ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’ classification of films 22–3 Cleveland Plain Dealer 1 Clipper 82 Cohan, George 50, 59, 75 Cohen, Harry J. 188n50 Coleman, John J. 52 Collier, John 134 Columbia University 155 comedies Broadway 75

comedies cont. Charles Hoyt 87, 201n122 demand for 135 Flagg 97 Max Linder 86–8 The Mishaps of Musty Suffer 78–9, 87–8 Perfection Pictures 93, 96 commercialism art and 110, 155 Kleine’s devotion to 145–6, 149, 161 commodities motion pictures as 7–8, 10, 28, 42, 160, 164 multi-reel feature films as 14, 44, 110 people as 166 The Commuters (1915) 75 competition in American cinema 21, 30, 38 foreign 37 Hollywood 109, 159–60 in motion picture business 115–16, 128 in multi-reel feature market 47, 73, 100 in non-theatrical film distribution 158 for patents 25 through innovation 21, 42, 107–8, 109 connectivity 28 Conquered Hearts (1918) 102 Conquest programmes 89, 91, 99, 218n96 institutional exchanges for 144, 150, 159 releases 87–8 conservatism Edison Co.’s 100 Kleine’s 14, 72, 109, 117–18, 121–2, 124–6 consumption 4–5, 9, 165–6, 223n175 non-rival 28, 42, 113 George Kleine and American Cinema

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copyright 36 The Cossack Whip (1916) 85, 85–6 The Country That God Forgot (1916) 84 Craft, P. Pliny 51 cultural materialism 6, 7, 171n5, 176n56 cultural practices alternative film 4–5, 15, 129, 156 motion pictures and 7–8, 13, 160 moviegoing as 17, 29, 31–2 culture American 158 collection 226n12 consumer 159 dehierarchisation of 73, 159 film 8, 13, 33, 54, 152–4, 160, 165 high 139, 153, 156–7, 159 mass 28, 31–3, 41–2, 113, 182n102 non-theatrical 149, 161, 166 popular 17, 31 reform 150–2 Cumberland Theatre (NY) 66 Curtis, Scott 34, 37, 185n178 Dale, Edgar 156 Dana, Viola 86, 98 Dante’s Inferno (1911) 47–8, 51 Davis, Harry 29 De Vany, Arthur 9–10, 198n71 DeBauche, Leslie Midkiff 111 Deliverance (1919) 106, 106–7, 150 differentiation 60, 68, 69, 164 brand identity and 94–5 standardisation and 72, 76, 83–4, 107

Index

distribution rights 57, 102, 145 for The Unbeliever 104–5 ‘Do Children Count?’ (1917) 87 Doro, Marie 100 Dougherty, Lee 52 Du Barry (1914) 77 Dudley, William H. 143–5, 157–8 ‘dupe’ (duplicate) films 24–5, 179n52 Dyer, Frank 37, 39, 50, 51, 56 economic history 4, 12, 17, 22, 32 institutional/industrial approach 7–8 Edison, Charles 104 Edison, Thomas, Kleine’s letters to 146, 157, 164 Edison Manufacturing Company Kleine Co.’s purchases from 18, 20–1, 25 licensing system 36–9, 41, 185n179 market control 16, 24–5, 33 patents 17, 22, 33, 35–6, 42 see also Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated educational film circulated at state universities 143, 143–4, 146, 159 the classics as 137–9, 141, 218n95 exhibition of 139–40 failure of 148, 220n124 Kleine’s catalogue of 132–6 libraries and rental exchanges 135–6, 142–4, 146–7

educational film cont. nature and science 91 promotion of 4, 14–15, 131–2, 134 revenues 147–8, 161 term usage 136–7 variety and volume 145 ‘wholesome’ films as 87–8 Educational Screen 132, 145, 149 ads 147–8 Efficiency Edgar’s Courtship (1917) 96 Egner, Russell F. 148 Elliott, Frederick H. 114 Elsaesser, Thomas 172n15 entrepreneurs 8–9, 30, 176n10 Essanay Film Manufacturing Company 18, 37, 40, 83 exit from motion picture business 105, 126 feature films 87, 201n117 name and identity 95–6 scenic films 91 see also Kleine-Edison-SeligEssanay (K-E-S-E) Service; Perfection Pictures The Essanay-Chaplin Revue of 1916 (1916) 84 European manufacturers 26, 27, 40, 51 ‘Evolution’ plan, Kleine’s 106–7, 118 exhibition and exhibitors artistic frame vs. vaudeville 66–7 feature film 44–5, 49–51, 54–6 First National 127–8 high quality 93–4 K-E-S-E pictures 87–9 motion picture 23, 28–9, 30–1 nickelodeon 55 overproduction and 112

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exhibition and exhibitors cont. programmes and models 65–8, 83 regulatory measures 151, 221n142 serial films 79–81 venues 52 experience goods 9, 42, 174n29 family films 87–8, 89 family-owned businesses 118 Feature Film Renters’ Association 182n110 feature films see multi-reel feature films feature programmes distribution 57, 83–4 multi-reel 53, 55 Federal Trade Commission (FTC) 127 fictional film-making 20 Film Service Association (FSA) 37, 38 filmed vs. staged drama 153 finance capitalism 118, 122, 163 see also capital The Fixer (1915) 76, 87, 201n118 Flagg, James Montgomery 97 Fools for Luck (1917) 96 foreign films ‘dupe’ 24–5, 26 importation 37, 39, 42, 162 Italian epics 73–4, 172n16, 195n14 US market for 26 The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) 213n100 Fox, William 27, 52 free speech 31 Frick, Caroline 142 From the Manger to the Cross (1912) 57

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Gaudreault, André 38, 175n52, 176n56, 178n37, 181n77 on second birth of cinema 11 Gaumont Company 37, 39, 46, 187n17 Gaycken, Oliver 132 General Film Company (GFC) 1, 34 footage-basis release system 56–7 formation 39–40, 42 Kleine’s resignation 82 preferred stock 46 release of Quo Vadis? 49 rental exchanges 46, 54, 105 genres 52 non-fiction 134, 214n10 George Kleine Attractions 62, 63, 75 stage plays 75 George Kleine Collection of Early Motion Pictures 6, 171n8, 172n16 ‘George Kleine Library of Classic and Modern Productions’ 140 George Kleine Papers 6, 46, 85, 105, 113, 171n8 catalogue of educational films 133–4 excerpts from Münsterberg 130 “Plan to Reorganize the Motion Picture Business of the United States” 39–40 record of operating costs 97 record of purchases 20 ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’ 88, 133, 140, 144 cultural and historical value of 141–2

‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’ cont. as a film library 140–1 promotional book 137–9 Gilmore, William E. 24–5, 36–7 Globe Theatre (NY) 81 Gloria’s Romance (1916) 79–81, 84, 88, 197n53 sheet music 80, 198n73 Goldman Rule 9, 90, 107 Goldwyn Pictures Corporation 127, 204n182 Gomery, Douglas 8 Gondolfi, Alfredo 74 Gramsci, Antonio 171n6 Grau, Robert 20, 132, 176n11, 188n36 Grazia, Victoria de 159 The Great Train Robbery (1903) 21, 23–4, 69 The Green Cloak (1915) 76 Grieveson, Lee 31, 163–4, 221n142 Guillory, John 139 Gunning, Tom 12, 38 Gunning, Wid 111 Haberski, Raymond, Jr 152, 155 Hampton, Benjamin 16, 69 Hansen, Miriam 31 hardware and software 22, 23, 42 Harris, Sam 50, 59, 63, 75 Harvard University 167 Hays, Will 152 hegemony 5, 164, 171n6 Helen Keller Film Corporation 106, 150 Hill, Victor D. 146 historical determinants 7, 171n5 historical fiction 141 historiography 10–13 George Kleine and American Cinema

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Hoff, James L. 114 Hollywood 34, 71, 129, 166–7 brand identity and 95 competition 109, 159–60 dominance 70, 108, 124, 127, 167–8 emergence of 4, 10 investors and capital 117, 123, 125 Kleine’s aversion to 15, 150, 157–8, 160–1 kurtocrats 212n93 mass culture and 31, 152, 156, 159–60, 165 portrayal of American culture 158, 160 production portfolios 101 studio system 71, 194n1, 225n220 Holmes, Taylor 96 The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921) 107 Horkheimer, Max 182n102 Horne, Jennifer 141 Horwitz, Rita 172n16 Hoyt, Eric 223n188 Hughes, Rupert 137 Independents 38 industrial revolution see second industrial revolution innovation 7, 22, 128, 167 competition through 21, 42, 107–8, 109 cost of product 117, 125 institutionalisation 17, 31, 68, 142, 182n107 process of 11–13, 162–3 rules 8–9 inventory 115 investments and investors 118–20 losses 122, 123 Wall Street 115–16, 117, 123–5

Index

Irwin, Walter W. 114–16 Italian film industry 74, 77 Ivan Film Productions 102 Jewish people 158, 223n198 see also anti-Semitism Johnson–Jeffries Fight (1910) 51 Johnston, William A. 116 Jones, Candace 8, 22, 176n10 Josephine (1912) 60 Julius Caesar (1914) 66, 136, 140–1, 150, 154 ads 138, 147 circulation 146–7, 220n125 profits 62–3 Kalem Company 35–6, 38, 183n130 Keil, Charlie 11 Kennedy, Jeremiah J. 39, 41 Kern, Jerome 80, 198n73 Kertscher, William F. 56 kinematography 52, 54, 55, 181n77 King, Rob 31, 73, 139, 153 Klaw & Erlanger 61 Kleine, Charles B. 16, 177n14 Kleine, George anti-Semitic views 2, 113, 157–8, 223n198 attack on the film industry 113–17, 121 birth and death 1, 169 European trip (1913–14) 74 at father’s optical store 1, 16 fortune 125 golden years 30, 42, 113 personal losses 168–9 photos 2, 169 self-censorship and selfregulation 151–2 speech on educational films 135

Kleine, Oscar B. 18, 177n14 Kleine-Edison Feature Service dissolution 81–2 formation 2, 75, 196n32 release schedule 76, 198n74 Kleine-Edison-Selig-Essanay (K-E-S-E) Service advertising 88–9 competition 107–8 dissolution 91, 92 distribution 83–4, 199n88 formation of 2, 72, 82 releases and profits 84–6, 85, 96, 116 successes and failures 89–90 variety and volume 86–8 see also Perfection Pictures Kleine Optical Company ad 24 branches 30 business organisation 118 founding 17–18, 20 licensee negotiations 38–9 procurement and release of Quo Vadis? 46–9, 58, 58–63 profits 50, 59 rental exchanges 46 rift with Edison Co. 24–5, 37 sale of company 168 sales catalogues 22–3, 26 Klenotic, Jeffrey 20 The Kleptomaniac (aka Stop Thief!) (1915) 75 Knights of the Square Table (1917) 159 Kolker, Henry 124 Kosmik Films, Incorporated 107 Koszarski, Richard 119 Krows, Arthur Edwin 132, 149 Kupfer, Alex 144

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kurtocracy 109, 128, 212n93 De Vany’s theory 9 movie economy as 10, 14, 68, 71–2, 98 Lasky, Jesse 53 The Last Days of Pompeii (1913) audience response 73 competing versions 62 marketing of 59, 60–1 profits 62–3 screenings 67, 192n122 Latham loop 37 Latour, Bruno 182n107 length of film 10, 23, 172n16, 189n58 categories for 49–50 evolution of 51–2 of Quo Vadis? 47 standardisation of 84 Levey, Harry 158 libraries, film 135–6, 140–1, 144, 146, 164 licenses Edison Co. 36–9, 41, 185n179 MPPC 45, 186n5 for Quo Vadis? 43, 47–9 Linder, Max 83, 86, 87–8 Lindsay, Vachel 155–6 Little Shoes (1917) 90 live entertainment 17, 28–9, 65 loans 115, 118–19, 121, 125 Long, Samuel 35, 38 Lubin, Siegmund 52, 223n198 McCarahan, Frank 61–2 McChesney, L. W. 87, 100, 103–5, 206n243 Kleine’s letters to 90, 96, 99 MacLane, Mary 102 McQuade, James 76, 89, 92, 93

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The Magic Skin (1915) 76 Maltby, Richard 6, 101, 160 Mandelbaum, Emanuel 54 The Man Who Was Afraid (1917) 89 Marion, Frank 35, 38 Marion, Philippe 11 markets concentration 9, 108, 128 Edison’s control of 16, 24–5, 33, 36 global 28, 117, 159–60, 224n218 live entertainment 28 mass 28–9, 73 motion picture 33, 112, 224n218 multi-reel feature film 47, 73, 84, 146 non-theatrical film 133, 135, 142, 145–6, 148–9, 161 Marsey, Harry 55 Marvin, Harry 39, 41, 47, 53 Marxism 13 mass communication 30–2, 161 mass entertainment access to 33 concept of cinema and 4–5, 12–13, 17, 131, 164, 166 cultural practices and 14, 28, 71, 160 demand 3, 7, 17, 32, 41 novelty and 42 phenomenon 30–2 mass production 14, 86, 108, 150 capital for 117 in motion picture business 71, 163 Mastbaum, Stanley and Jules 127 The Master Passion (1917) 90 medium, concept of 11, 141–2

Méliès, Gaston 26, 30, 36–7 Melnick, Ross 66–7, 103 Men Who Have Made Love to Me (1918) 102 micro-histories 6–7, 172n15 The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1914) 220n125 Miles Bros. 26, 36 Miller, Toby 10 Minneapolis Tribune 110 The Mishaps of Musty Suffer (1915–16) 78–9, 87–8 MoMA Film Library 166 The Money Master (1915) 76 Moore, Alex 37 Moore, H. F. 135 Moore, Paul S. 28–9, 31 Morgan, Jordan P. 56 motion picture equipment manufacturing and distributing of 18, 21–3 projectors 24, 65, 181n 80 motion picture industry business history 16–17 in Chicago 18 development of 7 economic value of 119–20 market supply/demand 24–5, 27–9, 33, 110–11 size of 119, 211n64 success and failure in 89–91, 99–100 transformation of 3–4, 212n97 Motion Picture News 113–14, 116, 118, 137 Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) demise 34, 77, 82 footage basis release system 46, 56–7 formation and purpose 1, 13, 33, 163 Kleine’s role 40–2, 162 licenses and licensing 43, 45, 47–9, 186n5 George Kleine and American Cinema

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MPPC cont. public image of 134 Trust 34, 38, 39 Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) 125–6, 151–2 Motography 34, 49, 55, 76 Perfection Pictures publicity 92–3 movie economy 95, 101, 109, 124 capital and 117, 120, 128 cost of innovation and 125 as a kurtocracy 9, 98 movie houses see nickelodeons; theatres moviegoing class and 52–3 cultural practice of 17, 29, 31–2 experience of 66, 68, 182n106, 193n144 reform discourse on 131 regulation of 33 silent era 67 ticket prices 165 see also audiences Moving Picture World 76, 137, 182n110 defence of film industry 114 ‘In the Educational Field’ column 136 K-E-S-E reports 88, 89, 91 Kleine’s letters to 116, 120, 122 on multi-reel films 51–2 Perfection Pictures publicity 92–4 multi-reel feature films circulation 58–64 distribution 2, 57, 69, 82–3 exhibition 54–6, 65–8 as a fad 57–8, 191n102 footage price 56–7

Index

multi-reel feature films cont. high-class patronage and 52–4 Kleine’s definition 78 MPPC and 34, 43, 49–50, 69 origins 51–2 profits 4, 14, 44, 60, 68–9 quality and 71 multimedia performance 67 Münsterberg, Hugo 130–1, 139 musical accompaniment 65–6 Musser, Charles 26, 31, 45, 172n16, 189n58 on competition in American cinema 21, 30, 38 on Edison-Kleine relations 18, 21, 24, 196n32 National Academy of Visual Instruction (NAVI) 144–5 National Association of the Motion Picture Industry (NAMPI) 111, 114, 117 National Board of Censorship (Review) 48, 134, 141, 151, 209n9 National Non-Theatrical Motion Pictures 158 National University Extension Association (NUEA) 144, 147 nature and art 130 negative costs of The Cossack Whip 86 definition 56 of Du Barry 77 Edison Co.’s 100, 104 of Gloria’s Romance 80 of programme features 100 of reissued films 223n188 of spectacle pictures 63 Nelson, Phillip 174n29

New York American 1, 151 New York Times 119, 154 nickelodeons 31, 135, 150–1, 162 boom 45–6, 113, 141 emergence 29–30, 42 exhibition 55, 66 live entertainment 44 non-fiction film 15, 134–5, 136, 214n10 see also educational film; non-theatrical film non-theatrical film audiences 150, 154, 160, 165–6, 223n175 commercial basis of 5, 142, 149–50, 154, 161 distribution 133, 141, 142–5, 152, 156, 217n81 exhibition 139–40 history 132 Kleine’s anti-Semitism and 157–8 profitability 145–6, 148, 161 split from theatrical film 4, 133, 135–6 term usage 131 see also educational film Officer 666 (1914) 75 Ohio University 146 Olsson, Jan 174n44, 179n51 optical goods see Kleine Optical Company otherness 17, 28, 31 overproduction see waste and overproduction Paramount 57, 83–4, 96, 100, 126–8 Parsons, Louella 1, 16 patents Biograph issues 35, 37, 40 competition 25 Edison Co.’s 18, 24, 33, 35–6, 42

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patents cont. for hardware 22 Latham film loop 37 see also Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) Pathé Frères 24, 36–8 Kleine Co.’s purchases from 26 US distribution 25, 29 Paul J. Rainey’s African Hunt (1912) 48 Pearson, Roberta 131, 138 Pelzer, William 36–7 Perfection Pictures company name 95–6 Edison and Essanay’s exit from 103–5 formation 2, 72, 92 profits and losses 97, 99 quality branding 92–5, 107 releases 96–7 superfeature strategy 97–9, 102–3 Perren, Alisa 194n1 Peterson, Jennifer 132, 133, 216n41 motion picture reform discourse 131, 182n111 on non-fiction genres 134, 136, 214n10 Photodrama Producing Company 74, 195n14 photoplays 136, 155–6, 188n36 The Photoplay (Münsterberg) 130–1, 139 Pickford, Mary 95, 100, 121, 154 Pike, Benjamin, Jr 16 Plimpton, Horace G. 51, 68 Pokorny, Michael 9, 128–9 portfolio strategies 101 Powers, Pat 114–16 primitive cinema 12, 175n49 The Prisoner of Zenda (1912) 47

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private enterprise 118, 122 prizefight pictures 51, 189n58 product diversity 71, 73, 78, 101, 125 of K-E-S-E Service 86, 88 profits big feature film 97–101, 108, 109 educational film 134 exaggerated 110, 115, 119 exhibitor 55 of feature companies 110–11 footage price and 56–7 K-E-S-E Service 84–6, 88 Kleine’s distribution service 77–81 The Last Days of Pompeii 62–3 losses and 120, 122, 123 multi-reel feature film 4, 14, 44, 60, 68–9 Quo Vadis? 59 programme cinema 43, 45–6, 50, 60, 69 ‘Progress in Optical Projection in the Last Fifty Years’ (Kleine) 16 Protestant ethics 159, 161 publicity 54, 60, 121 artistic 66 K-E-S-E Service 83, 88–9 Perfection Pictures 92–4 see also branding ‘punch,’ cinematic 72, 98–100, 109 in The Cossack Whip 85–6 quality race 43–4, 68, 73, 160, 163 Essanay and 91 Kleine and 77 and quantity race 110 quality vs. quantity 76, 83, 88–9, 107, 110

Quinn, Michael 34, 54–5, 57, 187n10 Quirk, James 116–17 Quo Vadis? (1913) 73, 152, 188n36 ads 58, 62 historical impact of 51 Kleine Co.’s procurement of 1–2, 46–7 licensing and release 43, 47–9, 137 marketing and circulation 58–63, 68, 189n50 musical cues 66, 67 production costs and distribution 50–1 Randolph Film Corporation 79–80 recklessness 109, 117, 120, 125, 127 Reel Life 53, 57 reform discourse, motion picture 131, 136, 182n111, 214n10 Regent Theatre (NY) 66 reissued films 87, 97, 136, 160, 164–5, 223n188 see also ‘George Kleine’s Cycle of Film Classics’ rental exchanges 29, 33, 44, 163 General Film’s 46, 54, 105 independent 106–7 institutional 133, 144, 146–50, 220n125, 220n127 Kleine’s 1, 40, 46, 75, 126 prices 54 representative regime 73 Republic Theatre (CA) 67 Ritz-Carlton Pictures Corporation 168 Rivoli Theatre (NY) 103 roadshowing 50–1, 192n133 companies 61–2 George Kleine and American Cinema

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roadshowing cont. of The Last Days of Pompeii 60–1, 192n122 of Quo Vadis? 58–9 revival 126, 213n100 Robinson, David 63 Rock, William T. 36–8 Rosenbluh, Louis 27 Ross, Steven 32 Rothafel, Samuel L. ‘Roxy’ 66–7, 103 Sargent, Epes Winthrop 52 Saturday Evening Post 92, 94 scarcity 93 scenic films 91 Schatz, Thomas 194n1 The Screen Fan (1918) 97 Scull, George F. 47–9, 69 Seabury, William Marston 128 second industrial revolution 7, 12, 32, 163 Sedgwick, John 9, 128–9 Selig, William 53 Selig Polyscope Company 35, 36–7 financial troubles 96–7 see also Kleine-Edison-SeligEssanay (K-E-S-E) Service serial films 79–81, 107, 197n53 Shakespeare films 138–9, 154 Sheldon, James 79, 81 Sherry, William L. 54 short-film variety programmes 44, 52–3, 55 Show World 26, 27 Sienkiewicz, Henryk 46 Simonet, Thomas 220n124 Singer, Ben 55, 58, 191n102, 215n33, 223n175 Skinner’s Dress Suit (1917) 86, 89 Slide, Anthony 132, 223n198 slides 22 Smith, Jacob 194n1

Index

Smith, Merle E. 75, 76, 168 Spartacus (1913) 62–3, 137 special effects 65–6 spectacle films formal organisation of 73 Italian 47, 51, 60 profits 62–3 The Spendthrift (1915) split reels 135 Spoor, George K. 18, 83, 91, 127 Perfection Pictures and 93, 96 Staiger, Janet 10–11, 153, 183n115, 225n220 Stamp, Shelley 11 standardisation and differentiation 72, 76, 107 exhibition 29 multi-reel features 83–4 narrative film-making 163 non-theatrical film distribution 144–5 programme cinema 13, 44–5 vaudeville 28 stars box-office success and 99–100 kurtocracy and 212n93 power of 81, 90, 91 salaries 95, 120, 121–2, 123–4, 212n79 Stevani, Mario A. 74, 195n14 stocks 118, 119 Storrs, Caryl B. 110 story film 22–3, 24–5 The Story of the Films (Harvard University) 167 Streible, Dan 189n58 Stroheim, Erich von 103 Sunday Morning Telegraph 114

superfeatures definition 84 exhibitors 87 Perfection Pictures strategy 97–9, 102–3 prices 89 Syndicate Superfeatures 106 technology and content periods 22, 23 teleology 12 The Tell Tale Step (1917) 89 theatres dramatic 48–9, 50 The Last Days of Pompeii screenings 61–2 monopolies 127–8, 213n101 music and sound effects 65–6 prestige 78–9 profitable 126–7 programme structure 60, 65–8 Quo Vadis? screenings 50, 58–9 screening rates 112–13, 116 seating capacity 55–6 supply of pictures 72, 112 temporary closures 117 types 51–3, 64–5 see also nickelodeons Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated box-office productions and 99–102 Bronx studio 204n277 exit from motion picture business 103–5, 126 name and identity 95–6 see also Edison Manufacturing Company; Kleine-Edison Feature Service; Kleine-EdisonSelig-Essanay (K-E-S-E) Service; Perfection Pictures

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Thompson, Kristin 10–11, 12, 224n218 Three Things (Shipman) 102 Times-Picayune 94 ‘tramp trend’ 78 transitional cinema 10–11, 174n44 travelogues 97, 214n10 Tribune Company 79–80 Trumpbour, John 158 The Unbeliever (1918) 102–5, 103, 206n243 uncertainty audiences and 73, 89–90 in motion picture business 43, 69, 72, 128–9 risk and 86, 100–1 ‘wild’ 9, 90–1, 107, 117 The Unchastened Woman (1918) 102 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1910) 51 Uneasy Money (1918) 96 United Artists (UA) 127 United Film Service Protective Association (UFSPA) 37, 184n150 United Theatre Equipment Corporation (UTE) 168 Urban, Charles 132 Urban-Eclipse 39, 45, 46 Uricchio, Willliam 131, 138 US-European film production 74, 77 US government 111, 112, 117, 145 US Marine Corps 102–3

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Usai, Paolo Cherchi 74 ‘useful cinema’ 131, 225n226 Utah, University of 146, 148 Vanity Fair (1915) 76, 137, 196n32 Variety 82, 86, 89, 114 vaudeville 28–9, 52, 180n76 feature films and 66–7 vertical integration model 126 visual instruction, university departments of 143, 143–4, 146, 149, 157 Vitagraph 26, 36, 138, 214n10 Vitagraph-Lublin-SeligEssanay (V-L-S-E) 82 Wall Street investment in film industry 115–16, 117, 123–4, 125, 163 Kleine’s dislike of 109, 118, 121, 128 Waller, Greg 225n224 Walls, David 198n71 war films 102–5 War Industries Board 113–14, 116–17 Warner Bros. 127 Wasko, Janet 8, 125 Wasson, Haidee 131, 141, 154, 225n226

waste and overproduction causes of 112–13, 164 conservative business ideology and 14, 109, 124, 125–7 Kleine’s campaign against 110–12, 115–16 unprofitability and 120, 122, 123 Watson, Harry, Jr 78–9, 87 Weber, Max 73 Who’s Who in Society (1915) 75 Wid’s Daily 105, 111, 117 Williams, Raymond 6, 171nn5–6 Williams, Sumner 155 Wilson, Carl 100, 104–5 winner-takes-all economy 43, 68, 71, 109–10, 129, 163 meaning 3, 9 Wisconsin, University of 143–4, 146, 149 Wisconsin Idea 144 The Woman Next Door (1915) 76 Woods, Frank E. 51–2, 152 World War I 74, 93, 111 conservation of materials 112, 114 The World Series Baseball Film (1917) 84 Wyke, Maria 218n95 Zukor, Adolph 84, 124

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