Silents are Golden: A History of the Iconic Vitagraph Studios

Silents are Golden: A History of the Iconic Vitagraph Studios

If you have even a passing interest in silent film, you’re no doubt familiar with the Keystone Film Company and Biograph–to say nothing of the Georges Méliès and Edison studios. But how well do you know Vitagraph Studios?

Very prolific in its day and older than Hollywood itself, Vitagraph was not only one of the earliest film studios but it created one of the very first movie stars – and it’s usually credited with creating the very first animal star, too. It was also well respected by its contemporaries. In honor of the studio’s 21st anniversary in 1918, the film magazine Motography wrote: “The history of Vitagraph is largely the history of the motion picture industry, for the organization has never lost its place in the front rank of producers.”

It certainly had humble beginnings. Founder James Stuart Blackton, whose family emigrated from England when he was ten years old, became a reporter and illustrator in New York City. He also performed in a versatile vaudeville act with Albert E. Smith, which used magic tricks, ventriloquism, lightning sketches, magic lanterns, and more. In 1896 Blackton had the good fortune of being assigned to interview Thomas Edison about his filmmaking process. While touring the famed revolving Black Maria studio Blackton was offered a chance to be filmed doing a lightning sketch of Edison. Fascinated by the whole experience, Blackton would purchase the finished film, several other films, and a Vitascope (or projector). These turned out to be a great addition to the vaudeville act, and it wasn’t long before Blackton and Smith reasoned: why not create their own films? And thus Vitagraph was born – and in direct competition to the studio that created the Vitascope, we might add.

Blackton and Smith’s initial studio couldn’t have been simpler. They haggled their way into renting an office for cheap in a building at 140 Nassau Street. Its location on the 13th floor was in easy proximity to the roof, where they built a small set. Since this predated the invention of decent studio lighting, access to lots of natural light was a must. Smith claimed that their first film was The Burglar on the Roof (1897 or 1898) – clearly inspired by their surroundings – showing a burglar stealing items through the skylight before getting beaten by women brandishing brooms. Their budget was a grand total of $3.50, and supposedly the plot twist was inspired by the janitor’s wife stumbling onto the set and mistaking the acting for the real deal.

Vitagraph started churning out a number of very short dramatic films and light comedies and also wasted no time making newsreels, famously capturing the Spanish American war in 1898 (although some films were “assisted” by staging naval battles in a bathtub at the studio). One film with the self-explanatory name Tearing Down the Spanish Flag (1898) was released almost the second the war began, causing quite a hubbub. Vitagraph would also have a sense of security after a film distribution deal was worked out with the famously lawsuit-happy Edison company. This would help keep the studio relatively safe from accusations of patent infringement–a real headache during cinema’s early years.

In 1906 Vitagraph had enough success and resources to build a proper studio in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn (they had previously moved to a better location on Nassau Street but had outgrown it). Located at East 14th Street and Locust Avenue, it had a large glass-roofed studio, offices, shops and storage buildings, and of course the all-important editing room. 1906 was also the year that actress Florence Turner signed with Vitagraph. At the time, actors in motion pictures were uncredited, but audiences became familiar with certain faces and demanded to see more of them. In Turner’s case, audiences called her the “Vitagraph Girl” and wanted to know who she was. She’s considered one of the earliest movie stars, just barely predating Florence Lawrence (who joined Vitagraph right around the same time).

As both the technology and art of motion pictures rapidly advanced, Vitagraph would gain hundreds of employees – around 1200 by 1915 – and more film stars. Leading man Maurice Costello is considered the first matinee idol, often acting in adaptations of famous books such as A Tale of Two Cities (1911). He also caused some consternation at the studio when he declared his intention to work only as an actor, and not to help clean, build sets or work in the wardrobe department (in those casual early days, actors doing double duties was commonplace). Jean the Vitagraph dog, a well-trained Scotch collie owned by writer Laurence Trimble, is considered cinema’s first animal star.

Heavyset comedian John Bunny would join the studio in 1910 and become one of the most familiar faces in American film, especially once he was paired with rail-thin comedienne Flora Finch. The pair was very popular, and theaters would frequently request “more Bunnyfinches” from Vitagraph. Their most well-known comedy today is probably A Cure for Pokeritis (1912), where the fed-up wife Flora decides to deal with her husband’s poker addiction by staging a fake police raid. Sadly, Bunny’s reign in films was short and he died of Bright’s disease in 1915. Finch would continue on in comedies, although the “Bunnyfinches” were certainly the high points of her career.          

Vitagraph would enjoy a solid reputation until its business took a hit during World War I, despite its feature The Battle Cry of Peace (1915) being considered one of the war era’s greatest propaganda films. Other large studios were gaining ground and foreign distributors were starting to fall away. Following the war, slapstick comedian Larry Semon became Vitagraph’s biggest star, but as the stunts and gags in his comedies became more and more elaborate – and expensive – the alarmed studio had him become his own producer.

In 1925, after nearly 30 years in the business, a diminished Vitagraph was bought out by Warner Brothers. Redubbed “Vitaphone,” it would specialize in a flurry of early sound shorts. Throughout the following decades the Vitagraph name would be variously revived before being retired for good in the 1960s. And while the once-prolific Midwood studio complex was demolished in 2015, a tall brick smokestack bearing the name “VITAGRAPH” still remains, a reminder of those long-ago days of ten-minute dramas and Bunnyfinches.

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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.