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Incorporating the Star: The Intersection of Business and Aesthetic Strategies in Early American Film

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Catherine E. Kerr
Catherine E. Kerr
Affiliation:
Catherine E. Kerr is a doctoral candidate in history and a Mellon Fellow at the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University
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Abstract

Scholars generally have studied the emergence of American film stars in one of two ways: as an aesthetic, cultural phenomenon or as part of the larger story of corporate consolidation in the film industry. This article combines these approaches, arguing that the early film star played two overlapping roles. Within the new long feature films, stars served as focal points for continuity across complex narratives; within the new vertically integrated film corporations, they became focal points for the coordination of production, distribution, and promotion. The article concludes by suggesting that the interconnections between aesthetic practice and industrial organization bear further examination.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 64 , Issue 3: Service Industries , Autumn 1990 , pp. 383 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1990

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References

1 Halsey, Stuart & Co., “The Motion Picture Industry as a Basis for Bond Financing, May 27, 1927” in The American Film Industry, ed. Balio, Tino (1976; rev. ed., Madison, Wis., 1985), 204Google Scholar.

2 Tino Balio, “Stars in Business: The Founding of United Artists,” in Balio, American Film Industry, 156–57.

3 Sklar, Robert, Movie-Made America: A Social History of American Movies (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, and May, Lary, Screening Out the Past (Chicago, III., 1980)Google Scholar.

4 Sklar, Marie-Made America, 17, 30; May, Screening Out the Past, 39.

5 Jacobs, Lewis, The Rise of American Film (New York, 1939)Google Scholar is the best example of this earlier approach to film history. Sklar's work follows in this tradition, and May borrows Sklar's historical framework on the way toward his own conclusions. See also May, Screening Out the Past, 39, on the “dream-like” power of the medium, and Sklar, Movie-Made America, 21, on the “elemental function of movies.”

6 For an excellent comparative discussion of early film historiography, see Allen, Robert and Gomery, Douglas, Film History (New York, 1985)Google Scholar. Allen's research into early film audiences can be found in Film Before Griffith, ed. Fell, John (Berkeley, Calif, 1983)Google Scholar; see especially, “Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906–1912: Beyond the Nickelodeon,” 162–76. Film Before Griffith provides a good overview of the new cinema studies and its different disciplinary and research interests. See also Miriam Hansen's thoughtful discussions of the naturalizing tendency in many accounts of early film in “Early Silent Cinema: Whose Public Sphere?” New German Critique 29 (Winter 1983): 147–83Google Scholar.

7 Both of the important trade papers, Moving Picture World and the New Tork Dramatic Mirror, carry frequent letters from rural exhibitors starting in 1907. Robert Allen notes that “accounts of early motion picture exhibition contained in the secondary sources are grossly inadequate.” He continues, “In Manhattan movie-going between 1906 and 1912 was by no means an exclusive activity of the poor or the immigrant. Our one-dimensional image of early exhibition taking place in the dingy, converted cigar stores does not hold in Manhattan.” Allen, “Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906–1912,” 174.

8 The new cinema studies have produced an important if somewhat fragmentary set of research on the early industry. The most prominent new work is Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, and Thompson, Kristin, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, a thorough topical description of the Hollywood system, invaluable both as a source guide and for its thematic insights, although its format makes it difficult for the historian to use. I am most indebted to the work of Janet Staiger, who has examined both the early film aesthetic, in “The Eyes Are Really the Focus: Photoplay Acting and Film Form and Style,” Wide Angle 6 (1984): 14–23Google Scholar, and industrial organization, in “Combination and Litigation: Structures of U.S. Film Distribution, 1896–1917,” Cinema Journal 23 (Winter 1983): 41–73Google Scholar. My approach will differ from hers, however, in my use of the work of Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., particularly The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977)Google Scholar in my analysis of the shifts in organization and strategy involving vertical integration, professional managerial infrastructures, and heterogeneous output within increasingly oligopolistic markets. For cartel theories and oligopolistic behavior, see Scherer, F. M., Industrial Market Structure and Economic Performance (Boston, Mass., 1980)Google Scholar.

9 Allen, Robert, Vaudeville and Film, 1895–1915: A Study in Media Interaction (New York, 1980), 151Google Scholar.

10 For the early film industry, the Justice Department's antitrust petition against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) (U.S. vs. MPPC and others, In the Eastern District Court of the U.S. for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, reprinted in Film History 1 [1987]: 187–304Google Scholar) contains important descriptions of industry practice from 1908 to 1912. Cassaday, Ralph Jr., “Monopoly in Motion Picture Production and Distribution: 1908–1915,” Southern California Law Review 32 (Summer 1959): 325–90Google Scholar, reprinted in The American Marie Industry, ed. Kindem, Gorham (Carbondale, III., 1982), 25–75Google Scholar, remains invaluable for his interpretative summary of the patent and antitrust filings. Jeanne Thomas Allen criticizes Cassaday's methodology and interpretation from a Marxist perspective in her “afterword” following Cassady in The American Movie Industry. Robert Anderson also provides an interesting reinterpretation of the MPPC in “The Motion Picture Patents Company: A Reevaluation,” in Balio, American Film Industry, 133–52. Of all the revisionists, only Janet Staiger in “Combination and Litigation” provides a slightly varying chronology of the trust and its collapse.

11 Richard de Cordova briefly sketches this intermediate stage of development between anonymous players and full-blown stars in “The Emergence of the Star System in America,” Wide Angle 6 (1984): 4–13Google Scholar.

12 Although I do not examine film theory within this article, I do draw on several film theorists for my analysis, including Cavell, Stanley, The World Viewed, enlarged ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1979)Google Scholar, and Bazin, Andre, What Is Cinema (Berkeley, Calif., 1967Google Scholar) in my discussions of Griffith's innovations and of larger questions surrounding filmic realism. Most intriguing is the work of Hugo Munsterberg, a protégé of William James, whose major treatise along these lines, The Film: A Psychological Study; the Silent Photoplay in 1916 (1916; New York, 1970Google Scholar) is contemporaneous with the rise of the star.

13 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 345–76. The impetus, crucial to my paper, for relating business and aesthetic drives in film arises from my reading of Michaels's, Walter BennThe Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism (Berkeley, Calif., 1988Google Scholar) and its stimulating comparisons across the discourses of American literary naturalism and late nineteenth century economic and social theory.

14 Allen, “Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906–1912,” 163.

15 New York Dramatic Mirror, 22 May 1909, 17; Moving Picture World, 21 March 1908, 232.

16 Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema, 115.

17 Moving Picture World, 8 Feb. 1908, 93; Moving Picture World, 18 Jan. 1908, 36.

18 U.S. vs. MPPC, 199–207, contains the terms of the patent agreement. The details of their operation are fully described in Cassaday, “Monopoly,” 26–38. See Jenkins, Reese, Images and Enterprise (Baltimore, Md., 1975)Google Scholar, for a description of the MPPC's interaction with Kodak.

19 Cassady, “Monopoly,” 31.

20 Moving Picture World, 15 Jan. 1910, 55.

21 Cassaday, “Monopoly, “ 37; Chandler, The Visible Hand, 315.

22 Cassaday, “Monopoly,” 27. MPPC enforcers and attorneys went to extremes to protect their patent right. When Thomas Bates filmed his baby son, “a prodigy of strength,” for exhibition with lectures on child training, the MPPC consented to its display only on the condition that Bates “hand over the negative, exhibit solely on licensed machines and bow to other onerous conditions” (U.S. vs. MPPC, 266). This unbending attitude cost the MPPC sympathy and support in later antitrust matches against the Justice Department.

23 “The Great Selig Plant,” New York Dramatic Mirmr, 1 May 1909, 36.

24 Ibid.

23 Schickel, Richard, D. W. Griffith: An American Life (New York, 1984), 111Google Scholar. I highlight Griffith's contributions despite the fact that there is some dispute about the overall importance of his innovations; see Fell, John, The Film and the Narrative Tradition (Norman, Okla., 1974)Google Scholar. Some of the claims made on behalf of his originality have been overstated (his own autobiographical title, The Man Who Invented Hollywood, seems especially hyperbolic in that regard), but there is no question that during his years at Biograph (1908–13), a stylistic revolution was accomplished of which he was in the vanguard. His well-documented work contained in the Library of Congress's paper print collection remains the best source. See Niver, Kemp, Motion Pictures from the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection: 1894–1912 (Berkeley, Calif., 1967)Google Scholar and Bergsten, Bebe, D. W. Griffith: His Biograph Films in Perspective, ed. Niver, Kemp (Los Angeles, Calif., 1974)Google Scholar; see also, Niver, , ed., Biograph Bulletins, 1896–1908 (Los Angeles, Calif., 1971)Google Scholar, and Bowser, Eilleen, ed. Biograph Bulletins, 1908–1912 (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.

Useful secondary sources include Schickel's thorough and thoughtful biography, and the Quarterly Review of Film Studies 6:1 (Winter 1981Google Scholar) issue devoted to Griffith, especially Tom Gunning, “Weaving a Narrative: Style and Economic Background in Griffith's Biograph Films,” 11-25. See also Peter Gutman, “D. W. Griffith: The Rise of Film Art,” Classic Images, March 1982, 12–14.

26 Gutman, “D. W. Griffith,” 12, 14. Parallel editing is the cutting back and forth between simultaneously occurring, spatially separate sequences.

27 New Tork Dramatic Mirror, 7 May 1910, 18.

28 Ibid., 14 May 1910, 18. Realism was a key term in critical debates of this period as it had been through late nineteenth century treatments of theater, painting, and literature. See Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson, Classical Hollywood Cinema, for a discussion of realist theater, and Fried, Michael, Realism, Writing and Disfiguration (Chicago, III., 1987)Google Scholar for a provocative reading of the rhetorical bases of late nineteenth century American realist texts.

29 New York Dramatic Mirror, 7 May 1910, 18.

30 Ibid., 9 April 1910, 17.

31 Cassaday, “Monopoly,” 50. Opposition to the cartel culminated with the Justice Department's filing in April 1912 of an antitrust suit following the successful limitation of exclusive licensing rights in the A. B. Dick Case of 1910 (U.S. v. MPPC, 191).

32 Moving Picture World, 2 April 1910, 505.

33 See, for example, the coverage of the Kalem Company's stock company photo release in “Photographs of Moving Picture Actors: A New Method of Lobby Advertisement,” Moving Picture World, 15 Jan., 1910, 50.

34 New York Dramatic Mirror, 28 May 1910, 20; 14 May 1910, 18.

35 Ibid, 7 May 1910, 18.

36 Ibid., 16 July 1910, 18.

37 Moving Picture World, 19 Feb. 1910, 262. See Bowser, Biograph Bulletins, 1908–1912, for the Marion Leonard credit in Through the Breakers.

38 Moving Picture World, 26 March 1910, 464; 22 Jan. 1910, 90. For a description of the conduct of the independents under the threat of MPPC prosecution, see the memoir of Balshofer, Fred and Miller, Arthur, One Reel and a Crank (Berkeley, Calif., 1967)Google Scholar.

39 Staiger, “Combination and Litigation,” 49; Moving Picture World, 4 June 1910, 928.

40 Staiger, “Combination and Litigation,” 49.

41 Cassaday, “Monopoly,” 47.

42 See, for example, Jeanne Thomas Allen, “Afterword,” 68–75; Anderson, “The Motion Picture Patents Company,” 145.

43 Although Staiger notes that trust coordination was further hampered by the different lines of authority and ownership control of the MPPC and the GFC, she does not put this in a managerial context. I would argue that the eventual failure of the GFC-MPPC combine was due in large part to the failure to set up an integrated management hierarchy with control over both production and distribution.

44 Moving Picture World, 7 July 1914, 177.

45 Staiger, “Combination and Litigation,” 55.

46 Moving Pictun World, 7 July 1914, 178.

47 Louis Reeves Harrison, “Eyes and Lips,” Moving Picture World, 18 Feb. 1911, 633.

48 Moving Picture World, 6 Aug. 1910, 286.

49 Cassaday, “Monopoly,” 56.

50 Staiger, “Combination and Litigation,” 56. Zukor's move outside the existing distribution network in search of better service and more control over the wholesale sector is analogous to the manner in which the McCormick and Singer companies integrated production and distribution during the late nineteenth century. See Chandler, The Visible Hand, 302–7.

51 Adolph Zukor, “Famous Players in Famous Plays,” Moving Picture World, special number, July 1914, 186.

52 Balio, summary, American Film Industry, 17.

53 Zukor, “Famous Players in Famous Plays,” 186.

54 Balio, summary, American Film Industry, 121.

55 In Matter of Famous Players et al., II FTC, 187–212, (1927) findings in response to a 1921 complaint detail Zukor's moves toward control over distribution and first-run movie theaters. Zukor's corporate maneuvers would later become the opening chapter of an epicantitrust investigation into the collusive practices of the film industry culminating in the Paramount Decrees of 1948. See also Conant, Michael, Antitrust in the Motion Picture Industry (Berkeley, Calif., 1960)Google Scholar.

56 William Selig, “Present Day Trends in Film Length,” Moving Picture World, special number, July 1914, 185.

57 Biograph folded soon after Griffith switched to Mutual in 1913 after the company turned down his request to make features.

58 Chandler, The Visible Hand, 390; Staiger, “Combination and Litigation,” 64. In 1925 Vitagraph was sold to Warner Brothers.

59 Motography, 6 July 1918, 8.

60 Balio, “Stars in Business: the Founding of United Artists,” 159–60.

61 Halsey, Stuart & Company, “Bond Financing,” 205.

62 One writer of popular behavioral manuals in 1900 described the face as “the key to all expression of the self.” Nathaniel Shaler, The Individual, cited in Susman, Warren, Culture as History (New York, 1984), 282Google Scholar.