Category Archives: way back

Latham Relics — above — Michael Leonard, who posed for the first screen fight made for Latham‘s special edition of Edison’s Kinetoscope — below — one of Latham’s Panoptikon’s first projectors — bottom — Latham Eidoloscope film of 1895, extract size.

Carmencita, First “Vamp” of the motion picture, a music hall favorite of the Naughty-Nineties, in the most daring pose that the press agent for Koster & Bial’s could imagine then.

“Mabel Normand, with John Bunny, at left, and Jimmy Morrison, in one of her first screen appearances, “Trouble and Secretary” at Vitagraph — after that came Biograph, Keystone, Sennett and fame.”

“Arthur Johnson, who went from the stage to play in Griffith‘s first picture at Biograph, and became the first screen player with the fame and following of a matinee idol.”

“Mary Pickford‘s first real part, playing opposite David Miles, in ‘The Violin Maker of Cremona,’ a one-reel drama released by Biograph July 7, 1909.”

“‘The Lonely Villa,’ a Griffith one-reel melodrama produced at Biograph in 1909, with Marion Leonard, at the telephone, and Mary Pickford at her right.”

“Mary Pickford, pictured in 1916 when the fate of half a dozen motion picture corporations hung in the balance as the producers battled to get her name on a contract.”

“Maurice Costello, among the earliest of real stars of the screen, who set a precedent for actors at Vitagraph by being the first player to refuse to help the stage carpenters.”

“When Theodore Roosevelt forgot his promise to take a Selig camera on his African hunt, Colonel Selig nature-faked a screen version in his Chicago studio”

“‘The Raven,’ a production of Biograph‘s ‘golden age,’ with Herbert Yost in the leading — He concealed his identity from the shame of the cinema under the name of Barry O’Moore, then.”