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Elgin Lessley
Elgin Lessley (also credited as Lesly, Lessly, and Leslie) (June 10, 1883 - January 10, 1944) was an American hand-crank cameraman of the silent film era—a period of filmmaking when virtually all special effects work had to be produced inside the camera during filming. Though Lessley worked earlier with Roscoe Arbuckle, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, and later with Harry Langdon, he is best known for the groundbreaking effects he produced with Buster Keaton, who dubbed him "the human metronome" for his ability to crank consistently at any requested speed. Lessley's most striking effects were in ''The Playhouse (film), The Playhouse'' (1921) and ''Sherlock Jr.'' (1924). In ''The Playhouse'', through use of a specially shuttered lens and repeated back-cranking and re-cranking, Lessley allowed Keaton to appear as up to nine characters simultaneously, interacting with one another. In ''Sherlock Jr.'', Lessley's careful positioning of camera and actor in various locations produced the effe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Higbee, Missouri
Higbee is a city in southern Randolph County, Missouri, United States. The population was 568 at the 2010 census. Barrel-making company A&K Cooperage, Barrel 53 Cooperage and Woodsmen Distilling are based in Higbee. History The first settlement at Higbee was made in 1872. A post office called Higbee has been in operation since 1873. The community has the name of Joseph Higbee, a pioneer settler. Geography Higbee is located approximately two miles north of the Randolph - Howard county line at the intersection of Missouri Routes A and B. Moniteau Creek flows past two miles to the east. Moberly lies eight miles to the northeast.''Missouri Atlas & Gazetteer,'' 1998, Delorme p.30 According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , all land. Demographics 2010 census As of the census of 2010, there were 568 people, 235 households, and 157 families living in the city. The population density was . There were 273 housing units at an average density of . Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of, El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since 2010. Colorado Springs is the second-most populous city and the most extensive city in the state of Colorado, and the 40th-most populous city in the United States. It is the principal city of the Colorado Springs metropolitan area and the second-most prominent city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. It is located in east-central Colorado, on Fountain Creek, south of Denver. At the city stands over above sea level. Colorado Springs is near the base of Pikes Peak, which rises above sea level on the eastern edge of the Southern Rocky Mountains. History The Ute, Arapaho and Cheyenne peoples were the first recorded inhabiting the area which would become Colorado Springs. Part of the territory included in the United States' 1803 Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mabel Normand
Amabel Ethelreid Normand (November 9, 1893 – February 23, 1930), better known as Mabel Normand, was an American silent film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in their Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own film studio and production company. Onscreen, she appeared in twelve successful films with Charlie Chaplin and seventeen with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing (or co-writing/directing) films featuring Chaplin as her leading man. In the 1920s, Normand's name was linked with scandal, including the 1922 murder of William Desmond Taylor and the 1924 shooting of Courtland S. Dines. Dines was shot by Normand's chauffeur, who was using her pistol. She was exonerated in the first crime, and disregarded from the second, but her film career declined. In addition, Normand suffered a recurrence of tuberculosis in 1923, which led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
He Did And He Didn't
''He Did and He Didn't'' is a 1916 American short comedy film starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Mabel Normand. Production The dark plot, extremely sophisticated for its time, involves a corpulent husband who finds himself consumed by jealousy when his wife's dashingly handsome old schoolmate unexpectedly turns up for dinner. The film was also written and directed by Arbuckle. Because it was billed as a comedy, the ending attributes the assumptions of the husband, including the murder, to eating bad lobster. After several lighthearted comedies featuring Mabel Normand and Roscoe Arbuckle, this seemed to be an added dimension to film genre in general, in that it attributed serious jealousy fantasies to human nature, but still managed to maintain a cheerful demeanor overall in its approximate 20 minutes. It may be the first "dramedy" in existence. The film was shot when many early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey, at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Waiters' Ball
''The Waiters' Ball'' is a 1916 American silent short comedy film directed by and starring Fatty Arbuckle. Arbuckle's nephew Al St. John has a memorable role as Roscoe's rival. The film is extant. Plot A cook and a waiter at a restaurant are both attracted to the pretty cashier. She sees an ad for a waiters’ ball coming up that night. Attendees must wear evening clothes; the waiter is distressed because he doesn’t have any. The waiter tries to sweep litter from the restaurant into the kitchen at the same time as the cook tries to sweep it out; they fight, hitting each other rhythmically with brooms. The waiter calls out customers’ orders to the kitchen using hash house lingo – e.g., two eggs on toast is “Adam and Eve on a raft.” Meanwhile, the cook prepares the orders with much juggling and many sight gags. For example, the cook gets a fish out of a cooler, but it’s still alive, and it leaps wildly; eventually, everyone in the restaurant becomes involved in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keystone Studios
Keystone Studios was an early film studio founded in Edendale, California (which is now a part of Echo Park) on July 4, 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from actor-writer Adam Kessel (1866–1946) and Charles O. Baumann (1874–1931), owners of the New York Motion Picture Company (founded 1909). The company, referred to at its office as The Keystone Film Company, filmed in and around Glendale and Silver Lake, Los Angeles for several years, and its films were distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation between 1912 and 1915. The Keystone film brand declined rapidly after Sennett went independent in 1917. The name ''Keystone'' was taken from the side of one of the cars of a passing Pennsylvania Railroad train (Keystone State being the nickname of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) during the initial meeting of Sennett, Kessel and Baumann in New York. The original main building, the first totally enclosed film stage and studio in history, is stil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett (born Michael Sinnott; January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960) was a Canadian-American film actor, director, and producer, and studio head, known as the 'King of Comedy'. Born in Danville, Quebec, in 1880, he started in films in the Biograph Company of New York City, and later opened Keystone Studios in Edendale, California in 1912. Keystone possessed the first fully enclosed film stage, and Sennett became famous as the originator of slapstick routines such as pie-throwing and car-chases, as seen in the Keystone Cops films. He also produced short features that displayed his Bathing Beauties, many of whom went on to develop successful acting careers. Sennett's work in sound movies was less successful, and he was bankrupted in 1933. In 1938 he was presented with an honorary Academy Award for his contribution to film comedy. Early life Born Michael Sinnott in Danville, Quebec, he was the son of Irish Catholic John Sinnott and Catherine Foy. His parents married in 187 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yokohama
is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of Tokyo, in the Kantō region of the main island of Honshu. Yokohama is also the major economic, cultural, and commercial hub of the Greater Tokyo Area along the Keihin region, Keihin Industrial Zone. Yokohama was one of the cities to open for trade with the Western world, West following the 1859 end of the Sakoku, policy of seclusion and has since been known as a cosmopolitan port city, after Kobe opened in 1853. Yokohama is the home of many Japan's firsts in the Meiji (era), Meiji period, including the first foreign trading port and Chinatown (1859), European-style sport venues (1860s), English-language newspaper (1861), confectionery and beer manufacturing (1865), daily newspaper (1870), gas-powered street lamps (1870s), railway station (1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Sea Islands
Polynesia () "many" and νῆσος () "island"), to, Polinisia; mi, Porinihia; haw, Polenekia; fj, Polinisia; sm, Polenisia; rar, Porinetia; ty, Pōrīnetia; tvl, Polenisia; tkl, Polenihia (, ) is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more than 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are called Polynesians. They have many things in common, including language relatedness, cultural practices, and traditional beliefs. In centuries past, they had a strong shared tradition of sailing and using stars to navigate at night. The largest country in Polynesia is New Zealand. The term was first used in 1756 by the French writer Charles de Brosses, who originally applied it to all the islands of the Pacific. In 1831, Jules Dumont d'Urville proposed a narrower definition during a lecture at the Geographical Society of Paris. By tradition, the islands located in the southern Pacific have also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Méliès
Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès (; ; 8 December 1861 – 21 January 1938) was a French illusionist, actor, and film director. He led many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema. Méliès was well known for the use of special effects, popularizing such techniques as substitution splices, multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted colour. He was also one of the first filmmakers to use storyboards. His films include '' A Trip to the Moon'' (1902) and ''The Impossible Voyage'' (1904), both involving strange, surreal journeys somewhat in the style of Jules Verne, and are considered among the most important early science fiction films, though their approach is closer to fantasy. The 2011 film ''Hugo'' was inspired by the life and work of Méliès. Early life and education Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès was born 8 December 1861 in Paris, son of Jean-Louis Méliès and his Dutch wife, Johannah-Catherine Schuering. His father h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaston Méliès
Gaston Méliès (; February 12, 1852 – April 9, 1915) was a French film director who worked primarily in the United States. He was the brother of the film director Georges Méliès. Biography Gaston and the third and elder Méliès brother, Henri, ran the family shoe factory in Paris. They landed a contract with the French War Ministry that looked to make them both wealthy. Unfortunately, the price of leather increased sharply, and they were unable to meet their costs. The factory shut down and the Méliès brothers lost their business. Georges Méliès had produced films in France, which had become popular around the world. Some distributors began infringing Méliès work, especially in the United States. Georges Méliès asked his brother Gaston to go the United States and guard Georges's copyrights. Gaston Méliès arrived in New York City in 1902, formed the American branch of the Star Film Company, and began distributing his brother's films. By 1903, Gaston began maki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Star Film Company
The Manufacture de films pour cinématographes, often known as Star Film, was a French film production company run by the illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. History On 28 December 1895, Méliès attended the celebrated first public demonstration of the Lumière Brothers' Kinetoscope. The event, held in a room at 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris with one hundred chairs and an entry price of 1, demonstrated the practicality of film cameras and projectors. According to later recollections by Méliès, he immediately approached Antoine Lumière and offered to buy a Lumière projector for his own experimentation; Lumière refused. Méliès went on to make repeated offers, all similarly turned down. Méliès next turned to the British film experimenter Robert W. Paul, and in February 1896, obtained an Animatographe projector for 1,000, along with a collection of short films, some by Paul and some by Edison Studios. Méliès projected these for the first time at his t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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