Canadian Film Weekly (Oct 11, 1944)

OUIMET AND LUBIN Ernest Ouimet (with moustache) shown at a meeting in Chicago, 1967, of the United Film Service Protective Association and the Film Importers and Manufacturers of the United States. It was the first meeting of its kind in the industry and a prelude to the great fight that was to come in a few years. The bald-headed man is Sigmund “Pop” Lubin. Edison's peep-show Kinetoscope, patented in 1891 but not displayed until 1894, was protected in the United States only. In 1896, through the incorporation of Thomas Armat’s Vitascope projector, the Kinetoscope gave its first screen show. Because he lacked a European copyright, individuals on that continent imitated his machine or copied its principles in the race for screen projection. Armat and ethers demonstrated screen projection before 1896 using Edison films. In 1889 Edison began the use of George Eastman’s newly-invented raw stock and this, enabling him to photograph on rolls, was a major factor in his victory over his rivals. In 1897 Edison had already begun the patent battle that lasted two decades and held back the development of the motion picture. He extended the fight into every channel of the industry and the Chicago meeting, called by Edison representatives with the consent of the other producers, was to organize and control distribution. They informed those present — exhibitors and sub-distributors—that they would be licenced mere rigidly and were invited to apply for rights under the new policy. A few years later the Edison interests organized the Motion Picture Patents Company, a monopoly pool which restricted production to nine Licensees. Exhibition came next with a demand for a weekly royalty of two dollars from each theatre on the threat of preventing the use of patented projection equipment for which the operator had already paid. Then distribution was concentrated when, in 1910, the monopoly producers founded the General Film Company as their releasing structure. General Films classified all theatres and charged leading houses from $160 to $125 per program. The prices graduated downward to $15 for store shows and itinerants. Rentals were standardized according to category. That began the fight of the Independent producers and distributors, supported by the exhibitors, against the monopoly. Carl Laemmle, exhibiter and distributor whose Laemmle Film Service was in jeopardy, headed the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company, a counter organization. He had refused the benefits of the trust. Bison was the first company to make films independently and Laemmle, with his Independent Moving Pictures Company of America—IMP—followed and was joined by others. Later Lacmmle founded Universal. The fight lasted until 1917, when the United States Supreme Court ruled against the monopoly. Ernest Ouimet, because he operated in Canada, was told at the Chicago meeting that he would be considered an exception. PART ONE The Story of L. ERNEST OUIMET | Pioneer By HYE BOSSIN NCE again, as it has sevO eral times in the history of the world,—and as all who know the Gallic character knew it would—the French spirit has emerged triumphant. In the darker days of this war a great statesman predicted that France, still in chains, would never again rise to its pre-war place among the nations. History will laugh at that opinion. The Gallic character is s0 strong that it thrives under any sun. The French, native or transplanted, are a people of great traditions in art; literature, science, gastronomy and courage. Their contribution, for instance, to the art and science of the motion picture in its beginning days and after is immeasurable. The search for screen projection was conducted avidly in France. A number of Edison's peep-show Kinetoscopes, introduced in the United States and Canada in April, 1894, had been imported into France and these provided the inspiration for the French quest. Edison was not too enthusiastic about screen projection. Hundreds of his peep-show machines had found profitable markets and he believed that screen projection would kill the novelty and end the demand. Jean A. Le Roy, who had long been experimenting in France, astonished a select New York audience of twenty-five in 1894 by projecting through his “The Marvellous Cinematograph” images on a screen eighty feet away. On March 22, 1895, August and Louls Lumiere, who conducted a photographic supply shop in Ly ons, France, brought out their own Cinematograph, 2 combined projector and camera, and gave a commercial demonstration of it in Paris on December 28, 1895. In Paris in the summer of 1895 Thomas Armat and Eugene Lauste, the latter already experimenting with sound films, had thrown moving pictures on a screen in the cellar of a Paris cafe, although the Lumiere machine gave a better show. But Armat was on the right track, for he discovered the principle of the modern projector and his Vitascope, as it came to be known, was shown publicly at Atlanta, Georgia, in September, 1895. Edison incorporated the Vitascope in his Kinetoscope, thus accomplishing screen projection and causing the abandonment of his peep-show idea. The Vitascope-Kinetoscope was used for the first screen motion picture in a theatre. This was at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, New York, on April 23, 1896. The movies were introduced as part of the vaudeville bill and ran about as long as one stage turn. This not only began the career of the movies as theatre entertainment but established the still existing film standard of one reel. Louis Lumiere was the first to build a real film library, sending Francis Doublier—still vigorous and at work in Fort Lee, New Jersey— around the world with Charles Moisson to film coronations, catastrophes and other events and happenings. About 1909 a French magician named George Melies showed the way to a more flexible handling of the moving picture camera by L. ERNEST OUIMET Today using it for feats of magic. This led him to fadeouts, dissolves and double exposures. Note must also be taken of the historic fact that an anticipation of the motion picture was embodied in a French patent application filed on April 25, 1864, by Arthur Ducos du Hauron. These are but a few of the French who pioneered in the motion picture field and opened a path for others to follow. The craft of the motion picture today represents the contributions of men from many nations. That which the French gave is an integral part of film history. The Lumieres, Le Roy, Lauste, Doublier, Melies, Charles Pathe and others were among the blessed tinkerers and sainted fools whose eternal experimentation endowed Mankind with a new world of art, entertainment and education. They did what man before their time never dreamed was possible. They captured and harnessed the lights and shadows and made them serve humanity. Motion pictures today are woven into the daily lives of all people and their use or misuse will have much to do with the kind of life the generations of the future will know. It is no surprise that Canada, a country of mainly British and French stock, should have a motion picture history which is almost day-and-date with that of the United States, with which it . shares the American scene. The British also had their pioneers. In 1890 W. Friese Greene demonstrated before a British photographers’ convention a camera which he claimed could take six hundred negatives a minute and the invention of the moving picture camera has been claimed for him by some. Robert W. Paul of London, a manufacturer of scientific instruments, demonstrated in 1906 a projection machine called the Theatrograph.