The Kalem Film Company and the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company are formed.
Edison projector sales generate over $418,000 in sales. This is a 130% increase over the previous year’s sales.
After losing many of its most creative people, and being unable to make the interest payments on its loans, Biograph is in a state of profound crisis. Jeremiah Kennedy is hired to be the new company president, and he starts to reorganize the company by laying-off many of the company’s employees.
David Wark Griffith (D.W. Griffith) begins working as an actor for the Edison Company after he fails to sell them a play he has written. He is paid $5 a day.
Vitagraph emerges as the leading American movie producer, with a repertoire of fast-paced, energetic films. The company establishes a stock company of actors, and begins assigning a director to each film unit who is responsible for the work of the cameraman.
Pathè’s cinema division in France has over 1,200 employees, most of whom are involved in splicing and coloring prints. The company seeks to control every aspect of film production, distribution and exhibition, even making and selling its own cameras and projectors. One French newspaper claims that “within a matter of months a film produced by Pathè Frères would be seen by 300 million people around the world.”
Pathè announces it will no longer sell its films in France, but rather rent them in weekly programs for a fixed percentage of exhibitor receipts.
The Warner Brothers open their own film exchange called the “Duquesne Amusement Supply Company” in a suburb of Pittsburgh.
Nickelodeon attendance surpasses two million per week, while movies are denounced by churches and the press for inciting criminal behavior.
Significant Films:
“The Runaway Sleighbelle”, becomes the Kalem Company’s first film. Their films, which are mostly comedies, are noted for their elaborate intertitles that include cartoons as well as text.
“Lightning Sketches”, is one of a number of Vitagraph films that use innovative object-animation and stop-motion techniques.