1915 in film

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The year 1915 in film involved some significant events.

Events[edit]

February 1: Fox Film Corporation founded
February 8: D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune's Auditorium Los Angeles and breaks both box office and film length records (running at a total length of over three hours).
February: Metro Pictures, a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is founded^[1]
February 22: The Allan Dwan directed film David Harum is released. The film is the first in long line of a successful romantic onscreen pairings of actors May Allison and Harold Lockwood.
March 15: Universal Studios Hollywood opens.
June 18: The Motion Picture Directors Association (MPDA) is formed by twenty-six film directors in Los Angeles, California.
July: Triangle Film Corporation is founded in Culver City, California and attracts filmmakers D. W. Griffith, Thomas H. Ince and Mack Sennett
September 11: A nitrate fire at Famous Players in New York destroys several completed but unreleased silent films which are later remade. Films lost include Mary Pickford's Esmerelda and The Foundling and John Barrymore's The Red Widow.
October 1: A US court rules in United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co. that the Motion Picture Patents Company trust is monopolistic and orders it to be dissolved.
November 18: Release of Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude.
December 13: Sessue Hayakawa becomes the first Asian actor to become a star in the US after his performance in The Cheat.
The Duplex Corporation creates a Split Duplex, an early widescreen film format where the film image is rotated 90 degrees and occupies half of a conventional frame.

Top-grossing films (U.S.)[edit]

Rank	Title	Gross
1.	The Birth of a Nation	$10,000,000^[2]
2.	Carmen	$147,600
3.	The Cheat	$137,364 ^[3]
4.	Temptation	$102,437
5.	The Girl of the Golden West	$102,224
6.	The Warrens of Virginia	$85,770
7.	The Golden Chance	$83,504
8.	Chimmie Fadden	$78,944
9.	Chimmie Fadden Out West	$72,036
10.	The Arab	$66,036

Notable films released in 1915[edit]

All following films are American, except where stated.

Are You a Mason?, directed by Thomas N. Heffron, starring John Barrymore
Assunta Spina, starring Francesca Bertini - (Italy)
The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish
The Caprices of Kitty, directed by Phillips Smalley, starring Elsie Janis
Carmen, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Geraldine Farrar
Carmen, directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Theda Bara
The Champion, starring Charles Chaplin and Edna Purviance
The Cheat, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Fannie Ward and Sessue Hayakawa
The Crazy Clock Maker
Double Trouble, starring Douglas Fairbanks
Enoch Arden, starring Lillian Gish
Fatty's Spooning Days, starring Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and The Keystone Cops
Filibus - (Italy)
A Fool There Was, starring Theda Bara
Four Feathers
A Gentleman of Leisure, directed by George Melford, starring Wallace Eddinger
The Golden Chance, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Cleo Ridgely and Wallace Reid
The Golem (Der Golem), directed by and starring Paul Wegener - (Germany)
The Immigrant
Inspiration
The Italian
The Lamb, starring Douglas Fairbanks
Madame Butterfly, directed by Sidney Olcott, starring Mary Pickford
The Man Who Stayed at Home - (GB)
Martyrs of the Alamo
The Raven
Regeneration, directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Rockliffe Fellowes and Anna Q. Nilsson
Sagebrush Tom, starring Tom Mix
The Senator, directed by Joseph A. Golden
The Soul of Broadway
The Tramp, directed by and starring Charles Chaplin
Le traquenard, starring Irène Bordoni - (France)
The Two Orphans, starring Theda Bara
Work, directed by & starring Charles Chaplin

Short film series[edit]

Broncho Billy Anderson (1910–1916)
Harold Lloyd (1913–1921)
Charlie Chaplin (1914–1923)

Births[edit]

January 9
- Anita Louise, actress (died 1970)
- Fernando Lamas, actor (died 1982)
January 11 - Veda Ann Borg, actress (died 1973)
January 26 - William Hopper, actor; son of Hedda Hopper (died 1970)
January 29 - Bill Peet, Disney author and illustrator (died 2002)
January 30 - Dorothy Dell, actress (died 1934)
February 7 - Eddie Bracken, actor (died 2002)
February 12 - Lorne Greene, actor (died 1987)
February 21 - Ann Sheridan, actress (died 1967)
February 23 - Jon Hall, actor (died 1979)
February 28 - Zero Mostel, actor (died 1977)
March 2 - Lona Andre, actress (died 1992)
March 17 - Henry Bumstead, art director (died 2006)
March 19 - Patricia Morison, actress (died 2018)
April 10 - Harry Morgan, American actor (died 2011)
April 21 - Anthony Quinn, actor (died 2001)
May 5 - Alice Faye, actress, (died 1998)
May 6 - Orson Welles, actor, director (died 1985)
May 8 - John Archer, American actor (died 1999)
May 19 - Renée Asherson, actress, (died 2014)
June 12 - Priscilla Lane, singer, actress (died 1995)
August 2 - Gary Merrill, actor (died 1990)
August 15 - Signe Hasso, (died 2002)
August 29 - Ingrid Bergman, actress (died 1982)
September 5 - Jack Buetel, actor (died 1989)
September 10 - Edmond O'Brien, actor (died 1985)
September 14 - Douglas Kennedy, actor (died 1973)
September 29 - Brenda Marshall, American actress (died 1992)
October 29 - Evi Rauer, Estonian actress (died 2004)
December 7 - Eli Wallach, actor (died 2014)
December 12 - Frank Sinatra, singer, actor (died 1998)
December 13 - Curd Jürgens, actor (died 1982)
December 14 - Dan Dailey, actor (died 1978)

Deaths[edit]

January 10 - Marshall P. Wilder, 55, American diminutive stage and screen actor
April 26 – John Bunny, 51, American silent film comedian, A Strand of Blond Hair, Bunny's Little Brother, Bunny Backslides
June 5 - John C. Rice, 58, stage and film actor, The Kiss
June 16 - Elmer Booth, 32, American silent screen actor, brother of film editor Margaret Booth, The Musketeers of Pig Alley, The Narrow Road, An Unseen Enemy
October 31 - Blanche Walsh, 42, American stage actress appeared in Zukor's 3 reel feature "Resurrection" 1912

Film debuts[edit]

Mary Boland - The Edge of the Abyss
Alice Brady - The Boss
Donald Brian - The Voice in the Fog
Marie Cahill - Judy Forgot
Yakima Canutt - Foreman of Bar Z Ranch (uncredited)
Laura Hope Crews - The Fighting Hope
Reginald Denny - Niobe
Elliott Dexter - Helene of the North
Marie Doro - The Morals of Marcus
Douglas Fairbanks - The Lamb
Geraldine Farrar - Carmen
W. C. Fields - Pool Sharks
Pauline Frederick - The Eternal City
John Gilbert - Aloha Oe (uncredited)
Charlotte Greenwood - Jane
Otto Kruger - A Mother's Confession
Edmund Lowe - The Wild Olive
Victor Moore - Snobs
Edna Purviance - A Night Out (short) (uncredited)
Esther Ralston - The Deep Purple (uncredited)
Valeska Suratt - The Soul of Broadway
Erich Von Stroheim - actor, assistant director, The Birth of a Nation (uncredited); costume designer, wardrobe assistant, Ghosts
Charlotte Walker - Kindling
Fannie Ward - The Marriage of Kitty

References[edit]

^ "The Metro Corporation". Motography. XIII (8). February 20, 1915. p. 278. Retrieved May 12, 2018.
^ Rucker, Walter C.; Upton, James N., eds. (2007). Encyclopedia of American race riots. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-313-33301-9. ...earning more than $10 million at the box office in 1915. By 1949, it had earned $50 million
^ Birchard, Robert S. (2004), Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, p. 19, ISBN 0-8131-2324-0