1.
Irving Thalberg
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Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called The Boy Wonder for his youth, innate commercial instincts, Thalberg had little interest in films as an art form, he notoriously remarked that filmmakers are like servant girls, they need a good slap on the backside now and then. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, and as a child was afflicted with a heart disease that doctors said would kill him before he reached the age of thirty. After graduating from school he took night classes in typing. Among the films he produced was The Hunchback of Notre Dame and he then partnered with Louis B. Mayers studio and, after it merged with two studios, helped create Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was made head of production of MGM in 1925, at the age of twenty-six, and after three years MGM became the most successful studio in Hollywood as a result of his supervision. During his twelve years with MGM, until his death at age 37, he produced four hundred films, most of which bore his imprint. Among those innovations were story conferences with writers, sneak previews to gain early feedback, in addition, he introduced horror films to audiences and coauthored the “Production Code, ” guidelines for morality followed by all studios. During the 1920s and 1930s, he synthesized and merged the world of stage drama, Thalberg created numerous new stars and groomed their screen images. He had the ability to combine quality with commercial success, and was credited with bringing his artistic aspirations in line with the demands of audiences. After his death, Hollywoods producers declared him to have been, despite his young age, President Roosevelt wrote, The world of art is poorer with the passing of Irving Thalberg. His high ideals, insight and imagination went into the production of his masterpieces, the Irving G. Thalberg was born in Brooklyn, to German-Jewish immigrant parents, William and Henrietta. Shortly after birth, he was diagnosed with blue baby syndrome, the prognosis from the family doctor, and from specialists years later, was that he would possibly live to age twenty, or at most, age thirty. During his high school years in Brooklyn, he began having attacks of chest pains, dizziness and this affected his ability to study, though until that time he was a good student. When he was 17, he contracted fever, and was confined to bed for a year. His mother, Henrietta, to prevent him falling too far behind other students, brought him homework from school, books and she also hoped that the schoolwork and reading would distract him from the tantalizing sounds of children playing outside his window. With little to him, he read books as a main activity
2.
Bessie Love
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Bessie Love, born Juanita Horton, was an American motion picture actress who achieved prominence mainly in the silent films and early talkies. With a small frame and delicate features, she played innocent young girls, flappers and her performance in The Broadway Melody earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Bessie Love was born Juanita Horton in Midland, Texas and she attended school in Midland until she was in the eighth grade, when her chiropractor father moved his family to Arizona, New Mexico, and then to Hollywood. On actor Tom Mixs recommendation that she get into pictures, Loves mother sent her to Biograph Studios, Griffith, who introduced Bessie Love to films, also gave the actress her screen name. He gave her a role in his film Intolerance. Love dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue her film career, in her early career, she was often compared to Mary Pickford, even called Our Mary by D. W. Griffith. Love took a role in the management of her career. Duffy, the editor of Picture-Play Magazine, and publicizing herself by playing the ukulele. Even glowing reviews of her films criticized the venues in which they were shown, in 1922, Love was selected one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. In 1923, she starred in Human Wreckage with Dorothy Davenport, as her roles got larger, so did her popularity. Because of her performance in The King on Main Street, Love is credited with being the first person to dance the Charleston on film and her technique was documented in instructional guides, including a series of photographs by Edward Steichen. She subsequently performed the dance the following year in The Song and she starred in The Lost World, a science fiction adventure based on the novel of the same name by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Three years later she starred in The Matinee Idol, a comedy directed by a young Frank Capra. Love successfully transitioned to talkies, and in 1929 she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Broadway Melody and she appeared in several other early musicals, including The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Chasing Rainbows, Good News, and They Learned About Women. However, by 1932, her American film career was in decline and she moved to England in 1935 and did stage work and occasional films there. Love briefly returned to the United States in 1936 to seek a divorce and she also worked for the American Red Cross. After the war, she resumed work on the stage and played roles in films—often as an American tourist. Stage work included such productions as Love in Idleness and Born Yesterday and she wrote and performed in The Homecoming, a semiautobiographical play, which had its opening in Perth, Scotland in 1958
3.
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
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Originally known as Graumans Chinese Theatre, it was renamed Manns Chinese Theatre in 1973, the name lasted until 2001, after which it reverted to its original name. On January 11,2013, Chinese electronics manufacturer TCL Corporation officially purchased the naming rights. The original Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Graumans Egyptian Theatre, built by a partnership headed by Sid Grauman over 18 months starting in January 1926, the theatre opened May 18,1927, with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMilles film The King of Kings and it has since been home to many premieres, including the 1977 launch of George Lucas Star Wars, as well as birthday parties, corporate junkets, and three Academy Awards ceremonies. In 2013 the Chinese Theatre partnered with IMAX Corporation to convert the house into a custom designed IMAX theater, the newly renovated theater seats 932 people and features one of the largest movie screens in North America. After his success with the Egyptian Theatre, Sid Grauman turned to Charles E. Toberman to secure a lease on property at 6925 Hollywood Blvd. Toberman contracted the firm of Meyer & Holler, designer of the Egyptian, Grauman financed and owned a one-third interest in the Chinese Theatre, his partners—Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Howard Schenck—owned the remainder. The principal architect of the Chinese Theatre was Raymond M. Kennedy, during construction, Grauman hired Jean Klossner to formulate an extremely hard concrete for the forecourt of the theatre. Klossner later became known as Mr. Footprint, performing the footprint ceremonies from 1927 through 1957, many stories exist to explain the origins of the footprints. The theatres official account in its books and souvenir programs credit Norma Talmadge as having inspired the tradition when she stepped into the wet concrete. While we were building the theatre, I accidentally happened to step in some soft concrete, so, I went to Mary Pickford immediately. Mary put her foot into it and his autograph and handprint, dated 1927, remain today. The theatres third founding partner, Douglas Fairbanks, was the celebrity, after Talmadge. In 1929, Sid Grauman decided to retire and sell his share to William Foxs Fox Theatres chain, Grauman remained as the theatres managing director for the entire run of Hells Angels, retiring once again after its run finished. But, unsatisfied with retirement, Grauman returned to the theatre as managing director on Christmas Day 1931, one of the highlights of the Chinese Theatre has always been its grandeur and décor. In 1952, John Tartaglia, the artist of nearby Saint Sophia Cathedral and he would later continue the work of Jean Klossner, by recommendation of J. Walter Bantau, for the Hollywood Footprint Ceremonies. Tartaglia performed his first ceremony as a Master Mason for Jean Simmons in 1953, for the premiere of The Robe, the Chinese Theatre was declared a historic and cultural landmark in 1968, and has undergone various restoration projects in the years since then. Ted Mann, owner of the Mann Theatres chain and husband of actress Rhonda Fleming, from then until 2001 it was known as Manns Chinese Theatre
4.
Pre-Code Hollywood
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Although the Code was adopted in 1930, oversight was poor and it did not become rigorously enforced until July 1,1934, with the establishment of the Production Code Administration. Strong female characters were ubiquitous in such films as Female, Baby Face. Gangsters in films like The Public Enemy, Little Caesar, along with featuring stronger female characters, films examined female subject matters that would not be revisited until decades later in US films. Nefarious characters were seen to profit from their deeds, in cases without significant repercussions. Many of Hollywoods biggest stars such as Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Blondell, Other stars who excelled during this period, however, like Ruth Chatterton and Warren William, would wind up essentially forgotten by the general public within a generation. Beginning in late 1933 and escalating throughout the first half of 1934, in 1922, after some risqué films and a series of off-screen scandals involving Hollywood stars, the studios enlisted Presbyterian elder William H. Will Hays, a figure of unblemished rectitude, to rehabilitate Hollywoods image, Hays, later nicknamed the motion picture Czar, was paid the then-lavish sum of $100,000 a year. The Supreme Court had already decided unanimously in 1915 in Mutual Film Corporation v, lords concerns centered on the effects sound film had on children, whom he considered especially susceptible to their allure. Several studio heads, including Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, met with Lord, after some revisions, they agreed to the stipulations of the Code. One of the motivating factors in adopting the Code was to avoid direct government intervention. It was the responsibility of the Studio Relations Committee, headed by Colonel Jason S. Joy, to film production. The Code was divided into two parts, the first was a set of general principles which mostly concerned morality. The second was a set of applications which was an exacting list of items that could not be depicted. Some restrictions, such as the ban on homosexuality or the use of curse words, were never directly mentioned but were assumed to be understood without clear demarcation. Miscegenation, the mixing of the races, was forbidden and it stated that the notion of an adults-only policy would be a dubious, ineffective strategy that would be difficult to enforce. However, it did allow that maturer minds may easily understand, the Code sought not only to determine what could be portrayed on screen, but also to promote traditional values. Sexual relations outside of marriage could not be portrayed as attractive and beautiful, presented in a way that might arouse passion, nor be made to seem right, All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience. Authority figures had to be treated respectfully, and the clergy could not be portrayed as characters or villains
5.
Sound film
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A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900. Reliable synchronization was difficult to achieve with the early sound-on-disc systems, innovations in sound-on-film led to the first commercial screening of short motion pictures using the technology, which took place in 1923. The primary steps in the commercialization of sound cinema were taken in the mid- to late 1920s, at first, the sound films which included synchronized dialogue, known as talking pictures, or talkies, were exclusively shorts. The earliest feature-length movies with recorded sound included only music and effects, the first feature film originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. A major hit, it was made with Vitaphone, which was at the time the brand of sound-on-disc technology. Sound-on-film, however, would become the standard for talking pictures. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon, in the United States, they helped secure Hollywoods position as one of the worlds most powerful cultural/commercial centers of influence. In Europe, the new development was treated with suspicion by many filmmakers and critics, in Japan, where the popular film tradition integrated silent movie and live vocal performance, talking pictures were slow to take root. In India, sound was the element that led to the rapid expansion of the nations film industry. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as the concept of cinema itself. On February 27,1888, a couple of days after photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge gave a lecture not far from the laboratory of Thomas Edison, the two inventors privately met. No agreement was reached, but within a year Edison commissioned the development of the Kinetoscope, essentially a peep-show system, as a visual complement to his cylinder phonograph. The two devices were brought together as the Kinetophone in 1895, but individual, cabinet viewing of motion pictures was soon to be outmoded by successes in film projection and these appear to be the first publicly exhibited films with projection of both image and recorded sound. Phonorama and yet another sound-film system—Théâtroscope—were also presented at the Exposition, three major problems persisted, leading to motion pictures and sound recording largely taking separate paths for a generation. The primary issue was synchronization, pictures and sound were recorded and played back by separate devices, sufficient playback volume was also hard to achieve. Finally, there was the challenge of recording fidelity, cinematic innovators attempted to cope with the fundamental synchronization problem in a variety of ways. In 1902, Léon Gaumont demonstrated his sound-on-disc Chronophone, involving an electrical connection he had recently patented, four years later, Gaumont introduced the Elgéphone, a compressed-air amplification system based on the Auxetophone, developed by British inventors Horace Short and Charles Parsons
6.
Technicolor
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Technicolor is the name applied to a series of color motion picture processes, the first version dating from 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. It was the major color process, after Britains Kinemacolor. As the technology matured it was used for less spectacular dramas. Occasionally, even a film noir—such as Leave Her to Heaven or Niagara —was filmed in Technicolor, Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color motion picture processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, now a division of the French company Technicolor SA. The Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation was founded in Boston in 1914 by Herbert Kalmus, Daniel Frost Comstock, the Tech in the companys name was inspired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where both Kalmus and Comstock received their undergraduate degrees and were later instructors. Technicolor, Inc. was chartered in Delaware in 1921, most of Technicolors early patents were taken out by Comstock and Wescott, while Kalmus served primarily as the companys president and chief executive officer. The term Technicolor historically has been used to describe at least five concepts, Technicolor, Technicolor process or format, several custom image origination systems used in film production, culminating in the three-strip process in 1932. Technicolor IB printing, a process for making color motion picture prints that allows the use of dyes which are more stable, originally used for printing from color separation negatives photographed on black-and-white film in a special Technicolor camera. This meaning of the name applies to nearly all Wikipedia articles about films made from 1954 onward in which Technicolor is named in the credits, Technicolor originally existed in a two-color system. Because two frames were being exposed at the time, the film had to be photographed and projected at twice the normal speed. Exhibition required a special projector with two apertures, two lenses, and a prism that aligned the two images on the screen. The results were first demonstrated to members of the American Institute of Mining Engineers in New York on February 21,1917, the near-constant need for a technician to adjust the projection alignment doomed this additive color process. Only a few frames of The Gulf Between, showing star Grace Darmond, are known to exist today, convinced that there was no future in additive color processes, Comstock, Wescott, and Kalmus focused their attention on subtractive color processes. This culminated in what would eventually be known as Process 2, the difference was that the two-component negative was now used to produce a subtractive color print. Because the colors were present in the print, no special projection equipment was required. The frames exposed behind the filter were printed on one strip of black-and-white film. After development, each print was toned to a color nearly complementary to that of the filter, orange-red for the green-filtered images, the two prints, made on film stock half the thickness of regular film, were then cemented together back to back to create a projection print. The Toll of the Sea, which debuted on November 26,1922, the second all-color feature in Process 2 Technicolor, Wanderer of the Wasteland, was released in 1924
7.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of feature films and television programs. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California and it is one of the worlds oldest film studios. In 1971, it was announced that MGM would merge with 20th Century Fox, over the next thirty-nine years, the studio was bought and sold at various points in its history until, on November 3,2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. MGM Resorts International, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MGM, is not currently affiliated with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1966, MGM was sold to Canadian investor Edgar Bronfman Sr. whose son Edgar Jr. would later buy Universal Studios, the studio continued to produce five to six films a year that were released through other studios, mostly United Artists. Kerkorian did, however, commit to increased production and a film library when he bought United Artists in 1981. MGM ramped up production, as well as keeping production going at UA. It also incurred significant amounts of debt to increase production, the studio took on additional debt as a series of owners took charge in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1986, Ted Turner bought MGM, but a few later, sold the company back to Kerkorian to recoup massive debt. The series of deals left MGM even more heavily in debt, MGM was bought by Pathé Communications in 1990, but Parretti lost control of Pathé and defaulted on the loans used to purchase the studio. The French banking conglomerate Crédit Lyonnais, the major creditor. Even more deeply in debt, MGM was purchased by a joint venture between Kerkorian, producer Frank Mancuso, and Australias Seven Network in 1996, the debt load from these and subsequent business deals negatively affected MGMs ability to survive as an independent motion picture studio. In 1924, movie theater magnate Marcus Loew had a problem and he had bought Metro Pictures Corporation in 1919 for a steady supply of films for his large Loews Theatres chain. With Loews lackluster assortment of Metro films, Loew purchased Goldwyn Pictures in 1924 to improve the quality, however, these purchases created a need for someone to oversee his new Hollywood operations, since longtime assistant Nicholas Schenck was needed in New York headquarters to oversee the 150 theaters. Mayer, Loew addressed the situation by buying Louis B. Mayer Pictures on April 17,1924, Mayer became head of the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Irving Thalberg as head of production. MGM produced more than 100 feature films in its first two years, in 1925, MGM released the extravagant and successful Ben-Hur, taking a $4.7 million profit that year, its first full year. Marcus Loew died in 1927, and control of Loews passed to Nicholas Schenck, in 1929, William Fox of Fox Film Corporation bought the Loew familys holdings with Schencks assent. Mayer and Thalberg disagreed with the decision, Mayer was active in the California Republican Party and used his political connections to persuade the Justice Department to delay final approval of the deal on antitrust grounds
8.
George M. Cohan
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George Michael Cohan, known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and producer. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with his parents, beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, he wrote, composed, produced, and appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals. Cohan published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards Over There, Give My Regards to Broadway, The Yankee Doodle Boy, as a composer, he was one of the early members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. He displayed remarkable theatrical longevity, appearing in films until the 1930s, known in the decade before World War I as the man who owned Broadway, he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Academy Award-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy, a statue of Cohan in Times Square in New York City commemorates his contributions to American musical theatre. Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate from St. Josephs Roman Catholic Church indicated that he was born on July 3, but Cohan and his family always insisted that George had been born on the Fourth of July. Georges parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance, Cohan started as a child performer at age 8, first on the violin and then as a dancer. He was the member of the family vaudeville act called The Four Cohans. In 1890, he toured as the star of a show called Pecks Bad Boy and then joined the family act and he and his sister made their Broadway debut in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack. Temperamental in his years, Cohan later learned to control his frustrations. During these years, Cohan originated his famous speech, My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you. The family generally gave a performance at the hall there each summer. Cohans memories of those happy summers inspired his 1907 musical 50 Miles from Boston, as Cohan matured through his teens, he used the quiet summers there to write. When he returned to the town in the cast of Ah, in 1934, he told a reporter, Ive knocked around everywhere, but theres no place like North Brookfield. Cohan began writing original skits and songs for the act in both vaudeville and minstrel shows while in his teens. Soon he was writing professionally, selling his first songs to a publisher in 1893. In 1901 he wrote, directed and produced his first Broadway musical, The Governors Son and his first big Broadway hit in 1904 was the show Little Johnny Jones, which introduced his tunes Give My Regards to Broadway and The Yankee Doodle Boy
9.
Academy Award for Best Actress
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The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered a performance in a leading role while working within the film industry. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the branch of AMPAS. In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories, at that time, all of their work during the qualifying period was listed after the award. The following year, this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actress is nominated for a performance in a single film. Starting with the 9th ceremony held in 1937, the category was officially limited to five nominations per year, one actress has been nominated posthumously, Jeanne Eagels. Only three film characters have been nominated more than once in this category, elizabeth I of England, Leslie Crosbie in The Letter, and Esther Blodgett in A Star is Born. Six women on the list have received an Honorary Academy Award for their acting, they are Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Pickford, Deborah Kerr, Gena Rowlands, since its inception, the award has been given to 74 actresses. Katharine Hepburn has won the most awards in this category, with four Oscars, meryl Streep, who has a total of 20 Oscar nominations, has been nominated in this category on 16 occasions, resulting in two awards. As of the 2017 ceremony, Emma Stone is the most recent winner in category for her role as Mia Dolan in La La Land. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of release in Los Angeles County. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933
10.
Vaudeville
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Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, a typical vaudeville performance is made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian, Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called the heart of American show business, vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades, the origin of this term is obscure, but is often explained as being derived from the French expression voix de ville. A second speculation is that it comes from the songs on satire by poet Olivier Basselin. Some, however, preferred the term variety to what manager Tony Pastor called its sissy. Thus, vaudeville was marketed as variety well into the 20th century, with its first subtle appearances within the early 1860s, vaudeville was not initially a common form of entertainment. The form gradually evolved from the saloon and variety hall into its mature form throughout the 1870s and 1880s. This more gentle form was known as Polite Vaudeville, in the years before the American Civil War, entertainment existed on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre existed before 1860 in Europe and elsewhere, in the US, as early as the first decades of the 19th century, theatregoers could enjoy a performance consisting of Shakespeare plays, acrobatics, singing, dancing, and comedy. As the years progressed, people seeking diversified amusement found a number of ways to be entertained. Vaudeville was characterized by traveling companies touring through cities and towns, a significant influence also came from Dutch minstrels and comedians. Vaudeville incorporated these various itinerant amusements into a stable, institutionalized form centered in Americas growing urban hubs, pastors experiment proved successful, and other managers soon followed suit. B. F. Keith took the step, starting in Boston. Later, E. F. Albee, adoptive grandfather of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee, circuits such as those managed by Keith-Albee provided vaudevilles greatest economic innovation and the principal source of its industrial strength. They enabled a chain of allied vaudeville houses that remedied the chaos of the booking system by contracting acts for regional and national tours. These could easily be lengthened from a few weeks to two years, Albee also gave national prominence to vaudevilles trumpeting polite entertainment, a commitment to entertainment equally inoffensive to men, women and children. Acts that violated this ethos were admonished and threatened with expulsion from the remaining performances or were canceled altogether
11.
Silent film
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A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. The silent film era lasted from 1895 to 1936, in silent films for entertainment, the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, mime and title cards which contain a written indication of the plot or key dialogue. During silent films, a pianist, theatre organist, or, in large cities, pianists and organists would either play from sheet music or improvise, an orchestra would play from sheet music. The term silent film is therefore a retronym—that is, a term created to distinguish something retroactively, the early films with sound, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were referred to as talkies, sound films, or talking pictures. A September 2013 report by the United States Library of Congress announced that a total of 70% of American silent feature films are believed to be completely lost, the earliest precursors of film began with image projection through the use of a device known as the magic lantern. This utilized a glass lens, a shutter and a persistent light source, such as a powerful lantern and these slides were originally hand-painted, but still photographs were used later on after the technological advent of photography in the nineteenth century. The invention of a practical photography apparatus preceded cinema by only fifty years, the next significant step towards film creation was the development of an understanding of image movement. Simulations of movement date as far back as to 1828 and only four years after Paul Roget discovered the phenomenon he called Persistence of Vision. This experience was further demonstrated through Rogets introduction of the thaumatrope, the first projected primary proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge between 1877 and 1880. Muybridge set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and timed image exposures to capture the many stages of a horses gallop, the oldest surviving film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a film of people walking in Oakwood streets garden. Edison also made a business of selling Kinetograph and Kinetoscope equipment, due to Edisons lack of securing an international patent on his film inventions, similar devices were invented around the world. The Lumière brothers, for example, created the Cinématographe in France, the Cinématographe proved to be a more portable and practical device than both of Edisons as it combined a camera, film processor and projector in one unit. In contrast to Edisons peepshow-style kinetoscope, which one person could watch through a viewer. Their first film, Sortie de lusine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first true motion picture, the invention of celluloid film, which was strong and flexible, greatly facilitated the making of motion pictures. This film was 35 mm wide and pulled using four sprocket holes and this doomed the cinematograph, which could only use film with just one sprocket hole. From the very beginnings of film production, the art of motion pictures grew into maturity in the silent era. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style, the silent era was also pioneering era from a technical point of view
