Flickering Empire

How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry
Erscheinungsjahr 2015
ISBN: 978-0-231-17448-0
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 242 mm x 162 mm, Gewicht: 510 g

Flickering Empire tells the fascinating yet little-known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of American film production in the years before the rise of Hollywood (1907;1913). As entertaining as it is informative, Flickering Empire straddles the worlds of academic and popular nonfiction in its vivid illustration of the rise and fall of the major Chicago movie studios in the mid-silent era (principally Essanay and Selig Polyscope). Colorful, larger-than-life historical figures, including Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux, and Orson Welles, are major players in the narrative in addition to important though forgotten industry titans, such as "Colonel" William Selig, George Spoor, and Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Selzer, Adam

Smith, Michael Glover

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

AcknowledgementsForeword, by Susan Doll Persons Discussed in Flickering Empire Preface: Hollywood Before HollywoodPart 1. Thomas Edison, Invention and the Dawn of a New Chicago1. Edison's Kinetoscope and Pre-Motion-Picture Entertainment2. The Columbian Exposition3. The Dawn of Exhibition Part 2. Chicago Rising4. Colonel William Selig 5. George Spoor, George Kleine, and the Rise of the Nickelodeon 6. Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson7. The Edison TrustPart 3. The Golden Age of Chicago Film Production8. The Golden Age of Essanay9. The Golden Age of Selig Polyscope 10. Essanay Signs Charlie Chaplin11. Chaplin in Chicago: His New JobPart 4. It All Came Crashing Down12. The Decline of the Chicago Studios 13. Major M. L. C. Funkhouser and the Chicago Censorship CodeEpilogue Post-Script: Oscar and Orson Appendix A: Selig Polyscope's Pointers on Picture ActingAppendix B: A Complete List of the Extant Chicago-Shot Films Named in This Book and Where to See Them Appendix C: Some Censored Scenes of Chicago Films Noted in Local NewspapersEndnotes Index

Über Autor(innen)

Michael Glover Smith is an independent filmmaker whose most recent films, At Last, Okemah! (2009) and The Catastrophe (2011), have won multiple awards at film festivals across the United States. He has taught film history and aesthetics at Oakton Community College, Triton College, Harold Washington College, and the College of Lake County, and lectures at Northwestern University and Facets Multimedia.

Adam Selzer lives in Chicago and is a tour guide and the author of several books on history and folklore, including The Smart Aleck's Guide to American History.