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115-754: Rosie Dolly (October 24, 1892 – February 1, 1970) and Jenny Dolly (October 24, 1892 – June 1, 1941), known professionally as The Dolly Sisters , were Hungarian-American identical twin dancers, singers and actresses, popular in vaudeville and theatre during the 1910s and 1920s. Both sisters also appeared in two silent films . The sisters, Rózsika Deutsch (later known as Rose or Rosie) and Janka Deutsch (later known as Yancsi or Jenny), were born in Balassagyarmat , Hungary . Their parents were Julius (born Gyula Deutsch, c.  1865 ) and Margaret Deutsch (born Margit Weisz, c.  1874 ). Julius and son Istvan (later known as Edward, born March 31, 1898) emigrated to

230-445: A 16 fps projection of the same reel would take 16 minutes and 40 seconds, or 304 millimetres (12.0 in) per second. In the 1950s, many telecine conversions of silent films at grossly incorrect frame rates for broadcast television may have alienated viewers. Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films , such as

345-554: A Lucky Man" was a hit for both African-American singer Sherman H. Dudley , and Jerome's wife, Maude Nugent . Their song " Dear Sing Sing " (1903) was a hit for Billy Murray who recorded the song multiple times. Their comedic song "I'm a Member of the Midnight Crew" (1909) became a hit for several performers of the era; including Carter DeHaven and Eddie Morton . Some of their other hit songs included "Since Sister Nell heard Paderewski Play" (1901), "I'm Unlucky" (1902) "Hamlet Was

460-424: A Melancholy Dane" (1902), " Cordelia Malone " (1904), and "The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day" (1909), among many others. After 1910, Schwartz and Jerome's collaborative output significantly dropped as they began to increasingly pursue projects independent of one another; and despite briefly operating their own publishing firm in the years leading up to World War I , their partnership came to an end during

575-563: A New York City based songwriter with the aptly named "Au Revoir Pleasant Dreams", a work which became the theme song for Ben Bernie and his orchestra. After this, he lived in retirement in Los Angeles and was mostly finished with music making. His final song of significance, the 1937 popular standard " Trust in Me ", was written in collaboration with Milton Ager and Ned Wever. That song has been recorded by numerous artists, most recently by Beyonce for

690-418: A chateau. They toured the theaters and dance halls of Europe and were courted by numerous wealthy men and royalty including Carol II of Romania , Christian X of Denmark and Alfonso XIII of Spain . On several occasions, the sisters would team up with male dance partners and sell tickets to the performances on the same night to create rivalry that would boost ticket sales. As their success continued throughout

805-475: A collection of jewelry; she then went on to win another $ 11 million. On other occasions, she won $ 100,000 at the horse track, $ 500,000 at baccarat and $ 200,000 at roulette . With her winnings, Jenny Dolly indulged in her passion – buying expensive jewelry. Jenny's collection of jewelry, which she acquired through her winnings and from numerous suitors, became legendary. While Jenny was gambling in Cannes one evening,

920-413: A key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Inter-titles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) "often were graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action". Showings of silent films almost always featured live music starting with the first public projection of movies by

1035-526: A large body of work for both Broadway and Tin Pan Alley , with the majority of their songs written between the years 1901 and 1910. Many of their popular songs were interpolated into Broadway musicals created by others during the 1900s, 1910s, and 1920s. The pair were also the primary creators of eight Broadway musicals, the most successful of which were Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!! (1904) and The Ham Tree (1905). Their most enduring song, " Chinatown, My Chinatown ",

1150-465: A low budget salute to sentimental silent comedies, particularly Charlie Chaplin 's The Kid . The German film Tuvalu (1999) is mostly silent; the small amount of dialog is an odd mix of European languages, increasing the film's universality. Guy Maddin won awards for his homage to Soviet-era silent films with his short The Heart of the World after which he made a feature-length silent, Brand Upon

1265-645: A much longer time for color to be adopted by the industry and an effective process to be developed. Blue represented night scenes, yellow or amber meant day. Red represented fire and green represented a mysterious atmosphere. Similarly, toning of film (such as the common silent film generalization of sepia -toning) with special solutions replaced the silver particles in the film stock with salts or dyes of various colors. A combination of tinting and toning could be used as an effect that could be striking. Some films were hand-tinted, such as Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894), from Edison Studios . In it, Annabelle Whitford ,

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1380-450: A music-only soundtrack in place of dialogue. The term silent film is a retronym —a term created to retroactively distinguish something from later developments. Early sound films, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were variously referred to as the "talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures" . The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is older than film (it was suggested almost immediately after Edison introduced

1495-420: A new book by Edgar Smith . The Schwartz and Bryan team followed this with The Midnight Rounders of 1920 and The Century Revue (1920). Atteridge joined the creative team of Schwartz and Bryan for The Midnight Rounders of 1921 , and both Atteridge and Schwartz were part of a larger number of creatives behind The Mimic World (1921). Schwartz and Atteridge collaborated with Eddie Cantor to create

1610-627: A part of his fictional city Ankh-Morpork on the Discworld "Dolly Sisters". The exploits of the Dolly sisters and their respective relationships with Harry Selfridge are chronicled on the TV series Mr Selfridge . It was indicated the expression 'dolly birds' arose from this period. In the 1987 Last of the Summer Wine episode, "The Ice Cream Man Cometh", Compo Simmonite , seeing Nora Batty and Pearl come into

1725-573: A pianist under Franz Liszt . After working for a time as an office boy at a cigar factory and as an attendant at a Turkish bath house, Schwartz obtained employment in the sheet music department of the Siegel-Cooper Company , where his job was to play songs on the piano for customers in order to sell the sheet music. It was while working in this job that he published his first song, the ragtime piece "Dusky Dudes' Cakewalk", in 1899. Other music jobs he held in his early years included working as

1840-856: A pianist with an orchestra at Coney Island and as a song-plugger for the Shapiro-Bernstein Publishing House of Tin Pan Alley . Schwartz became a citizen of the United States in 1902. In 1914, he was one of the twelve founding members of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers . Schwartz remained at the Siegel-Cooper Company until 1901 when he took a job as the on-stage pianist in John Stromberg 's Broadway musical Hoity Toity at Weber & Fields Music Hall . His energy and enthusiasm on stage attracted

1955-591: A portion of her jewelry collection. After the majority of Jenny's financial earnings were wiped out, Selfridge paid for Jenny's medical treatments although the two never married. After the car accident, Jenny Dolly developed depression. Her depression increased when she was forced to sell the remainder of her jewelry at auction in 1936. After living abroad for nine years, Jenny returned to the United States when her sister invited Jenny to live with her and her husband, Irving Netcher, in Chicago . There, Jenny met Bernard Vinissky,

2070-498: A race to design, implement, and market several rival sound-on-disc and sound-on-film sound formats, such as Photokinema (1921), Phonofilm (1923), Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927) and RCA Photophone (1928). Warner Bros. was the first studio to accept sound as an element in film production and utilize the Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc technology, to do so. The studio then released The Jazz Singer in 1927, which marked

2185-492: A special effect in many of his films. His 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation used a number of colors, including amber, blue, lavender, and a striking red tint for scenes such as the "burning of Atlanta" and the ride of the Ku Klux Klan at the climax of the picture. Griffith later invented a color system in which colored lights flashed on areas of the screen to achieve a color. With the development of sound-on-film technology and

2300-467: A wealthy lawyer; the two were married on June 29, 1935. Vinissky later adopted the two Hungarian orphans, Klári (1924–2013) and Manczi (1925–1985), whom Jenny had adopted in 1929. The marriage did little to alleviate Jenny's depression, however, and the couple separated. Jenny took an apartment in Hollywood with her two daughters. On June 1, 1941, she hanged herself from a curtain rod in their apartment. In

2415-494: A young dancer from Broadway, is dressed in white veils that appear to change colors as she dances. This technique was designed to capture the effect of the live performances of Loie Fuller , beginning in 1891, in which stage lights with colored gels turned her white flowing dresses and sleeves into artistic movement. Hand coloring was often used in the early "trick" and fantasy films of Europe, especially those by Georges Méliès . Méliès began hand-tinting his work as early as 1897 and

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2530-448: Is silent during its middle third, complete with intertitles; Stanley Tucci 's The Impostors has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Brazilian filmmaker Renato Falcão's Margarette's Feast (2003) is silent. Writer/director Michael Pleckaitis puts his own twist on the genre with Silent (2007). While not silent, the Mr. Bean television series and movies have used

2645-424: Is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist , theater organist —or even, in larger cities, an orchestra —would play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music , or improvisation . Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for

2760-546: The Ziegfeld Follies , among other shows. In 1903, Schwartz and Jerome wrote their first of eight musicals together where they were the primary authors, Mrs. Delaney of Newport . This was followed by their biggest success as musical theatre writers, Piff! Paff!! Pouf!!! , in 1904. The song "Radium Dance" from this show was inspired by scientist Marie Curie , and the musical was a big hit for its stars, Eddie Foy and Alice Fischer . They scored another popular hit with

2875-535: The benshi , a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The benshi became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. The popularity of the benshi was one reason why silent films persisted well into the 1930s in Japan. Conversely, as benshi -narrated films often lacked intertitles, modern-day audiences may sometimes find it difficult to follow

2990-553: The Dolly Sisters . Jenny Dolly was Schwartz's first wife. In 1909, Schwartz began to work on musical theatre projects without Jerome, beginning with the Harry B. Smith musical The Silver Star , for which he was one of several credited primary composers. He formed a partnership with the lyricist Harold Atteridge , with their first major work together being the 1913 musical The Honeymoon Express . The two men then went on to work for

3105-557: The Shubert family in The Passing Show musical revue series, joining the composer Sigmund Romberg to create The Passing Show of 1913 . The same creative trio was later re-united to create The Passing Show of 1918 , The Passing Show of 1919 , The Passing Show of 1923 , The Passing Show of 1924 , and the musicals Monte Cristo, Jr. (1919) and Innocent Eyes (1924). Schwartz joined playwright Anne Caldwell to create

3220-421: The audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or campy . The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. Vaudeville was an especially popular origin for many American silent film actors. The pervading presence of stage actors in film

3335-556: The phonograph in 1877), and some early experiments had the projectionist manually adjusting the frame rate to fit the sound, but because of the technical challenges involved, the introduction of synchronized dialogue became practical only in the late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the advent of the Vitaphone system. Within a decade, the widespread production of silent films for popular entertainment had ceased, and

3450-522: The 1899 Cendrillion (Cinderella) and 1900 Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) provide early examples of hand-tinted films in which the color was a critical part of the scenography or mise-en-scène ; such precise tinting used the workshop of Elisabeth Thuillier in Paris, with teams of female artists adding layers of color to each frame by hand rather than using a more common (and less expensive) process of stenciling. A newly restored version of Méliès' A Trip to

3565-450: The 1914 Broadway musical When Claudia Smiles . He was the composer for Shubert Gaieties of 1919 with Atteridge being one of several contributing writers to the show's book and Alfred Bryan as lyricist. He collaborated with Bryan on another musical that year, Hello, Alexander (1919), which was a major re-working of The Ham Tree . This heavily revised work supplanted most of the earlier work by Jerome with new lyrics by Bryan and

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3680-589: The 1922 musical Make It Snappy . The pair joined composer Al Goodman and playwright Harry Wagstaff Gribble to create Topics of 1923 . Schwartz and Atteridge re-united with Bryan for the musical A Night in Spain (1927). Schwartz's final Broadway musical, Sunny Days (1928), was made with writers Clifford Grey and William Carey Duncan . In 1930, Schwartz ended his lengthy association with Tin Pan Alley and Broadway; publishing his last song written in New York,

3795-640: The 2008 film Cadillac Records . He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. Jean Schwartz was born into a Jewish family in Budapest , Hungary on November 4, 1878. At the age of 13, he immigrated with his family to the United States and settled with them in New York City . The family lived on the East Side , and he studied the piano under his older sister, Rosa, who had trained as

3910-510: The Brain! (2006), incorporating live Foley artists , narration and orchestra at select showings. Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau 's classic silent vampire movie Nosferatu (1922). Werner Herzog honored the same film in his own version, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). Some films draw a direct contrast between

4025-579: The Broadway stage. The pair regularly contributed additional songs and other material to musicals primarily written by others. One of their early songs, "Mr. Dooley", was first performed in George Dance and Howard Talbot 's musical A Chinese Honeymoon (1902), and was a popular enough hit that it was also included in the first musical version of The Wizard of Oz (1902). Most of their early songs were comedic works; including musical theatre songs written for

4140-524: The Cafe in a bad mood, says "Here come the Dolly Sisters!" Silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue ). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards . The term "silent film"

4255-623: The Dance and Rose appeared opposite Lillian Gish in Lily and the Rose (later reissued as The Tiger Lady ). The sisters re-teamed in 1916 to appear in Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolic and returned to vaudeville where they commanded $ 2,000 a week. In 1918, they appeared in their only film together, the semi-autobiographical The Million Dollar Dollies . After World War I ended, the sisters moved to France where they bought

4370-642: The Devil (1927). Israel has worked mainly in silent comedy, scoring the films of Harold Lloyd , Buster Keaton , Charley Chase , and others. Timothy Brock has restored many of Charlie Chaplin 's scores, in addition to composing new scores. Contemporary music ensembles are helping to introduce classic silent films to a wider audience through a broad range of musical styles and approaches. Some performers create new compositions using traditional musical instruments, while others add electronic sounds, modern harmonies, rhythms, improvisation, and sound design elements to enhance

4485-488: The Dolly Sisters' popularity began to decline. Their highly publicized Paris show A vol d'oiseau , closed after eight weeks. The sisters spent more time gambling than performing and eventually retired by 1929. The Dolly Sisters' private lives were as melodramatic as their public life was stellar. Rose Dolly was married three times while Jenny Dolly was married twice and had a string of highly publicized affairs with wealthy men. Their reputation for dating wealthy men earned them

4600-623: The Lumière brothers on December 28, 1895, in Paris. This was furthered in 1896 by the first motion-picture exhibition in the United States at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. At this event, Edison set the precedent that all exhibitions should be accompanied by an orchestra. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing atmosphere, and giving the audience vital emotional cues. Musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons. However, depending on

4715-536: The Moon , originally released in 1902, shows an exuberant use of color designed to add texture and interest to the image. Comments by an American distributor in a 1908 film-supply catalog further underscore France's continuing dominance in the field of hand-coloring films during the early silent era. The distributor offers for sale at varying prices "High-Class" motion pictures by Pathé , Urban-Eclipse , Gaumont , Kalem , Itala Film , Ambrosio Film , and Selig . Several of

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4830-505: The Sahara desert and a British cricket pitch. War scenes were shot on the plains of Grasmere, Staten Island . The Perils of Pauline and its even more popular sequel The Exploits of Elaine were filmed largely on the island. So was the 1906 blockbuster Life of a Cowboy , by Edwin S. Porter Company , and filming moved to the West Coast around 1912. The following are American films from

4945-471: The US have been lost, though these estimates are inaccurate due to a lack of numerical data. Film projection mostly evolved from magic lantern shows, in which images from handpainted glass slides were projected onto a wall or screen. After the advent of photography in the 19th century, still photographs were sometimes used. Narration of the showman was important in spectacular entertainment screenings and vital in

5060-692: The United States in October 1904; the twins and their mother arrived May 1905. As children, the sisters trained as dancers and began earning money in beer halls as early as 1907. Barred for being under age by the New York City stage, they toured the Orpheum Circuit until 1909 when they debuted on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit . The following year, they appeared in the stage production of The Echo . In 1911, Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. signed them to appear in his Ziegfeld Follies for two seasons. Their act

5175-451: The United States. In view of the enormous amount of labor involved which calls for individual hand painting of every one of sixteen pictures to the foot or 16,000 separate pictures for each 1,000 feet of film very few American colorists will undertake the work at any price. As film coloring has progressed much more rapidly in France than in any other country, all of our coloring is done for us by

5290-612: The Viscountess Furness saw her and remarked, "I have never seen so many jewels on any one person in my life. Her bracelets reached almost to her elbows. The necklace she wore must have cost a king's ransom, and the ring on her right hand was the size of an ice cube." In 1926, the sisters staged a gala benefit concert for the nation of France at the Champs-Élysées theater. Participating artists included Josephine Baker , Harry Pilcer , and bandleader Billy Arnold . By early 1927,

5405-547: The action—particularly for comedies and action films. Slow projection of a cellulose nitrate base film carried a risk of fire, as each frame was exposed for a longer time to the intense heat of the projection lamp; but there were other reasons to project a film at a greater pace. Often projectionists received general instructions from the distributors on the musical director's cue sheet as to how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected. In rare instances, usually for larger productions, cue sheets produced specifically for

5520-674: The actual song being performed. Films in this category include Griffith's Lady of the Pavements with Lupe Vélez , Edwin Carewe 's Evangeline with Dolores del Río , and Rupert Julian 's The Phantom of the Opera with Mary Philbin and Virginia Pearson . The Silent Film Sound and Music Archive digitizes music and cue sheets written for silent films and makes them available for use by performers, scholars, and enthusiasts. Silent-film actors emphasized body language and facial expression so that

5635-412: The adoption of sound-on-film technology. Traditional film colorization, all of which involved the use of dyes in some form, interfered with the high resolution required for built-in recorded sound, and were therefore abandoned. The innovative three-strip technicolor process introduced in the mid-1930s was costly and fraught with limitations, and color would not have the same prevalence in film as it did in

5750-490: The aptly named "Au Revoir Pleasant Dreams", as an intentional finale to his career as a New York City songwriter and composer. This song was written with lyricist Jack Meskill and was recorded by Ben Bernie and his orchestra. Bernie used the song as his theme song for his radio program. Schwartz then moved to Los Angeles, California where he mostly retired from songwriting. He wrote one last hit song, " Trust in Me ", in collaboration with Ned Wever and Milton Ager . This song

5865-446: The attention of the show's librettist, William Jerome , and the two ended up becoming friends. In the midst of Hoity Toity' s run, the two men wrote their first song together, "Mr. Shakespeare Comes to Town", and the tune was added into that production under the pseudonym John Black. It was a popular hit with audiences. Schwartz went on to write more than 1,000 popular songs with Jerome; many of them written for or first performed on

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5980-415: The audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema prior to the invention of synchronized sound, but it also applies to such sound-era films as City Lights , Modern Times and Silent Movie which are accompanied by

6095-562: The beginning of film and 1928. The following list includes only films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent. Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including Charlie Chaplin , with Modern Times (1936), Orson Welles with Too Much Johnson (1938), Jacques Tati with Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Pierre Etaix with The Suitor (1962), and Mel Brooks with Silent Movie (1976). Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien 's acclaimed drama Three Times (2005)

6210-458: The best coloring establishment in Paris and we have found that we obtain better quality, cheaper prices and quicker deliveries, even in coloring American made films, than if the work were done elsewhere. By the beginning of the 1910s, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was used as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The director D. W. Griffith displayed a constant interest and concern about color, and used tinting as

6325-472: The biggest-budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores. However, the first designated full-blown scores had in fact been composed in 1908, by Camille Saint-Saëns for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise , and by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov for Stenka Razin . When organists or pianists used sheet music, they still might add improvisational flourishes to heighten

6440-461: The case of the 2002 restoration of Metropolis . With the lack of natural color processing available, films of the silent era were frequently dipped in dyestuffs and dyed various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Hand tinting dates back to 1895 in the United States with Edison's release of selected hand-tinted prints of Butterfly Dance . Additionally, experiments in color film started as early as in 1909, although it took

6555-490: The comedians George M. Cohan , Al Jolson , Eddie Foy , Harry Bulger , and Thomas Q. Seabrooke . The pair then began to expand their repertoire into writing ballads, with an important early success being the song " Bedalia " written for Blanche Ring in Reginald De Koven and George V. Hobart 's The Jersey Lily (1903). This song's sheet music sold more than three million copies. The pair also contributed songs to

6670-498: The crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as Albert Capellani and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles, such as Metropolis , were still being released. Greta Garbo , whose first American film

6785-459: The development of motion picture cameras, projectors and transparent celluloid film. Although Thomas Edison was keen to develop a film system that would be synchronised with his phonograph , he eventually introduced the kinetoscope as a silent motion picture viewer in 1893 and later "kinetophone" versions remained unsuccessful. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" ( 1894 in film – 1929 in film ). The height of

6900-401: The drama on screen. Even when special effects were not indicated in the score, if an organist was playing a theater organ capable of an unusual sound effect such as "galloping horses", it would be used during scenes of dramatic horseback chases. At the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians, at least in the United States. However,

7015-630: The early 1920s, they were able to command high salaries. During one engagement at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, the sisters were paid $ 1,200 a night. While in Europe, the sisters became well known for gambling excursions at casinos and horse tracks which were usually financed by wealthy admirers. They won $ 850,000 in one season at Deauville . Of the two, Jenny Dolly became legendary for her winnings. She won 4 million francs one evening in Cannes , which she converted to

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7130-555: The famous " Mighty Wurlitzer " could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of percussion effects such as bass drums and cymbals, and sound effects ranging from "train and boat whistles [to] car horns and bird whistles; ... some could even simulate pistol shots, ringing phones, the sound of surf, horses' hooves, smashing pottery, [and] thunder and rain". Musical scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music

7245-475: The first film serial , The Million Dollar Mystery , released in 1914. The first westerns were filmed at Fred Scott 's Movie Ranch in South Beach, Staten Island. Actors costumed as cowboys and Native Americans galloped across Scott's movie ranch set, which had a frontier main street, a wide selection of stagecoaches and a 56-foot stockade. The island provided a serviceable stand-in for locations as varied as

7360-411: The first commercially successful sound film , but silent films were still the majority of features released in both 1927 and 1928, along with so-called goat-glanded films: silents with a subsection of sound film inserted. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929. For a listing of notable silent era films, see List of years in film for the years between

7475-622: The formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison , Biograph , Essanay Studios , Kalem Company , George Kleine Productions , Lubin Studios , Georges Méliès , Pathé , Selig Studios , and Vitagraph Studios , and dominated distribution through the General Film Company . This company dominated

7590-459: The image to flicker , and images with low rates of flicker are very unpleasant to watch. Early studies by Thomas Edison for his Kinetoscope machine determined that any rate below 46 images per second "will strain the eye". and this holds true for projected images under normal cinema conditions also. The solution adopted for the Kinetoscope was to run the film at over 40 frames/sec, but this

7705-641: The industry as both a vertical and horizontal monopoly and is a contributing factor in studios' migration to the West Coast. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915, and were dissolved. The Thanhouser film studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York , in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser . The company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, including

7820-535: The industry had moved fully into the sound era , in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and sound effects . Most early motion pictures are considered lost owing to their physical decay, as the nitrate filmstock used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Additionally, many films were deliberately destroyed, because they had negligible remaining immediate financial value in that era. It has often been claimed that around 75 percent of silent films produced in

7935-773: The industry's acceptance of it, tinting was abandoned altogether, because the dyes used in the tinting process interfered with the soundtracks present on film strips. The early studios were located in the New York City area . Edison Studios were first in West Orange, New Jersey (1892), they were moved to the Bronx, New York (1907). Fox (1909) and Biograph (1906) started in Manhattan , with studios in St George, Staten Island . Other films were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey . In December 1908, Edison led

8050-532: The introduction of sound with its 24 frame/sec standard speed 2-bladed shutters have become the norm for 35 mm cinema projectors, though three-bladed shutters have remained standard on 16 mm and 8 mm projectors, which are frequently used to project amateur footage shot at 16 or 18 frames/sec. A 35 mm film frame rate of 24 fps translates to a film speed of 456 millimetres (18.0 in) per second. One 1,000-foot (300 m) reel requires 11 minutes and 7 seconds to be projected at 24 fps, while

8165-470: The introduction of talkies, coupled with the roughly simultaneous onset of the Great Depression , was devastating to many musicians. A number of countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early cinema of Brazil , for example, featured fitas cantatas (singing films), filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. In Japan , films had not only live music but also

8280-615: The lecturing circuit. The principle of stroboscopic animation was well-known since the introduction of the phenakistiscope in 1833, a popular optical toy , but the development of cinematography was hampered by long exposure times for photographic emulsions , until Eadweard Muybridge managed to record a chronophotographic sequence in 1878. After others had animated his pictures in zoetropes , Muybridge started lecturing with his own zoopraxiscope animation projector in 1880. The work of other pioneering chronophotographers, including Étienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz , furthered

8395-426: The longer, more prestigious films in the catalog are offered in both standard black-and-white "plain stock" as well as in "hand-painted" color. A plain-stock copy, for example, of the 1907 release Ben Hur is offered for $ 120 ($ 4,069 USD today), while a colored version of the same 1000-foot, 15-minute film costs $ 270 ($ 9,156) including the extra $ 150 coloring charge, which amounted to 15 cents more per foot. Although

8510-401: The mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D. W. Griffith , cinematography became less stage-like, and the development of the close up allowed for understated and realistic acting. Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing

8625-507: The music to his songs, he did on occasion work as a lyricist as well. He was a founding member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 1914. Schwartz formed a prolific partnership with the lyricist and playwright Harold Atteridge with whom he created more than a dozen Broadway musicals. Many of these shows were also made with the composer Sigmund Romberg . The trio of Schwartz, Atteridge, and Romberg created five of The Passing Show musical revues together as well as

8740-825: The musical The Ham Tree , which was created for the vaudeville stars James McIntyre and Thomas Heath . A tremendous success, the production toured for seven years and was later periodically revived by McIntyre and Heath. Schwartz and Jerome's other show from 1905, Lifting the Lid , was their first collaboration with the playwright John J. McNally . McNally penned the books to several other Schwartz and Jerome Broadway musicals, including Fritz in Tammany Hall (1905), Lola from Berlin (1907), and In Hayti (1909). Their final musical together, Up and Down Broadway (1910), included their biggest hit as songwriters, " Chinatown, My Chinatown ". Originally written in 1906, this song

8855-476: The musicals Monte Cristo, Jr. (1919) and Innocent Eyes (1924). Schwartz also created several Broadway musicals in collaboration with the lyricist Alfred Bryan ; sometimes in conjunction with Atteridge as musical book writer. Schwartz collaborated with many other songwriters during his lengthy career. He wrote the 1918 popular standard " Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody " with Sam M. Lewis and Joe Young . In 1930, he intentionally ended his career as

8970-520: The new "talkies" around the mid-1930s. The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high, but there remains a widely held misconception that these films were primitive, or are barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes from the general public's unfamiliarity with the medium, as well as from carelessness on the part of the industry. Most silent films are poorly preserved, leading to their deterioration, and well-preserved films are often played back at

9085-488: The nickname "The Million Dollar Dollies". In 1913, Rosie married songwriter Jean Schwartz . They divorced in 1921. Her second marriage was to Mortimer Davis, Jr., whom she married in 1927. Davis was the son of Mortimer Davis , the president of the Imperial Tobacco Company of Canada Limited. The senior Davis disapproved of the marriage and cut off Davis, Jr. Rosie and Davis divorced in 1931. Rosie's final marriage

9200-450: The plots without specialised subtitling or additional commentary. Few film scores survived intact from the silent period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions when they attempt to precisely reconstruct those that remain. Scores used in current reissues or screenings of silent films may be complete reconstructions of compositions, newly composed for the occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries, or improvised on

9315-438: The projectionist provided a detailed guide to presenting the film. Theaters also—to maximize profit—sometimes varied projection speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film, or to fit a film into a prescribed time slot. All motion-picture film projectors require a moving shutter to block the light whilst the film is moving, otherwise the image is smeared in the direction of the movement. However this shutter causes

9430-424: The reasons for the cited extra charge were likely obvious to customers, the distributor explains why his catalog's colored films command such significantly higher prices and require more time for delivery. His explanation also provides insight into the general state of film-coloring services in the United States by 1908: The coloring of moving picture films is a line of work which cannot be satisfactorily performed in

9545-486: The release of D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). In 1999, the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki produced Juha in black and white, which captures the style of a silent film, using intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. Special release prints with titles in several different languages were produced for international distribution. In India, the film Pushpak (1988), starring Kamal Haasan ,

9660-614: The sanitized biographical film The Dolly Sisters . June Haver portrayed Rosie, and Betty Grable portrayed Jenny. In Anthony Powell 's 1951 novel A Question Of Upbringing , some schoolboys discuss whether the Sisters might actually be mother and daughter. In 1972, the twenty-fourth episode of the fifth season of The Carol Burnett Show featured a musical comedy sketch of the sisters' lives called "The Doily Sisters", with Carol Burnett as Jenny, Vicki Lawrence as Rosie and Harvey Korman as Henry. Author Terry Pratchett chose to name

9775-440: The silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation. The film movements of Classical Hollywood as well as French Impressionism , German Expressionism , and Soviet Montage began in this period. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style and genre of film-making of the 20th and 21st centuries has its artistic roots in

9890-470: The silent era. The silent era was also a pioneering one from a technical point of view. Three-point lighting, the close-up , long shot , panning , and continuity editing all became prevalent long before silent films were replaced by " talking pictures " or "talkies" in the late 1920s. Some scholars claim that the artistic quality of cinema decreased for several years, during the early 1930s, until film directors , actors, and production staff adapted fully to

10005-463: The silent film era and the era of talkies. Sunset Boulevard shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of Norma Desmond , played by silent film star Gloria Swanson , and Singin' in the Rain deals with Hollywood artists adjusting to the talkies. Peter Bogdanovich 's 1976 film Nickelodeon deals with the turmoil of silent filmmaking in Hollywood during the early 1910s, leading up to

10120-479: The silent film era that had earned the highest gross income as of 1932. The amounts given are gross rentals (the distributor's share of the box-office) as opposed to exhibition gross. Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, only from the early 1920s were the basic technologies such as vacuum tube amplifiers and high-quality loudspeakers available. The next few years saw

10235-427: The silents for nearly four decades. As motion pictures gradually increased in running time, a replacement was needed for the in-house interpreter who would explain parts of the film to the audience. Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen inter-titles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the audience. The title writer became

10350-430: The silver screen. The animated film Fantasia (1940), which is eight different animation sequences set to music, can be considered a silent film, with only one short scene involving dialogue. The espionage film The Thief (1952) has music and sound effects, but no dialogue, as do Thierry Zéno 's 1974 Vase de Noces and Patrick Bokanowski 's 1982 The Angel . Jean Schwartz With Jerome, Schwartz created

10465-438: The size of the exhibition site, musical accompaniment could drastically change in scale. Small-town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a pianist . Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have organists or ensembles of musicians. Massive theatre organs , which were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra, had a wide range of special effects. Theatrical organs such as

10580-438: The spot in the manner of the silent-era theater musician. Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. There was a belief in many college film programs and repertory cinemas that audiences should experience silent film as a pure visual medium, undistracted by music. This belief may have been encouraged by the poor quality of the music tracks found on many silent film reprints of

10695-462: The standardization of the projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps) for sound films between 1926 and 1930, silent films were shot at variable speeds (or " frame rates ") anywhere from 12 to 40 fps, depending on the year and studio. "Standard silent film speed" is often said to be 16 fps as a result of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe , but industry practice varied considerably; there

10810-484: The time. Since around 1980, there has been a revival of interest in presenting silent films with quality musical scores (either reworkings of period scores or cue sheets, or the composition of appropriate original scores). An early effort of this kind was Kevin Brownlow 's 1980 restoration of Abel Gance 's Napoléon (1927), featuring a score by Carl Davis . A slightly re-edited and sped-up version of Brownlow's restoration

10925-547: The title character's non-talkative nature to create a similar style of humor. A lesser-known example is Jérôme Savary 's La fille du garde-barrière (1975), an homage to silent-era films that uses intertitles and blends comedy, drama, and explicit sex scenes (which led to it being refused a cinema certificate by the British Board of Film Classification ). In 1990, Charles Lane directed and starred in Sidewalk Stories ,

11040-629: The traditional approach include organists such as Dennis James and pianists such as Neil Brand , Günter Buchwald, Philip C. Carli, Ben Model , and William P. Perry . Other contemporary pianists, such as Stephen Horne and Gabriel Thibaudeau, have often taken a more modern approach to scoring. Orchestral conductors such as Carl Davis and Robert Israel have written and compiled scores for numerous silent films; many of these have been featured in showings on Turner Classic Movies or have been released on DVD. Davis has composed new scores for classic silent dramas such as The Big Parade (1925) and Flesh and

11155-468: The viewing experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Un Drame Musical Instantané , Alloy Orchestra , Club Foot Orchestra , Silent Orchestra , Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Minima and the Caspervek Trio, RPM Orchestra . Donald Sosin and his wife Joanna Seaton specialize in adding vocals to silent films, particularly where there is onscreen singing that benefits from hearing

11270-482: The war years. However, songs the pair had written earlier in their career continued to be interpolated into musicals, and performed by recording artists after their partnership had ended. The pair re-united briefly in 1921 with the song "Molly on a Trolley by Golly With You", which was published by M. Witmark & Sons . Schwartz and Jerome were also active as performers on the vaudeville stage together, and they sometimes worked in collaboration with Maude Nugent and

11385-409: The wrong speed or suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, giving the appearance of poor editing. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often made from already damaged and neglected film stock. Many early screening were plagued by flicker on the screen, when the stroboscopic interruptions between frames lay below the critical flicker frequency . This

11500-558: The years following their retirement and her sister's death, Rosie Dolly retreated from public life. With no children of her own, she spent her remaining years doing charitable work for children in her native Hungary. In 1962, Rosie, too, attempted suicide. On February 1, 1970, she died of a heart attack in New York City at the age of 77. The bodies of both sisters are interred in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale , California. In 1945, 20th Century Fox released

11615-680: Was a black comedy entirely devoid of dialog. The Australian film Doctor Plonk (2007), was a silent comedy directed by Rolf de Heer . Stage plays have drawn upon silent film styles and sources. Actor/writers Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore staged their Off-Broadway slapstick comedy Silent Laughter as a live action tribute to the silent screen era. Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and starred in All Wear Bowlers (2004), which started as an homage to Laurel and Hardy then evolved to incorporate life-sized silent film sequences of Sobelle and Lyford who jump back and forth between live action and

11730-578: Was a hit with audiences who enjoyed their glamorous personas. In 1913, the sisters decided to try to forge separate careers. Rosie appeared in The Whirl of the World on stage while Jenny teamed up with dancer Harry Fox (whom she married in 1912) in Honeymoon Express . Jenny and Fox also toured the vaudeville circuit as a dance duo. Both sisters made their film debuts in 1915: Jenny starred in The Call of

11845-415: Was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by Joseph Carl Breil for D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915), it became relatively common for

11960-478: Was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to the presentation of classic silent films. Today, a large number of soloists, music ensembles, and orchestras perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films internationally. The legendary theater organist Gaylord Carter continued to perform and record his original silent film scores until shortly before his death in 2000; some of those scores are available on DVD reissues. Other purveyors of

12075-451: Was expensive for film. However, by using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the flicker rate is multiplied two or three times higher than the number of film frames — each frame being flashed two or three times on screen. A three-blade shutter projecting a 16 fps film will slightly surpass Edison's figure, giving the audience 48 images per second. During the silent era projectors were commonly fitted with 3-bladed shutters. Since

12190-464: Was first popularized in separate recordings made in 1937 by Mildred Bailey and Wayne King . It has been recorded by numerous artists, including Beyoncé in the 2008 film Cadillac Records . Schwartz married the actress, singer, and dancer Jenny Dolly of the Dolly Sisters in 1913. They divorced in 1921. Jean Schwartz died in Sherman Oaks, California on November 30, 1956 at the age of 78. He

12305-540: Was interpolated into the musical. This song, however, did not become a popular hit until it was recorded by the American Quartet and Billy Murray in late 1914 on their number one selling record. It then became a jazz standard and was recorded by numerous artists over the next several decades; among them Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson . Schwartz and Jerome also wrote several popular songs not attached to musicals. Their 1901 comedic song "Rip Van Winkle Was

12420-403: Was later distributed in the United States by Francis Ford Coppola , with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola . In 1984, an edited restoration of Metropolis (1927) was released with a new rock music score by producer-composer Giorgio Moroder . Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddie Mercury , Pat Benatar , and Jon Anderson of Yes ,

12535-514: Was no actual standard. William Kennedy Laury Dickson , an Edison employee, settled on the astonishingly fast 40 frames per second. Additionally, cameramen of the era insisted that their cranking technique was exactly 16 fps, but modern examination of the films shows this to be in error, and that they often cranked faster. Unless carefully shown at their intended speeds silent films can appear unnaturally fast or slow. However, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting to accelerate

12650-669: Was released in 1926, would become known for her naturalistic acting. According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, American silent cinema began to see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the Weimar Republic , "including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses". Until

12765-575: Was solved with the introduction of a three-bladed shutter (since 1902), causing two more interruptions per frame. Another widely held misconception is that silent films lacked color. In fact, color was far more prevalent in silent films than in the first few decades of sound films. By the early 1920s, 80 percent of movies could be seen in some sort of color, usually in the form of film tinting or toning or even hand coloring, but also with fairly natural two-color processes such as Kinemacolor and Technicolor . Traditional colorization processes ceased with

12880-572: Was still involved with Selfridge, Jenny Dolly began seeing French pilot Max Constant. In 1933, Selfridge offered Jenny $ 10 million to marry him. Before she gave Selfridge an answer, she decided to go on one last holiday with Constant. While the two were returning to Paris , Constant crashed the sports car in which they were traveling near Bordeaux . Jenny sustained serious injuries (her stomach had been displaced into her lung chamber) that required dozens of operations and plastic surgeries to reconstruct her face. To pay her medical expenses, Jenny sold off

12995-454: Was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917: "The sooner the stage people who have come into pictures get out, the better for the pictures." In other cases, directors such as John Griffith Wray required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen. Silent films became less vaudevillian in

13110-616: Was to merchant Irving Netcher in 1932. They remained married until Netcher's death in 1953. Jenny's first marriage was to her dancing partner Harry Fox in 1912. They too divorced in 1921. In 1925, the sisters met retail magnate Harry Gordon Selfridge while they were performing in London . Jenny began an affair with Selfridge (Rosie also reportedly had an affair with him). Selfridge lavished Jenny with expensive gifts and funded both sisters' gambling habit. The Dolly Sisters reportedly gambled approximately $ 4 million of Selfridge's money away. While she

13225-408: Was written in 1906, interpolated into their final musical together, Up and Down Broadway (1910), and became a jazz standard when a series of recording artists, including Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson , made popular recordings of the work. Their collaborative output slowed significantly after 1910 and came to an end during World War I . While Schwartz was mainly concerned with writing

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