American Cinematographer - March 1989 - 48

Film Editors Ethel

and Grace
with Stan

from 70mm

stock.) He soon persuaded Eastman to do
perforating, by reason of the fact that one could
actually recover more from the silver punched out in
the process than it cost for putting holes in the film.
The first Centaur picture was The Cowboy's
Escapade, a one-reeler released on September 15,1908,
about a cowboy who challenges a magician to catch a
bullet in his teeth, followed by WJw Ate the Possum Pie?
They were naive, light-hearted productions, relying on
quickness of action to hold an audience. Money bor¬
rowed from friends and relatives to buy film and pay
the overhead enabled Centaur to stay afloat.
After their first year, all hell broke loose. An
industrial fracas known as the Patents War, fought with
weapons and violence enough to justify the term, was
forcing New York producers to flee as far as Cuba. They
were
infringing on the Edison patents, as Horsely was
doing, by building equipment from pirated designs.
Ironically, the Edison/Horsley alliance fell prey to a
legal harangue fueled by avaricious patents attorneys
who knew nothing about pictures and everything

Davey
Horsley,

its

circa 1910.

own

about money.
In

quicksilver move, the Motion Picture
Company was launched on December 18,1908
at the Hotel Brevort on Fifth Avenue for the purpose of
corralling all existing patents relating to the making of
movies. Their key piece of artillery was the Latham
loop, a mechanism invented by Confederate major
Woodville Latham. No camera or projector could oper¬
ate without it. On the night of the coalition, Parker
Page, the "archivist" of the trust, beamingly told his
audience how the loop had been assigned to the An¬
thony Scoville Company, Ansco, and American Mutoscope & Biograph. He then proclaimed it property of
the Patents Company. Drinks were on the house.
By January 1909, every film company in the
tri-state area was made to genuflect before this monop¬
olistic behemoth. They were given licenses to operate,
the legal equivalent of Mafia protection. Though Edi¬
son
hypocritically denied sponsorship, his company
became the nuclear entity through the machinations of
his lawyer Frank Dyer and "Edison secret service
man" A1 McCoy, who gleefully haunted paths of in¬
fringement for evidence. Ballbusting was his stock
one

Patents

Horsley had the knack. An unflappable spec¬
opened a retail phonograph store (Edison's
"talking machine" was the vogue), invented his own
phono speaker, and even ran a palmistry joint, map¬
ping the futures of those hard-hit by the crash. When
the birth of his son David Stanley in 1906 made steady
cash a familial necessity, he decided to try his hand
(literally) at the nascent motion picture business.
ulator, he

In 1907,

he and Charles Gorman,

scenic

artists for

Biograph in New York, agreed to pool their
interests. The result was the Centaur Film Company at
900 Broadway in Bayonne, a mythological banner de¬
rived by contracting the names Horsley and Gorman half horse, half man. They earn a nod as being the first
independent movie producers in America.
Centaur was a ramshackle operation. Secur¬
ing some lumber, they covered the rear yard over with a
wooden platform and hung a muslin sheet on overhead
wires to diffuse the light. While Gorman was readying
this, Horsley made a box. With a jackknife, a screw¬
driver, and some sprockets from an old projector, he
installed the parts within, called it a camera and start¬
ed making movies - with an assist from Thomas
Edison.

"My father

hard of hearing, just as Edi¬
Horsley, "so they understood
each other and were quite friendly. When pictures
came about, he came to Edison to get information,
which Edison generously provided. He had to build all
of his own equipment - the cameras, perforators, pol¬
son

ishers and studio

getting
ter

was

was," recalled Stan

fittings. So Edison

was

helpful in

my father started on the manufacturing end."
David Horsley used unperforated 35millime-

film manufactured

American

Cinematographer

by George Eastman. (It was split

and trade.
At the

urging of George Kleine (the "K" of
studio), Vitagraph, Biograph, Selig, Pathe,
Melies, Essanay in Chicago, and Lubin in Philadelphia
the Kalem

yielded submissively. All except David Horsley and his
ramshackle Centaur. He had applied for a license, but it
was refused on the
day a committee of three came to
Bayonne to look things over. According to his brother
William, "Dave
other two stood

was

in the

rear

with

one

while the

the front steps. One said to the
other: This sonofabitch ain't got nothing. All he's got is
a

washtub and

sink! We won't

give him a license and

he won't last

thirty days.' "
Horsley was never

one to party with the big
boys and was luridly nicknamed "the one-armed paperhanger)' a slur that prompted him to wear a wood¬
en

prosthetic, but he refused to be stifled by

March 1989

American Cinematographer - March 1989

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