American Cinematographer - March 1989 - 50

William

rected

by A1 Christie. They flaunted "talking picture"
apparently an offshoot of the Actophone
phonograph/camera system which had been operating

Horsley in

1936.

process,

in the Hell's Kitchen

area

of Manhattan. The Mutt &

Jeffs

were made one a week and were eagerly sought
by exhibitors nationwide.
By 1911, Horsley had three units shooting
regularly and a New York office at 147 Fourth Avenue.

out

What had

once

been "a washtub and

a

sink"

was now

grossing $11,400 a week, based on weekly sales of 120
prints. Christie handled the comedies with cameraman
Bill Piltz. Milton Fahrney helmed the Westerns with
cameramen Walter Pritchard and Gerald
Badgley. Tom
Ricketts directed dramatic subjects with his camera¬
man, Tom Harding.
The roster of contract players included come¬
dienne Victoria Forde (Tom Mix's fourth wife) and her
sister Eugenia; Dorothy Davenport, later a screenwriter
and wife of Wallace Reid; cowboy actors Hoot Gibson,
Art Acord, and Indian Curly Eagle. Harry Tenbrook,
an

who broke John Ford into the business, func¬
Centaur's property man. Typical Centaurs
The Bucking Bronco, The Sheriffs Mistake, and the

actor

tioned
were

as

"Desperate Diamond" series authored by Harry HershJournal. The toothier Nestors

field of the New York

included In The Commissioned Ranks released
he

was

"going independent" Carl Laemmle rented a

floor at 111 East 14th Street and created the Yankee Film

Company. A beat later, he changed it to the Indepen¬
dent Motion Picture Company and began his IMPS
releases, the first being Hiawatha, shot near Fort Lee.
Swanson joined Edwin Porter and formed the Rex
brand. Mark Dintenfass, a former herring salesman
whose Cameraphone "talkie" process clearly in¬
fringed on Edison's, started Champion Pictures in a
shack secreted in Coytesville, New Jersey. Edwin
Thanhauser converted a New Rochelle skating rink
into a gleaming, glass-roofed studio, reliance and the
Powers brand followed, until the beginning of 1910 saw
as
many renegade companies making pictures as there
were in the trust. A major turning point was George
Eastman's decision to sell negative to the independents
on March 1, 1911, amassing a fortune for his agent,
Jules Brulatour.
To protect themselves, the indies formed the
Sales

Company with offices on 14th Street. Every film
delivered there by the maker. The Sales
Company shipped it to the buyer at $100 per reel.
When the money came in, $95 was issued to the maker.
The remaining "fin" was retained by the company for
the purpose of hiring the best patents attorneys in New
York in order to file suit against the trust. If the obsta¬
cles proved insurmountable, the scheme then was to
keep the case in court for at least five years, during
which independents like David Horsley would be earn¬
ing a living.
Centaur/Nestor did brisk but paranoid busi¬
ness, grinding out one-reelers while ducking the pro¬
cess servers. A husky bruiser armed with a pick axe
sold

48

was

on

March

8, 1911. A

Horsley parody, Those Jersey Cowpunchers,
burlesqued the problems faced by a Bayonne movie
company whose sudden loss of professional cowboys
forced them to hire local yokels as replacements.
A very real problem, though, was the weath¬
er. Winters in New
Jersey and Staten Island were hell
for moviemakers, and audiences who had accepted
local scenery as authentic western topography were
becoming more discriminating. Southern California
beckoned, a good 3,000 miles from the Patents weasels.
The Selig outfit had already settled in Edendale,
prompting Fred Balshofer to establish the Bison Film
Company for Kessel & Bauman in an abandoned groc¬
ery store at 1712 Allesandro Street (now Glendale Bou¬
levard). The same year, 1909, D.W. Griffith arrived to
shoot backgrounds for a film he was making at
Biograph.
David Horsley preferred the east, so he relo¬
cated to Jacksonville, Florida and operated a unit on a
houseboat. It lasted a while and he returned to Bay¬
onne. Winter of 1910 saw him
making pictures in
Baltimore, but the weather was brutal. In the summer
of 1911, he decided to go West, based on eyewitness

reports by his brother-in-law, Horace Davey, who, ac¬
cording to Stan Horsley, "had bummed his way to Los
Angeles and returned to Bayonne, exalting over the
climate." (Some historians attribute the move to a coin
toss between David

stood within six feet of the camera at all times to ward
off intruders. Unique were the Mutt & Jeff shorts di¬

Horsley and A1 Christie, the for¬
wanting Florida, the latter hot for California.
Apocryphal or not, the temptation to believe it is
irresistible.)
Horsley and Christie boarded a train and met
a theatrical
producer who suggested that they see
Frank Hoover, owner of a photographic shop on Gower
Street. Hoover encouraged them to stay. The realtors

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March 1989

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American Cinematographer - March 1989

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