Allisyn Still Not Home
I was hoping to have Mrs. Lewis released to me today, but she was depressed last night and said the wrong thing to a nurse. So now I guess I wait another day. By any chance did I say before that I hate hospitals?
Indeed she's better off there than here, as there are lots of drugs to keep her under. But I want her home - I almost lost her this time.
Good News, For a Change
This comes from Ron Orowitz in Cincinnati:
After over a year of haranguing with waif radio politics (and let me tell
you it is no fun), Art Damage is -temporarily at least- back on the
air, starting April Fool's day in the wee hours 2-5am. This isn't the
time we want, of course, hence the tentativeness of the slot.
2-5am on WAIF-FM 88.3 MHz in the Cincinnati OH area
(approx 50 mi. radius) or on the internet: http://216.68.21.4/waif/ -
there's a 4 day archive so you don't have to stay up.
We're Back!
David Horsley and the Centaur Film Company
This is a little project that I involved myself with while waiting for phone calls from the hospital. It is a complete listing of the known film titles made by the Centaur Film Company of Bayonne, New Jersey. It is posted from an excel file, and I'm not sure how it will show up on this blog, but I'm pretty proud of it and would like to share.
Centaur was founded by David Horsley, a one-armed British born entrepreneur based in Bayonne, New Jersey. He bought a building in Bayonne around 1902 and first made it into a pool hall. The bank panic of 1907 brought him into contact with a camera operator from Biograph who had been laid off during that time. David and his brother William "pooled" (sorry) their resources and turned the pool hall into a primitive movie studio, delivering their first subject, "The Cowboy's Escape" in December 1907. Apparently David Horsley coverted an old projector into a movie camera in order to film his first subjects.
In December 1908 Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Trust and started to systematically harass small companies like Centaur. In mid-1910 Horsley changed the name of the company to Nestor and the following year moved to southern California both for the constant sunlight (needed to make the pictures) and to get further away from the agents of the MPPT. It is often said that Nestor was the first movie studio to set up in southern California. This is incorrect - Selig set up a studio in Santa Monica as early as 1909. But Selig was a member of the MPPT, and Nestor really was the first movie company to set up on the left coast in order to get out from under Edison and his goons. This is significant, as other studios who outlasted the Patents Trust all moved to the L.A. area for the same reason shortly thereafter.
In summer of 1912 Horsely and Nestor became part of an independent film combine jointly run by Pat Powers and Carl Laemmle known as Universal Pictures. After about a year a tense power struggle between Powers and Laemmle disrupted the combine to such an extent that Horsley saw an opportunity and sold his share in Nestor to Laemmle. David Horsley walked away a rich man, and decided to take his wife to Europe while Nestor continued without him as a Universal subsidiary.
While in Europe he seems to have revied the Centaur brand in order to involve himself in a mysterious, unreleased project which may have been a feature length rendering of Verdi's opera Il trovatore. Around 1910 Nestor had experimented with a crude form of sound-on-disc movie in which the picture was matched to pre-recorded musical cues played from records. An abridged "Il trovatore" had been issued on records in Europe already, and it appears that Horsley was shooting a film with no name singers miming to these records. The film was never released, and has not been found, but it seems to have been the first attempt to film something like an opera in its entireity.
In 1915 Horsley bought out a failed circus in England which he shipped out to California. He started a new studio which also incorporated the circus zoo which the public could stop in and see for a quarter. This concept, of a movie studio which is also partly a theme park, would prove immensely popular later for Universal Studios, but Horsley's idea was WAY ahead of it's time and ultimately failed. By 1921, when smaller Hollywood studios would begin to converge into the big studios that would dominate Hollywood's "golden age," Horsley was already out of the business, and broke to boot. Horsley died, penniless and forgotten, in 1933.
A few words about this list - it is limited only to Centaur Films and Horsley produced efforts other than the ones for Nestor. Nestor was a highly successful Western franchise which produced nearly 700 films, most of which Horsley was not personally involved with. The convention of movie releases in the years around 1910 was simply to produce one reel a week, which might be a "split reel" of two subjects. So the "Notes" field identifies whether a film is a full-length single reel subject or half of a "split reel."
After 1914 Horsley is producing mostly features in addtion to a few one or two reel films. The latter no longer appear after 1915. Most of the features were vehicles for action star Crane Wilbur, who had gained fame as the male lead in Pearl White's Pathe serial "The Perils of Pauline" (1914). Wilbur began his directing career in the latter days of Centaur. Wilbur continued to direct into the 1960s, making notorious exploitation films such as "High School Girls" (1934) and working in television.
As far as the "credit" field is concerned, Horsley himself is the default credit as producer "(p)", and indeed it appears that he did direct many of the earliest Centaur Films himself. If I had a genuine director credit, it's identified as "(d)", or if I had a scenario writer and no director it is "(sc)". You will note huge gaps, resulting from this interesting analysis via Excel, in the chronology. There are no films from the first one in December 1907 until September of 1908. This is as the first title was remembered in William Horsley's thumbnail sketch of his brother, written in 1934, and in no other source. By September 1908 Horsley had found a distributor who began to list Centaur films in trade publications, and from this time we have titles. But for the intevening months we have nothing.
Also, Horsley did pick up films from other producers and distribute them. Both "A Tale of Texas" and "Maryland 1777" were made by the Powhattan Film Company, based in Powhatton County, Maryland, a company even smaller than Horsley's! Their nine or so titles are better dealt with in another study, however it is not known which of the other films listed here may have come from outside Centaur. Some of the last titles in 1910 were also released by Nestor, and the late silent film expert George Pratt beleived the two "Bonehead" subjects were the first actual Nestor films.
The title shown in
boldface is the only Centaur Film known to survive - it is in the George Marshall collection in the Library of Congress. So why bother with doing this, you might ask? Worldwide there are thousands of nitrate films of this period which are unidentified, either having the title changed, no title at all, or is a sigle reel from a feature. Chances are good that at least one of the others is still extant somewhere; we just don't know which film it is. Lists like these aid identification of such films and indicate where the gaps are in our knowledge about them. Of these, I'd love to someday see "Santa Claus and the Miner's Child" or the Crane Wilbur directed "The Conscience of John David." Heck, "The Painted Lie" was even a small-scale hit in it's time.
Centaur Films/David Horsley Productions, 1907-1910, 1914-1919
Year Title Credit Release Notes
1907 The Cowboy's Escape David Horsley (p) 12 00 Full
1908 The Doll Maker's Daughter David Horsley (p) 09 16 Full
1908 A Cowboy Escapade David Horsley (p) 09 19 Full
1908 The Parson's Thanksgiving Dinner David Horsley (p) 11 19 Split
1908 Circumstantial Evidence; or Who Ate the Possum Pie? David Horsley (p) 11 23 Split
1909 The Sceptical Cowboy David Horsley (p) 04 01 Full
1909 A Cowboy's Sweetheart David Horsley (p) 05 08 Full
1909 The Temptation of John Gray David Horsley (p) 05 15 Full
1909 Johnny and the Indians David Horsley (p) 05 22 Full
1909 Scrappy Bill David Horsley (p) 05 29 Full
1909 A Nevada Girl David Horsley (p) 06 05 Full
1909 Private Brown David Horsley (p) 06 12 Full
1909 Love Wins David Horsley (p) 06 19 Full
1909 A Cowboy's Romance David Horsley (p) 06 26 Full
1909 The Crystal Ball David Horsley (p) 07 03 Full
1909 A Tale of Texas Powhatton Films (p) 07 21 Full
1909 Maryland 1777 Powhatton Films (p) 07 28 Full
1909 The Power of Love David Horsley (p) 08 11 Full
1909 The Young Bachelor's Dream David Horsley (p) 08 16 Full
1909 The Lost Letter David Horsley (p) 08 18 Full
1909 The Blacksmith's Daughter Joseph Golden (d) 08 25 Full
1909 Peaceful Jones David Horsley (p) 09 01 Full
1909 The Diamond Necklace David Horsley (p) 09 08 Split
1909 The Wishing Charm David Horsley (p) 09 08 Split
1909 A White Lie David Horsley (p) 09 15 Full
1909 Dan Blake's Rival David Horsley (p) 09 22 Full
1909 A Close Call David Horsley (p) 09 29 Full
1909 The Sheriff's Girl David Horsley (p) 10 06 Full
1909 His Mexican Bride David Horsley (p) 10 13 Full
1909 The Purse David Horsley (p) 10 20 Split
1909 Almost a Suicide David Horsley (p) 10 23 Split
1909 Brother and Sister David Horsley (p) 10 30 Full
1909 The Lost Years David Horsley (p) 11 03 Full
1909 Santa Claus and the Miner's Child David Horsley (p) 12 11 Full
1909 Beyond the Rockies David Horsley (p) 12 18 Full
1909 Vindicated David Horsley (p) 12 20 Full
1909 The Deceiver David Horsley (p) 12 25 Full
1910 The Nemesis David Horsley (p) 01 06 Full
1910 Forgiven David Horsley (p) 01 13 Split
1910 Mishaps of Bonehead David Horsley (p) 01 13 Split
1910 Bonehead's Second Adventure David Horsley (p) 01 27 Split
1910 The Ordeal David Horsley (p) 01 27 Split
1910 A Daughter's Devotion David Horsley (p) 02 16 Split
1910 Blind Love David Horsley (p) 06 09 Split
1910 Mr. Swell in the Country David Horsley (p) 06 09 Split
1910 Her Lesson David Horsley (p) 06 16 Split
1910 The Old Maid's Picnic David Horsley (p) 06 16 Split
1910 Getting Rid of Uncle David Horsley (p) 06 23 Split
1910 One Good Turn David Horsley (p) 06 23 Split
1910 For Her Son's Sake David Horsley (p) 06 30 Split
1910 She Would Be a Business Man David Horsley (p) 06 30 Split
1910 One Man's Confession David Horsley (p) 07 07 Full
1910 Aviation at Montreal: June 25th to July 5th David Horsley (p) 07 11 Full
1910 The Badgers David Horsley (p) 07 14 Split
1910 Grandad's Extravagance David Horsley (p) 07 14 Split
1914 Il Trovatore Charles Simone (d) not released? Feature
1915 The Rajah's Sacrifice Jack Bonavita (d) 00 00 2reeler
1915 The White King of the Zaras David Horsley (p) 00 00 Full
1916 The Kaffir's Gratitude David Horsley (p) 00 00 Full
1916 The Bait William Bowman (d) 01 22 Feature
1916 Vengeance is Mine! Robert Broadwell (d) 01 31 Feature
1916 The Soul's Cycle Ulysses Davis (d) 02 12 Feature
1916 A Law unto Himself Robert Broadwell (d) 02 28 Feature
1916 The Heart of Tara William Bowman (d) 03 04 Feature
1916 The Hidden Law Theodosia Harris (sc) 03 25 Feature
1916 The Love Liar Crane Wilbur (d) 03 27 Feature
1916 The Leopard's Bride Theodosia Harris (sc) 04 13 Feature
1916 The Conscience of John David Crane Wilbur (d) 04 26 Feature
1916 The Wasted Years Robert Broadwell (d) 06 19 Feature
1917 The Painted Lie Harrish Ingraham (d) 03 19 Feature
1917 The Single Code Thomas Ricketts (d) 04 16 Feature
1917 The Eye of Envy Harrish Ingraham (d) 08 10 Feature
1917 The Blood of His Fathers Harrish Ingraham (d) 09 10 Feature
1917 Unto the End Harrish Ingraham (d) 10 08 Feature
1917 Her Bargain David Horsley (p) 11 00 Feature
1919 Breezy Jim Lorimer Johnston (d) 02 22 Feature
1919 Devil McCare Lorimer Johnston (d) 04 20 Feature
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com