Selig Polyscope Company
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| Industry | Entertainment |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1896 |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, United States |
| Products | Motion pictures |
| Owner | William Selig |
The Selig Polyscope Company is an American motion picture company that was founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago. Selig Polyscope is noted for establishing Southern California's first permanent movie studio, in the historic Edendale district of Los Angeles. The company produced hundreds of early, widely distributed commercial moving pictures, including the first films starring Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, Colleen Moore, and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The business gradually became a struggling zoo attraction in East Los Angeles, having ended film production in 1918.
Selig had worked as a magician and minstrel show operator on the west coast of California. Later on in Chicago he attempted to enter the film business using his own photographic equipment, free from patent restrictions imposed through companies controlled by Thomas Edison. In 1896, with help from Union Metal Works and Andrew Schustek, he shot his first film, Tramp and the Dog. He went on to successfully produce local actualities, slapstick comedies, early travelogues and industrial films (a major client was Armour and Company). In 1908 Selig Polyscope was involved in the production of The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays, a touring "multimedia" attempt to bring L. Frank Baum's Oz books to a wider public (which played to full houses but was nonetheless a financial disaster for Baum). By 1909 Selig had studios making short features in Chicago and the Edendale district of Los Angeles. The company also distributed stock film footage and titles from other studios. That year, Roscoe Arbuckle's first movie was a Selig comedy short. The company's early existence was fraught with legal turmoil over disputes with lawyers representing Thomas Edison's interests. In 1909 Selig and several other studio heads settled with Edison by creating an alliance with the inventor. Effectively a cartel, Motion Picture Patents Company dominated the industry for a few years until the Supreme Court (in 1913 and 1915) ruled the firm was an illegal monopoly. In 1910 Selig Polyscope produced a wholly new filmed version of the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The company produced the first commercial two-reel film, Damon and Pythias, successfully distributed its pictures in Great Britain and maintained an office in London for several years before World War I. Although Selig Polyscope produced a wide variety of moving pictures, the company was most widely known for its wild animal shorts, historical subjects and early westerns.
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