Alfred Clark (director)
| Alfred Clark | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
19 December 1873 New York City, United States |
| Died | 16 June 1950 (aged 76) Fulmer, England |
| Occupation | cinematographer, gramophone inventor and executive |
Alfred Clark (19 December 1873 – 16 June 1950) was a British-American pioneer of music recording and cinema. As a cameraman and director of productions at Edison's first studio, he was the first to make moving pictures with innovations like continuity, plot, trained actors and special effects. In 1896, he joined Emile Berliner's Gramophone Company and then went to Europe where he became an important manager of companies like HMV and EMI. He was naturalized as a British citizen in 1928 and he became a leading member of the Oriental Ceramic Society in London, establishing a valuable collection including rare pieces which had been made for the emperors of the Tang and Song dynasty.
In 1921 he married Ivy Sanders, who survived him and died in 1973.
Alfred Clark was born in New York on 19 December 1873. He was educated at the Franklin School in Washington and the City College of New York. He took an early interest in electricity and left college at sixteen to join the North American Phonograph Company. This collapsed in 1894 and Clark then joined Thomas Edison to make early short movies using the Kinetoscope technology at the Black Maria studio. Previously, Edison's output had been boxing and vaudeville but Clark introduced the first productions with continuity and plot such as the brief Execution of Mary Stuart which introduced the first special effect to show her decapitation.
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