Industry | Film studio |
---|---|
Founded | 1912 (as Keystone Pictures Studio) |
Defunct | 1935 |
Headquarters | Edendale, Los Angeles |
Key people
|
Mack Sennett |
Coordinates: 34°05′10.37″N 118°15′34.80″W / 34.0862139°N 118.2596667°W
Keystone Studios was an early movie studio founded in Edendale, California (which is now a part of Echo Park) on July 4, 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett (1880-1960) with backing from actor-writer Adam Kessel (1866-1946) and Charles O. Baumann (1874-1931), owners of the New York Motion Picture Company (founded 1909). The company filmed in and around Glendale and Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California for several years, and its films were distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation between 1912 and 1915.
The original main building, the first totally enclosed film stage and studio in history, is still standing. It is located at 1712 Glendale Blvd in Echo Park, Los Angeles.
The studio is perhaps best remembered for the era under Mack Sennett when he created the slapstick antics of the Keystone Cops, from 1912, and for the Sennett Bathing Beauties, beginning in 1915. Charles Chaplin got his start at Keystone when Sennett hired him fresh from his vaudeville career to make silent films. Charlie Chaplin at Keystone Studios is a 1993 compilation of some of the most notable films Chaplin made at Keystone, documenting his transition from vaudeville player to true comic film actor to director. In 1915 Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of the Triangle Film Corporation with D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince. In 1917 Sennett gave up the Keystone trademark and organized his own company.