The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company (also known as the Biograph Company) was founded in 1895 and is the oldest movie production company in the United States. Its heyday was the era of silent film.

The company was started by nickelodeon producer William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, an inventor at Thomas Edison's laboratory who helped pioneer the technology of capturing moving images on film. Dickson left Edison and joined with Herman Casler, Henry Marvin and Elias Koopman to form the American Mutoscope Company, the first company entirely devoted to film production. The firm manufactured and made films for the mutoscope as a rival to Edison's kinetoscope for individual "peep shows" making the company Edison's chief competitor in the nickelodeon market and, in 1896, the Biograph Projector was released which allowed motion pictures to be projected onto a large screen in a theatre, the first time this had happened in the United States, establishing it as a leader in the film industry and leading it to form distribution and production subsidiaries around the world including the British Mutoscoope Company. In 1899 it changed its name to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Compnay.

Among Biograph's other accomplishments were being the first producers to film the Pope at the Vatican (1896), the first company to make a movie western in 1901, and being one of the first companies to make a full length feature film.

Director D.W. Griffith joined Biograph in 1908 and helped establish many of the conventions of narrative film as well as helped the company become a major commercial success. Many early movie stars were Biograph performers including Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and Lillian Gish. Mack Sennett honed his craft as a director of comedies at Biograph.

In 1909, Biograph joined Edison in forming the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. "The Trust" as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay, Kalem, Kleine, Lubin, Melies, Pathe, Selig and Vitagraph and dominated distribution through the General Film Company. Also in 1909, American Mutoscope and Biograph officially changed its name to the Biograph Company.

In 1910, Biograph became the first movie company to shoot a movie in Hollywood which was at the time an old village. "The Trust" was sued by the smaller film companies and became defunct in 1916 leaving Biograph saddled with debts, just as many other trusts or cartels in the United States were being busted.

Biograph was eclipsed by other movie production companies in the 1920s, by the end of the decade it was in financial difficulty and did not have the money to convert to sound production (or talkies) forcing it out of the movie production business in 1929. Instead, the company focused on distribution of movies from its existing film library and in exhibiting movies produced by other companies in its chain of Biograph theatres.

In 1987 the company was acquired by producer Thomas R. Bond, son of Tommy Bond, who played "Butch" in Our Gang (The Little Rascals).

In recent years Biograph has returned to production in a limited way with the release of several documentaries on current topics as well as relying on its film library to produce DVDs on "Old Hollywood" including a 2001 documentary, The Rascals - the Silent Years narrated by Tommy Bond . The company has also reverted to its original name of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.

In 2004, the company plans to release Bob's Night Out its first feature length motion picture in over 75 years and its first movie "talkie".

See also

• History of cinema
• List of Hollywood movie studios

External links

• Biograph homepage (http://www.biographcompany.com)
• Mutoscope and Biograph (http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~s-herbert/muto.htm)
• Article on Biograph (http://www.learnaboutmovieposters.com/NewSite/HISTORY/STUDIOS/Early%20Studios/BIOGRAPH/biograph.asp)