Thanhouser Company
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The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema
A fifty minute documentary recounting the remarkable tale of one of America's pioneering independent motion picture studios during the first decade of the twentieth century. Based in New Rochelle, New York, the studio produced over one thousand films that were seen by...Watch Movie
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The Coffin Ship
A love story filmed in Long Island Sound with a stowaway and a shipwreck. Because of 1911 production convention, a sprawling adventure is truncated to one-reel length. Good location work, a strength of Thanhouser pictures, creates a visually strong seagoing story. Long Island Sound locations were...Watch Movie
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A Dog's Love
The fantasy centers on a dog and a child, a universally appealing movie subject. The loyal dog's attachment to his little girl playmate is treated with pictorial beauty and simple, honest sentiment. Reviewers of the time praised the double-exposure passages for their dramatic effectiveness. Baby...Watch Movie
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Zudora Episode #2: The Mystery of the Sleeping House
A mysterious and exotic secret society conducts elaborate ceremonies in American suburbia with the kidnapped heroine Zudora who they want to marry off to their leader as a substitute for the real princess who was taken by a rival tribe back in India. The sets range from cheap...Watch Movie
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She
This sensational popular story was one of three Haggard novels filmed by Thanhouser. It has many of the elements found in the not-yet-invented adventure/fantasy serial genre. Thanhouser’s expertise in location work, costume fantasy, and elaborate storytelling pay off in in SHE, the studio’s first...Watch Movie
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Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
James Cruze featured as Jekyll/Hyde in this second U.S. film version of the classic novel by Robert Lewis Stevenson. This famous tale, made even more sensational by Richard Mansfield's stage performance, was filmed in at least nine silent versions. Thanhouser's was the second...Watch Movie
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The Star of Bethlehem
Biblical tale about the birth of Christ told with a cast of 100's. Thanhouser's ambitious STAR OF BETHLEHEM was one of the first steps toward true feature-length films (more than two reels long). It appeared the year before the Italian epic QUO VADIS? was screened in the U....Watch Movie
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The Woman in White
In its last two years of production Thanhouser concentrated on multi-reel features of high quality. Lloyd Lonergan’s scenarios were the foundation for the attention to quality, whether with original stories or with adaptations like THE WOMAN IN WHITE. Stylistic and technical...Watch Movie
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The World and the Woman
THE WORLD AND THE WOMAN is historically important as the screen debut of legendary actress Jeanne Eagels. The role of a prostitute turned faith healer is suitably challenging for the star. Edwin Thanhouser began phasing down production at the studio in early 1917, so this is a...Watch Movie
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In de Tropische Zee
In April through June of 1914 a joint project by Thanhouser and the Williamson Submarine Company produced some 20,000 feet of underwater footage in the Bahamas. Carl Louis Gregory, an important cinematographer in film history, was the Thanhouser cameraman, using the...Watch Movie
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The Elusive Diamond
A one-reel crime drama with crooks, ruses, kidnapping, escape and a twist, all wrapped in a coherent narrative. Screenwriter Lloyd Lonergan’s amazing versatility served equally well in several genres. There is successful pictorial telling of the setup and attempted theft, and...Watch Movie
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Joseph in the Land of Egypt
The second of “Thanhouser Big Productions,” a monthly schedule, Joseph in the Land of Egypt was a true “feature” film, a new class of film which came to dominate the market by the end of 1914. A feature was an hour or more, heavily advertised, with elaborate production...Watch Movie
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The Vicar of Wakefield
Edwin Thanhouser and Lloyd F. Lonergan, who wrote or supervised screenplays for hundreds of Thanhouser films, often turned to classic plays and novels for quality source material. THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD was an enormously popular English novel for 150 years, offering a complex...Watch Movie
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Just a Shabby Doll
A relatively complex original romantic story is squeezed onto only one reel, but this was the last year that such a constraint was taken for granted. Of special interest here are the 1913 New York City backgrounds. In 1913 the inter-titles became more frequent and, for the...Watch Movie
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The Cry of the Children
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN is the most famous and best documented of all Thanhouser films. In its day it was recognized as one of the most important expressions of the pre-World War One reform movement, in particular child labor. Perhaps because the uncompromising content drew...Watch Movie
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Seven Ages of an Alligator
Documentary footage showing the alligator in several stages of growth, from babyhood to a ripe old age; a film taken at an alligator farm in California. In early 1913 as Thanhouser staff and crews were setting up a facility in Los Angeles, cameraman Carl Louis Gregory was...Watch Movie
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The Vagabonds
THE VAGABONDS source is a different kind of classic, a poem by an influential and prolific writer of inspirational and cautionary stories for children, particularly boys. THE VAGABONDS is a series of flashbacks where a penniless, friendless tramp relates the story of his downfall due to drink....Watch Movie
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Shep's Race with Death
If you thought Lassie had little to draw on in way of predecessors, there's a revelation in store in this silent 1914 melodrama and its titular star, a fun-loving collie who appeared in several Thanhouser films in 1914 and 1915 and who here proves fully capable of outwitting a...Watch Movie
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The Farmer's Daughters
The daughters of the farmer do some very good character work fooling young college graduates who are bent on matrimony. Incidental glimpses of American farm life considerably enhance the value of the film. The one-reel light comedy was a specialty of Thanhouser, as were...Watch Movie
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The Little Girl Next Door
The “Thanhouser Twins,” Marion and Madeline Fairbanks, are featured in this tragic drama with a moral lesson. Although limited by the constraints of one-reel storytelling, the scenario (the first by Philip Lonergan, the brother of story department head Lloyd Lonergan) is a...Watch Movie
