James Stuart Blackton usually known as J. Stuart Blackton, was an Anglo-American

English American

English Americans are citizens or residents of the United States whose ancestry originates wholly or partly in England....

 film producer

Film producer

A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...

 of the Silent Era

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

, the founder of Vitagraph Studios

Vitagraph Studios

American Vitagraph was a United States movie studio, founded by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. By 1907 it was the most prolific American film production company, producing many famous silent films. It was bought by Warner Bros...

 and among the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

 animation. He is considered the father of American animation.

Early life

Blackton was born in Sheffield

Sheffield

Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...

, Yorkshire

Yorkshire

Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, in 1875. At the age of ten, he and his family immigrated to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. In 1894, Blackton and two fellow English émigrés, Albert E. Smith and Ronald A. Reader, formed a partnership to break into vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

. Smith called himself the "Komikal Konjurer", Blackton was the "Komikal Kartoonist", and Reader operated an early version of the slide projector called a "magic lantern

Magic lantern

The magic lantern or Laterna Magica is an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century.-Operation:The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture , and...

". Blackton's act consisted of "lightning sketches", where Blackton drew and rapidly modified drawings on an easel pad before the audience's eyes, accompanying this with a stream of talk nearly as rapid. The act failed to make enough money and the trio broke up to get regular jobs.

Career

Blackton ended up as a reporter/artist for the New York Evening World newspaper. In 1896, Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

 publicly demonstrated the Vitascope, one of the first film projectors, and Blackton was sent to interview Edison and provide drawings of how his films were made. Eager for good publicity, Edison took Blackton out to his "Black Maria

Edison's Black Maria

The Black Maria was Thomas Edison's movie production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. It is widely referred to as America's First Movie Studio.- History :...

", the special cabin he used to do his filming, and created a film on the spot of Blackton doing a lightning portrait of Edison. The inventor did such a good job selling the art of movie-making that he talked Blackton and partner Smith into buying a print of the new film as well as nine other films, plus a Vitascope to show them to paying audiences (Reader was brought back in to run the projector).

The new act was a great success, largely despite the various things Blackton and Smith were doing between the Edison films. The next step was to start making films of their own. In this way the American Vitagraph Company was born.

During this period J. Stuart Blackton was not only running the Vitagraph studio, but also producing, directing, writing, and even starring in his films (he played the comic strip character "Happy Hooligan

Happy Hooligan

Happy Hooligan was a popular and influential early American comic strip by Frederick Burr Opper.Happy Hooligan, the first major comic strip by already celebrated cartoonist Opper, debuted with a Sunday strip on March 11, 1900 in the William Randolph Hearst newspapers, and was one of the first...

" in a series of shorts). Since profits were constantly increasing, Blackton felt that he could try any idea that sprang to his head. In a series of films, Blackton developed the concepts of animation.

The first of these films is The Enchanted Drawing

The Enchanted Drawing

The Enchanted Drawing is a silent film made in 1900. It was directed by J. Stuart Blackton, an American film producer of early silent films, the founder of Vitagraph Studios and an early animator. He also stars in the film. It was produced by Vitagraph Studios. A combination of animation and film...

, with a copyright date of 1900 but probably made at least a year earlier. In this film, Blackton the lightning artist sketches a face, cigars, and a bottle of wine. He appears to remove the last drawings as real objects, and the face appears to react. The "animation" here is of the stop-action variety (the camera is stopped, a single change is made, and the camera is then started again) first used by Méliès

Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès , full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects...

 and others.

The transition to stop-motion was apparently accidental and occurred around 1905. According to Albert Smith, one day the crew was filming a complex series of stop-action effects on the roof while steam from the building's generator was billowing in the background. On playing the film back, Smith noticed the odd effect created by the steam puffs scooting across the screen and decided to reproduce it deliberately. A few films, some lost, use this effect to represent invisible ghosts or to have toys come to life. In 1906, Blackton directed Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is a silent cartoon by J. Stuart Blackton released in 1906. It features a cartoonist drawing faces on a chalkboard, and the faces coming to life. It is generally regarded by film historians as the first animated film. It features movements as where a dog jumps through...

, which uses stop-motion as well as stick puppetry to produce a series of effects. After Blackton's hand draws two faces on a chalkboard, they appear to come to life and engage in antics. Most of the film uses life action effects instead of animation, but nevertheless this film had a huge effect in stimulating the creation of animated films in America. In Europe, the same effect was had from "The Haunted Hotel" (1907), another Vitagraph short directed by Blackton. The "Haunted Hotel" was mostly live-action, about a tourist spending the night in an inn run by invisible spirits. Most of the effects are also live-action (wires and such), but one scene of a dinner making itself was done using stop-motion, and was presented in a tight close-up that allowed budding animators to study it for technique.

Blackton made another animated film that has survived, 1907's "Lightning Sketches", but it has nothing to add to the art of animation. In 1908 he made the first American film version of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet (1908 film)

The first ever American film version of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was a silent film short made in 1908 made by Vitagraph Studios. Directed by J. Stuart Blackton, it was filmed in Central Park in Manhattan, New York....

, filmed in New York City's Central Park

Central Park

Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...

 and The Thieving Hand

The Thieving Hand

The Thieving Hand is a 1908 American silent short film. It is credited for its astounding trick photography and effects for its age. It was directed and produced by J...

, filmed in Flatbush, Brooklyn

Flatbush, Brooklyn

Flatbush is a community of the Borough of Brooklyn, a part of New York City, consisting of several neighborhoods.The name Flatbush is an Anglicization of the Dutch language Vlacke bos ....

. By 1909, Blackton was too absorbed in the business of running Vitagraph to have time for filmmaking. He came to regard his animation experiments in particular as being rather juvenile (they receive no mention in his unpublished autobiography).

Blackton left Vitagraph to go independent in 1917, but returned in 1923 as junior partner to Albert Smith. In 1925, Smith sold the company to Warner Brothers for a comfortable profit.

Blackton did quite well with his share until the Stock Market Crash of 1929, which destroyed his savings. He spent his last years on the road, showing his old films and lecturing about the days of silent movies. His daughter Violet Virginia Blackton (1910-1965) married writer Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich

Cornell George Hopley-Woolrich was an American novelist and short story writer who sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms William Irish and George Hopley....

 in 1930 but their marriage was annulled in 1933.

In the 1930s, Blackton produced letterhead that read, "Pioneer of the Movies in Association with Thomas A. Edison in 1896. Founder of the Famous Vitagraph Company of America in 1900. Producer of Countless Successful Motion Pictures. Creator of Hundreds of Screen Stars -- Commodore J. Stuart Blackton -- Presents the First Comprehensive and Authentic History of the Motion Picture in Absorbing and Entertaining Discourse Entitled -- "The Inside Story of the Movies" -- Illustrated by Rare and Priceless Historical Motion Pictures of the Screen's Greatest Stars from 1986 to the Present Day. The Glamorous Story of the Movies told by "THE DEAN OF THE SCREEN." The sidebar read, "Remember Roly-Poly and John Bunny

John Bunny

John Bunny was an American actor and was one of the first comic stars of the motion picture era. Between 1910 and his death in 1915 Bunny was one of the top stars of early silent film, as well as an early example of celebrity...

? Funny Flora Finch

Flora Finch

Flora Finch was an English-born film actress who starred in over 300 silent films, including over 200 for the Vitagraph Studios film company.-Early life and career:...

? Beautiful Florence Turner

Florence Turner

Florence Turner was an American actress, who became known as the "Vitagraph Girl" in early silent films.Born in New York City, she was pushed into appearing on the stage at age three by her ambitious mother...

? and Handsome Maurice Costello

Maurice Costello

Maurice Costello was a prominent vaudeville actor of the late 1890s and early 1900s, who later played a principal role in early American films, as both a leading man, supporting player and a director....

? These Beloved Favorites All Live Again in BLACKSTON'S (sic) FILM. This unique entertainment is endorsed by the California Federation of Woman's Clubs The Parent Teachers Assn., Universities, Press and the Public. Hollywood, Calif. Phone Hempstead 6641." In 1934, he signed and sent a letter to American Legion

American Legion

The American Legion is a mutual-aid organization of veterans of the United States armed forces chartered by the United States Congress. It was founded to benefit those veterans who served during a wartime period as defined by Congress...

 Hollywood Post 43, arranging for "The Inside Story of the Movies" (referred to in the body of the letter as "The March of the Movies") to be shown twice at the Post on Monday, January 7, 1935 at "9 or 9:15 p.m.," and Tuesday, January 8, 1935 at 8:30 p.m. "For the first evening," the letter states, "I am to receive twenty-five dollars for my services and for the second evening... an admission is to be charged and the entire proceeds are to be divided equally between Legion Post 43 and myself."

Blackton was married to actress Evangeline Wood when he was killed in a road accident in 1941. Cremated, his ashes were placed in the columbarium at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California

Glendale, California

Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...

.

External links

• Before Walt Inkwell Images, Inc. (DVD, 2006)
• Filmography at Fandango.com
  Fandango (ticket service)
  Fandango is a corporation in the United States that sells movie tickets over the telephone and Internet, enabling customers to ensure ticket availability and avoid lines at the movie theater.-Services:...