William Selig
Encyclopedia
William Nicholas Selig was a pioneer of the American
motion picture industry.
performer and produced a traveling minstrel show in San Francisco while still in his late teens. One of the actors was Bert Williams
, who went on to become a leading African-American entertainer. In 1894 Selig saw Thomas Edison's
Kinetoscope
at an exhibition in Dallas, Texas
. He returned to Chicago, opened a small photography studio and began investigating how he might make his own moving pictures without paying a patent fee to Edison's company. Selig reportedly found a metalworker who had unwittingly repaired a Lumière brothers motion picture camera and with his help, developed a working system. In 1896 Selig founded the Selig Polyscope Company
in Chicago, one of the first motion picture studio
s in America. He began making actuality shorts, travelogues and industrial films for Chicago businesses.
, where he set up studio facilities in the Edendale
area of Los Angeles
with director Francis Boggs
. Southern California's weather allowed outdoor filming for most of the year and offered varied geography and settings which could stand in for far flung filming locations around the world. Los Angeles also seemed to offer geographical isolation from Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company
(MPPC), a cartel which Selig later reluctantly joined.
In 1911 Boggs was murdered by a Japanese gardener employed by the company. Selig was shot and wounded in the arm while trying to defend him.
Selig produced almost a thousand movies and was responsible for developing new film talent such as Roscoe Arbuckle along with early cowboy western stars Gilbert M. "Bronco Billy" Anderson and Tom Mix
. He also popularized the cliffhanger format through the serial The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913). The Spoilers (1914), a western set in Alaska. is often cited as his greatest success.
In 1915 the United States Supreme Court nullified all of Edison's MPPC patents, breaking the cartel and allowing increased competition. However, Selig believed short films would continue to dominate the market.
In 1916 Selig sued George Fabyan
on the grounds that profits from forthcoming films of Shakespeare's works, along with a film on "The Life of Shakespeare", would be damaged by Fabyan's assertion that Francis Bacon
was the real author of Shakespeare's work, a popular claim at the time. He had already obtained an injunction stopping the publication of a book by Fabyan on the subject, in which Fabyan promoted the discovery of ciphers in Shakespeare's plays, identified in his private laboratory Fabyan Villa
. Selig was hoping to capitalise on the celebrations organised for the upcoming 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, scheduled for April 1916. A Cook Country
Circuit Court
judge
, Richard Tuthill, found against Shakespeare. He determined that the ciphers identified by Fabyan's analyst Elizabeth Wells Gallup
were authentic and that Francis Bacon was therefore the author of the works. Damages of $5,000 were awarded to Fabyan for the interference with the publication of the book. In the ensuing uproar, Tuthill rescinded his decision, and another judge, Judge Frederick A. Smith, dismissed the ruling. It was later suggested by the press that the case was concocted by both parties for publicity, since Selig and Fabyan were known to be old friends. An official of the Selig Company was quoted as saying, about the initial loss of the case, "Isn't that sad. That will be about nine million columns of publicity, won't it?"
, stocked with hundreds of animals he had collected for his studio's jungle pictures and cliffhangers. He also moved his studio there. Meanwhile World War I
began cutting into profits from Selig Polyscope's extensive European operations and, as the war ended, the film industry moved towards more expensively produced full length feature films. Under these circumstances, Selig Polyscope was unable to compete and closed down in 1918.
Nonetheless, he had great hopes for the zoo. Over thirty years before Walt Disney
built Disneyland, Selig made plans to expand it into a major amusement park and resort called Selig Zoo Park, with many mechanical rides, a hotel, large swimming area, theatres and restaurants, believing thousands of visitors a day would flock to the location. However, only a single carousel was ever built and the crowds never came. A business which ten years earlier had been one of the most prolific and widely known movie studios in the world had, in effect, become a struggling zoo on the other side of downtown Los Angeles from Hollywood's booming post World War I
film industry. Although for a time he was able to rent space on the lot for wild animal "location" shooting and other projects, this side of the business quickly dwindled into an animal rental service.
. He then became a literary agent, re-selling story rights to film properties he had produced or acquired years before.
William Selig died on July 15, 1948. His ashes were stored in the Hall of Memory Columbarium at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory
in Los Angeles.
at 6116 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1947 Selig and several other early movie producers and directors shared a special Academy Honorary Award
to acknowledge their role in building the film industry.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
motion picture industry.
Biography
Selig was raised in Chicago. He worked as a vaudevilleVaudeville
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...
performer and produced a traveling minstrel show in San Francisco while still in his late teens. One of the actors was Bert Williams
Bert Williams
Egbert Austin "Bert" Williams was one of the preeminent entertainers of the Vaudeville era and one of the most popular comedians for all audiences of his time. He was by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920...
, who went on to become a leading African-American entertainer. In 1894 Selig saw Thomas Edison's
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...
Kinetoscope
Kinetoscope
The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic...
at an exhibition in Dallas, Texas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
. He returned to Chicago, opened a small photography studio and began investigating how he might make his own moving pictures without paying a patent fee to Edison's company. Selig reportedly found a metalworker who had unwittingly repaired a Lumière brothers motion picture camera and with his help, developed a working system. In 1896 Selig founded the Selig Polyscope Company
Selig Polyscope Company
The Selig Polyscope Company was an American motion picture company founded in 1896 by William Selig in Chicago, Illinois. Selig Polyscope is noted for establishing Southern California's first permanent movie studio, in the historic Edendale district of Los Angeles...
in Chicago, one of the first motion picture studio
Movie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
s in America. He began making actuality shorts, travelogues and industrial films for Chicago businesses.
Heyday as a producer
In 1909 Selig was the first producer to expand film-making operations to the West CoastWest Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
, where he set up studio facilities in the Edendale
Edendale, Los Angeles, California
Edendale is a historical name for a district in Los Angeles, California, northwest of Downtown Los Angeles, in what is known today as Echo Park, Los Feliz and Silver Lake....
area of Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
with director Francis Boggs
Francis Boggs
Francis W. Boggs was a stage actor and pioneer silent film director. He was one of the first to direct a film in Hollywood.-Biography:...
. Southern California's weather allowed outdoor filming for most of the year and offered varied geography and settings which could stand in for far flung filming locations around the world. Los Angeles also seemed to offer geographical isolation from Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company
Motion Picture Patents Company
The Motion Picture Patents Company , founded in December 1908, was a trust of all the major American film companies , the leading film distributor and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak...
(MPPC), a cartel which Selig later reluctantly joined.
In 1911 Boggs was murdered by a Japanese gardener employed by the company. Selig was shot and wounded in the arm while trying to defend him.
Selig produced almost a thousand movies and was responsible for developing new film talent such as Roscoe Arbuckle along with early cowboy western stars Gilbert M. "Bronco Billy" Anderson and Tom Mix
Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features...
. He also popularized the cliffhanger format through the serial The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913). The Spoilers (1914), a western set in Alaska. is often cited as his greatest success.
In 1915 the United States Supreme Court nullified all of Edison's MPPC patents, breaking the cartel and allowing increased competition. However, Selig believed short films would continue to dominate the market.
In 1916 Selig sued George Fabyan
George Fabyan
George Fabyan was a millionaire businessman who founded a private research laboratory. Fabyan's laboratory pioneered modern cryptography, though its initial findings, supporting Fabyan's belief that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays, were later disproven by the cryptographers who trained...
on the grounds that profits from forthcoming films of Shakespeare's works, along with a film on "The Life of Shakespeare", would be damaged by Fabyan's assertion that Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
was the real author of Shakespeare's work, a popular claim at the time. He had already obtained an injunction stopping the publication of a book by Fabyan on the subject, in which Fabyan promoted the discovery of ciphers in Shakespeare's plays, identified in his private laboratory Fabyan Villa
Fabyan Villa
Fabyan Villa was the home of George and Nelle Fabyan from c. 1908 to 1939. The house is notable because of its remodelling in 1907 by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was the centerpiece of the Fabyans country estate, which they named Riverbank...
. Selig was hoping to capitalise on the celebrations organised for the upcoming 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, scheduled for April 1916. A Cook Country
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, with its county seat in Chicago. It is the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County. The county has 5,194,675 residents, which is 40.5 percent of all Illinois residents. Cook County's population is larger than...
Circuit Court
Circuit court
Circuit court is the name of court systems in several common law jurisdictions.-History:King Henry II instituted the custom of having judges ride around the countryside each year to hear appeals, rather than forcing everyone to bring their appeals to London...
judge
Judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as part of a panel of judges. The powers, functions, method of appointment, discipline, and training of judges vary widely across different jurisdictions. The judge is supposed to conduct the trial impartially and in an open...
, Richard Tuthill, found against Shakespeare. He determined that the ciphers identified by Fabyan's analyst Elizabeth Wells Gallup
Elizabeth Wells Gallup
Elizabeth Wells Gallup was an American educator and exponent of the Baconian theory of Shakespearian authorship....
were authentic and that Francis Bacon was therefore the author of the works. Damages of $5,000 were awarded to Fabyan for the interference with the publication of the book. In the ensuing uproar, Tuthill rescinded his decision, and another judge, Judge Frederick A. Smith, dismissed the ruling. It was later suggested by the press that the case was concocted by both parties for publicity, since Selig and Fabyan were known to be old friends. An official of the Selig Company was quoted as saying, about the initial loss of the case, "Isn't that sad. That will be about nine million columns of publicity, won't it?"
Zoo
At great expense, Selig created a zoo in East Los AngelesEast Los Angeles (region)
East Los Angeles is the portion of the City of Los Angeles that lies east of Downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles River and the unincorporated areas of Lincoln Heights, west of the San Gabriel Valley, East Los Angeles and City Terrace, south of Cypress Park, and north of Vernon, California and...
, stocked with hundreds of animals he had collected for his studio's jungle pictures and cliffhangers. He also moved his studio there. Meanwhile World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
began cutting into profits from Selig Polyscope's extensive European operations and, as the war ended, the film industry moved towards more expensively produced full length feature films. Under these circumstances, Selig Polyscope was unable to compete and closed down in 1918.
Nonetheless, he had great hopes for the zoo. Over thirty years before Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
built Disneyland, Selig made plans to expand it into a major amusement park and resort called Selig Zoo Park, with many mechanical rides, a hotel, large swimming area, theatres and restaurants, believing thousands of visitors a day would flock to the location. However, only a single carousel was ever built and the crowds never came. A business which ten years earlier had been one of the most prolific and widely known movie studios in the world had, in effect, become a struggling zoo on the other side of downtown Los Angeles from Hollywood's booming post World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
film industry. Although for a time he was able to rent space on the lot for wild animal "location" shooting and other projects, this side of the business quickly dwindled into an animal rental service.
Post-war
Selig did some work as an independent producer and expedition promoter into the 1930s but ultimately lost the zoo and his assets during the Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. He then became a literary agent, re-selling story rights to film properties he had produced or acquired years before.
William Selig died on July 15, 1948. His ashes were stored in the Hall of Memory Columbarium at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory
Chapel of the Pines Crematory
Chapel of the Pines Crematory is a crematory and columbarium located at 1605 South Catalina Street Los Angeles, California, in the historic West Adams District a short distance southwest of Downtown...
in Los Angeles.
Legacy
For his contributions to the motion picture industry William Selig has a star on the Hollywood Walk of FameHollywood Walk of Fame
The Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
at 6116 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1947 Selig and several other early movie producers and directors shared a special Academy Honorary Award
Academy Honorary Award
The Academy Honorary Award, instituted in 1948 for the 21st Academy Awards , is given by the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to celebrate motion picture achievements that are not covered by existing Academy Awards, although prior winners of...
to acknowledge their role in building the film industry.
External links
- The William Selig Collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesThe Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
. - Brief history of the Selig Zoo and Movie Studio in Lincoln Heights