The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema

I love learning about film history and this documentary sheds light on a fascinating chapter from the early days of the motion picture business.

Coming from the legitimate stage, Edwin and Gertrude Thanhouser sought to create films of higher quality than the nickelodeon offerings of the time. The independent Thanhouser Company, based in New Rochelle, New York (in the days before the movie industry moved out West to Hollywood), flourished for eight years in the 1910s, releasing adaptations of Shakespeare and Dickens as well as original dramas and situation comedies, and boasting a stable of popular stars.

THE THANHOUSER STUDIO AND THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN_CINEMA (2014) documents the highs and lows in the studio's short history and is chock full of film clips and vintage poster art from dozens of little-remembered silent shorts.

I caught the documentary on Turner Classic Movies, whose programming over the past few years has exposed me to early films by Georges Méliès, the Lumière brothers, Thomas Edison's company, and Mack Sennett. This film has piqued my interest in the Thanhouser movies and their stars (like the beautiful, but tragic, Florence La Badie). It was a real treat to see clips from early adaptations of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", "Cinderella", and "David Copperfield" that I never knew existed. I look forward to viewing these and other films mentioned in the doc (many of which can be found online).

As Ben Mankiewicz pointed out on TCM, this documentary was a labor of love. Ned Thanhouser has spent three decades trying to keep alive the legacy of a grandfather he never knew. To date he has found over 220 surviving films of the more than one thousand Thanhouser Company productions. (The New Rochelle studio suffered a devastating fire in 1913 and it's said that Edwin Thanhouser destroyed the company's remaining nitrate negatives after the enterprise folded in 1918.)

Ned Thanhouser hosts the documentary himself, surrounded by stacks of old film canisters, while film historians offer further insight and analysis of the Thanhouser Company and its place in the story of American cinema. Funded, at least in part, by an Indiegogo campaign, the film brings years of research to life for a general audience and should spark renewed interest in the century-old productions of Edwin and Gertrude Thanhouser and the studio they built.

The Thanhouser Studio and the Birth of American Cinema (2014)

*** (out of 4)

Entertaining, if a bit too short, documentary taking a look at the Thanhouser Studio, which was created by Edward and his wife Gertrude. The documentary covers how these two met, eventually married and the brave decision they made entering the film business without any connection. We learn that in an eight year period the studio made over a thousand films.

A lot of these early silent movies are making a comeback and several studios like Edison and Biograph are still quite popular among film buffs. The Thanhouser company has pretty much been forgotten except to the strongest film buffs. This documentary does an extremely good job at showing what made this studio different from others but the film also tells us the entire story from various disasters that hit the studio and how the ended up going out of business. The Thanhouser's grandson hosts and narrates the film as well as talks about his continuing search for the hundreds of lost films.

in 1908 Edward Thanhouser, his wife Gertrude and her brother, Lloyd Lonergan decided to open a movie production company. Thanhouser and his wife came from the theater. Lonergan was a police reporter. The Patents Trust turned down their license. The studio they founded produced more than a thousand movies over the next nine years, launched the film career of James Cruze and then was forgotten.

It was a common fate for the industry. However, the Thanhousers' grandson, Ned, has spent a couple of decades tracking down the one hundred fifty or so surviving films, making them available and creating this documentary.

Thanhouser (the studio) was an enormously ambitious studio for the era. Because of its roots, its production values were excellent, with costumes, scenery and actors drawn from the New York stage. The stories were a mix of original scripts and classics, including works of Shakespeare and Dickens.

This informative "talking heads" documentary offers some obvious errors, like referring to Cruze's THE COVERED WAGON as the first western feature (surely a surprise anyone who has seen William S. Hart's features from the previous decade). However, the production is eked out with many colorful and beautiful posters and will be of great interest to people with any interest in that turbulent era of film.