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Maybe Lowville could have been ... film famous?
Kinemacolor was the first successful color motion picture process, used commercially from 1908 to 1914. It was invented by George Albert Smith of Brighton, England in 1906. He was a magic lantern lecturer and one of the pioneers of British cinema. In 1910, Kinemacolor released the first dramatic film made in the process, Checkmated. The documentary With Our King and Queen Through India and The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1914), and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1914) were the first three and close to the last feature films made in color.
The company was never a success, partly due to the expense of installing special Kinemacolor projectors. Also, the process suffered from image "fringing" and "haloing". Kinemacolor in the U.S. became most notable when its Hollywood studio was taken over by D. W. Griffith, who also took over Kinemacolor's failed plans to film Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, which eventually became The Birth of a Nation in 1915.
Here is a reprint (on the next page) of an article in one of the 1913 December issues of “The Moving Picture.”
KINEMACOLOR TO BUILD EASTERN PLANT
It Will Be in Lowville, N. Y., Convenient to Varied Scenery of Great Beauty.
William H. Hickey, general manager of the London Kinemacolor Company, has been elected vice-president of the Kinemacolor Company of America. Mr. Hickey during the past two months has been quietly investigating the conditions for establishing a big eastern Kinemacolor Studio and manufacturing plant. He has just returned to New York City after concluding negotiations along this line. He has signed contracts for establishing at Lowville, N. Y. a plant for the eastern business of the Kinemacolor Company of America. The plans call for an outlay of over a half million dollars. Following the custom of some of the. big commercial manufactures, the Kinemacolor. Company intends to practically establish its own city, using Lowville as a basis.
Plans have been completed and building operations already started for a magnificent glass covered studio, over 300 feet in length. This studio is to be built immediately back of what is now the Lowvi1le Town Hall, a theater seating about 1,200 persons. A large section of the wall back of the stage has been removed to allow connection between the studio and the stage of the theater. Productions will be rehearsed on the stage of the theater, and then played on one of the five stages in the glass covered studio, or in the open air when the scenario, call for natural backgrounds.
Lowville is situated in a wonderfully picturesque spot in northern New York State, being a short distance from the St. Lawrence River, which will give the acting companies the benefit of the wonderful scenery, castles and water effects of this beautiful river. Special laboratories will be constructed, and experimental work in connection with the Kinemacolor process will be carried on there. Mr. Hickey has had the water analyzed and finds that it is particularly suitable for the Kinemacolor needs, especially in the sensitizing of the film. Some of the best technical men from the London Kinemacolor laboratories are on their way here now to lake their places on the Kinemacolor stall in Lowville.
Mr. Hickey says he selected Lowville owing to its wonderful natural possibilities and also for the fact that the Kinemacolor player would have the benefit of quiet, homelike surroundings while engaged in their work.
Mr. Hickey still retains his foreign interest, but intends to remain in this country for several months until all the details of the new venture are well under way. In connection with the American productions Mr. Hickey has already planned and now has under way a number of big feature productions in England and France, among them Maeterlinck’s "Bluebird" and "Mary Magdalen with Mme. Maeterlinck in the title role. A great many of the subjects made at Lowville will be placed in the regular Kinemacolor service, although a number of big productions suitable for presentation in the leading theaters will also be made.
BOB MOSHER
Bob Mosher was a television and radio scriptwriter born in Auburn, N Y on January 18, 1915. He was best known for his work on Amos and Andy, Leave It To Beaver, Bringing Up Buddy, and The Munsters, along with his co-writer Joe Connelly. Mosher graduated from Susquehanna University in 1937.
Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher first worked together at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in New York. They left the agency in 1942 to devote their talents to radio comedy writing. The duo worked on shows starring Edgar Bergen, Frank Morgan, and Phil Harris before securing jobs on the wildly popular Amos 'n' Andy program. Over a period of twelve years, they earned writers' credits on over 1,500 radio and television scripts for that series; continuing to create material for the show's radio version right up to Beaver's third year. Amos 'n' Andy is now viewed as a distorted view of racial stereotyping,
Their experience on that program helped refine a flair for extracting humor from uncomplicated likable characters that the audience could easily identify. They took a situation Connelly had observed while driving his son to parochial school and crafting it into The Private War of Major Benson, a feature starring Charlton Heston that won the pair an Academy Award nomination in 1956. It was from this real-life simplicity that Leave It To Beaver was born.
In 1957, they developed a concept for an show about children. Unlike The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, and Father Knows Best, it would be kids who served as Beaver's focal point. The stories would be told from the kids' point-of-view as Connelly and Mosher recalled it and observed it in their own children. Mosher was the father of two children and Connelly the parent of six. While all of these offspring served as sources for the show's dialogue and plot lines. Connelly's eight-year-old son Ricky was the inspiration for Beaver; his fourteen-year-old son Jay the model for Beaver's older brother Wally. They then went on to totally parody families in The Munsters.
By the way, the first season opening credit sequence of The Munsters is a great example of the way they parodied the typical family sitcoms of the time. You see Lily Munster, housewife and mother, sending her brood off for the day in the same manner June Cleaver and Donna Reed did. Lily hands each of her loved ones their packed lunches or school books as she pinches their cheeks or gives them a little motherly kiss. It became a TV institution still popular today. The writing team was also nominated for a Best Writing Academy Award in 1956 for The Private War of Major Benson.
Franchot Tone...
suave Cornell Grad
Franchot Tone was born on February 27, 1905 in Niagara Falls, New York. Tone’s career spanned 40 years and included hundreds of films, theatrical productions, radio and television appearances. He is most known as an actor but he also produced and directed.
He entered Cornell University, studying romance languages with an initial teaching goal. But he also joined Cornell's drama club, becoming its president his senior year before graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1927.
He then made his professional debut with a stock company in Buffalo. Broadway then saw him in The Belt in 1927, followed by major roles in Hotel Universe in 1930, Green Grow the Lilacs and The House of Connelly in 1931. The Gentle People in 1939, Oh, Men! Oh, Women! In 1953, and A Moon for the Misbegotten in 1957. He made his Hollywood screen debut in The Wiser Sex followed by seven more films before the end of 1933. Among those films was Today We Live in which he co-starred with his future wife Joan Crawford, playing her brother. He also appeared in the hit Bombshell with the original platinum blonde bombshell herself, Jean Harlow.
He won an Academy Award nomination in 1935 as Best Actor for his portrayal of Roger Byam in 'Mutiny On The Bounty.' Technically, Franchot's role was that of supporting actor but the category did not exist until 1936 when the Academy reviewed the situation of three actors from one film being nominated. 1935 was a notable year for two other projects -- he shot another adventure film, 'Lives Of A Bengal Lancer' with Gary Cooper and it was one of his all-time favorite roles. He also appeared in 'Dangerous' with Bette Davis.
Bette would admit to falling in love with Franchot during the filming of 'Dangerous' but his affections were won by her arch rival, Joan Crawford, who married him later that year. Tone, always dapper and aloof in a way that worked both on stage and in film was always worth watching.
Kinemacolor Pics
