|
Milestones and Turning Points in Film History The Year 1916 |
 Timeline of Greatest Film History Milestones and Turning Points (by decade and year) Introduction | Pre-1900s | 1900s | 1910s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s |
| Event and Significance | |
| D.W. Griffith's expensive follow-up film to his controversial The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the monumental historical and dramatic epic Intolerance - told with parallel cross-cutting between its four stories, symbolically linked by the image of Lillian Gish rocking a child. Each story told of intolerance and injustice in four different historical periods -- a Modern Story, a French story, a Babylonian story (with the largest set in film history up to its time), and a Biblical story. It was Griffith's attempt to defensively answer and appease his critics with a message of tolerance and good-will, following the uproar over his earlier film. Its film-making techniques would be adopted and displayed in the works of future film-makers, such as Eisenstein and Coppola. With a budget of almost $2 million (the most expensive film of all time), it became the first multi-million dollar box-office 'bomb' in film history. | |
| The Jesse L. Lasky Company merged with its friendly rival, Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company, to form the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. The corporation consolidated its production and distribution divisions with Paramount, and audiences began seeing "Paramount Pictures." [Paramount Pictures is one of the oldest American motion picture studios. Its logo - a majestic mountain peak - still remains recognizable, making it the oldest surviving Hollywood studio film logo.] | |
| Samuel Goldfish (later renamed Samuel Goldwyn) and Edgar Selwyn established the Goldwyn Company. | |
| The salary of Charlie Chaplin, filmdom's first major star, went from $125 to $10,000 weekly, when he signed on with the Mutual Film Corporation. The deal specified $10,000/week, plus $150,000 as a signing bonus. | |
| Australian-born swimming and diving champ Annette Kellermann (the "Esther Williams of the silent era" who was called "the world's most perfectly-formed woman" and billed as "the Diving Venus") had already gained attention for advocating the scandalous-at-the-time one-piece bathing suit. She caused a further stir when she was seen naked with her flowing hair under a waterfall in Daughter of the Gods (1916) - she was the first major female star to appear nude on screen. This controversial film, Kellermann's second feature film, was also the most expensive film of its decade at $1 million. | |
| Mary Pickford signed the first seven-figure (or "million dollar contract") in Hollywood, a lucrative two-year term guaranteeing $10,000/week against half of the profits, including bonuses and the right of approval of all creative aspects of her films. The contract, specifying that she would get $250,000 per film, was signed with Adolph Zukor at Paramount Pictures. | |
| The first autobiography of a movie star was silent screen star Pearl White's Just Me, published in 1916.. | |
| The earliest vampire feature film was director Arthur Robison's German silent film Nachte des Grauens (1916), aka Night of Terror, with strange, vampire-like people. | |
| Lois Weber's controversial drama Where Are My Children? was about the subject of abortion, in a story about a district attorney (Tyrone Power in an early role) who discovered that his wife had used illegal abortion services. | |
| The first film to feature an African-American actor was the short comedy film A Natural Born Gambler (1916), starring Biograph's Bert Williams, a vaudeville comedian who had become known by appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies (joining it in 1911). It was the first time that an African-American produced, wrote, directed, and starred in a film. [Note: Williams was actually born in the Bahamas, and was of mixed descent.] | |
| Thomas Ince's Civilization contained the first original full orchestral and choral film score for an American feature. It composed by American-born Victor Schertzinger (his first film credit). |
