Timeline of Influential Milestones and Turning Points in Film History

Timeline of Influential Milestones and Important Turning Points in Film History

1910s

Herein is a detailed timeline of the key film milestones, important turning points, and significant historical dates or events (organized by decade) that have had a significant influence on the world body of cinema and shaped its development. For more detailed accounts of many items, also see this site's extensive narratives on Film History by Decade, Film Milestones in Visual and Special Effects, and a comprehensive History of the Academy Awards.

Index to Timeline of Greatest Film Milestones and Turning Points

(by decade)

Pre-1900s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s

1910s - Part 1

Year	Event and Significance
1910	Thomas Edison introduced his Kinetophone, a sound-film process which made talkies a reality. However, his attempt to combine the phonograph and motion pictures failed commercially.
1910	Carl Laemmle set up his own Independent Motion Picture Company (IMP) to counteract the Edison Trust.
1910	Laemmle introduced the star system, causing the rise of the American movie star phenomenon, by hiring now-forgotten Florence Lawrence ("The Biograph Girl"), one of Biograph's anonymous stars, and beginning a massive publicity campaign. By most accounts, Lawrence was the first US motion picture "movie star." Carl Laemmle orchestrated a shameless but spectacular, high-profile 'publicity stunt' in March of 1910, with rumors of her death in a street-car accident in St. Louis, and her subsequent resurrection at the IMP Company's St. Louis premiere of her first IMP film (The Broken Oath, aka The Broken Bath), in April of 1910. She was the first film star to make a 'personal appearance' (as a publicity stunt).
1910	The first screen credit was given to Florence Lawrence, in IMP's short crime romance The Broken Oath (aka The Broken Bath), directed by her husband Harry Solter.
1910	Dialogue titles began to appear with regularity. Studios began distributing publicity stills of actors and actresses.
1910	The first US multi-reel "feature" film was Vitagraph's five-reel Life of Moses. It was shown at a single sitting in New Orleans. Such multi-reel films weakened exhibitors' control of their programs (i.e., prior to this development, exhibitors effectively "edited" the program by arranging their selections of short films without directorial intervention.)
1910	Film companies began to move to the area later known as Hollywood. Los Angeles annexed Hollywood.
1910	The first film made in Hollywood, by Biograph and director D.W. Griffith, In Old California, was released.
1910	For the first time, Hollywood purchased the rights to adapt a novel from a publisher (Little, Brown & Company who published Helen Hunt Jackson's novel Ramona), for a D.W. Griffith film to be made in 1910.
1910	John Randolph Bray patented the cel process, pioneering true animated cartoons with structured story lines.
1910	The first movie stunt -- a man jumped into the Hudson River from a burning balloon.
1910	The first Frankenstein monster film in the US was Edison's Frankenstein, a 16-minute (one-reel) version made by the Edison Motion Picture Studios and starring Charles Ogle (uncredited) as the monster, and Mary Fuller as Frankenstein’s fiancée Elizabeth. The film was directed and written by J. Searle Dawley and filmed in the Bronx; the monster appeared misshapen and pathetic rather than horrifying in this first film adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel.In this early version, the Monster was created in a cauldron of chemicals.
1910	Vaudeville press agent William Foster launched his Foster Photoplay Company, the first African-American film production company (to produce "race films" as they were called), in Chicago. It produced primarily slapstick comedies starring black vaudeville performers.
1910	Max Factor created the first makeup formulated especially for film.
1910	The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) tried to monopolize film distribution and absorb independent distributors by setting up the General Film Company. Independent William Fox responded by making his own films.
1910	In Denmark, Fotorama introduced the multi-reel documentary film Den Hvide Slavehandel (The White Slave Trade) - one of the first examples of a vice film, and the first time film was used to study prostitution.
1911	The first US 'feature film' was released when the two parts of D. W. Griffith's Enoch Arden were screened together, running twice the normal length of films at the time. The two parts became a two-reel featurette shown in its entirety - an industry first.
1911	The first feature-length film to be released in its entirety in the US was the 69-minute fantasy/horror epic Dante's Inferno (It.) (aka L’Inferno), inspired by Dante's 14th century poem The Divine Comedy. It opened in New York on December 10, 1911 at Gane’s Manhattan Theatre. It was made by three directors Francesco Bertolini, Giuseppe de Liguoro, and Adolfo Padovan, took two years to make, and cost over $180,000.
1911	Pennsylvania became the first state to pass a film censorship law.
1911	New York Herald comic-strip animator Winsor McCay debuted the first animated cartoon, Little Nemo in Slumberland (with 4,000 hand-drawn cels), with each frame drawn individually.
1911	The first US fan magazine Motion Picture Story Magazine debuted in February. The Moving Picture World and The Motion Picture News also offered interviews and gossipy columns about the personal lives and careers of the stars.
1911	IMP star Florence Lawrence was interviewed in 1911 in Motion Picture Story Magazine - often considered the first movie star interview.
1911	The Nestor Company built the first full-time studio in a district of Los Angeles known as Hollywood. It was the first movie studio based in Hollywood. As a result of the independents desire to escape the restrictions of the MPPC, Hollywood was soon to become the motion-picture capital of the world.
1911	Credits began to appear regularly at the beginning of motion pictures.
1911	Pathe's Weekly was the first regularly-released US newsreel.
1912	Photoplay, the first true movie "fan" magazine, debuted and gave rise to the whole idea of a celebrity and fan culture. By the early 1920's, over a dozen such magazines crowded the news-stands with names like Cinema Art, Film Fun, Motion Picture Journal, Movie Weekly, Picture Play, and Screenland.
1912	Carl Laemmle merged IMP and other studios to found the Universal Pictures Company, which was to become the first major, long-lasting Hollywood studio. Mutual Film Corporation was formed. Jesse Lasky also formed the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company in partnership with his brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later renamed Goldwyn) and Cecil B. DeMille. Significantly, the independents made longer 'feature' films than the short one-reelers produced by the MPPC. By 1912, fifteen film companies were operating in Hollywood.
1912	Adolph Zukor founded an independent film studio named the Famous Players Film Corporation, with distribution arranged with a new organization named Paramount by 1914. 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.
1912	Canadian writer and actor Mack Sennett (the "King of Comedy") formed the Keystone Film Company (and Studio) in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles. The first Mack Sennett Keystone production was Cohen Collects a Debt. The first Keystone Kop film from the studio, Hoffmeyer's Legacy, was released in late 1912. Nearly every major comic performer in America worked at Keystone during this time, including Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin, in mostly slapstick comedy films.
1912	Adolph Zukor's Famous Players' first release (opening in New York City at the Lyceum Theatre) was the four-reel French import Queen Elizabeth (aka Les Amours de la Reine Élisabeth) with famous stage actress Sarah Bernhardt in the title role. It was the first full-length drama shown in the United States, and the third film to be shown in its entirety, in its US premiere in July. New York society elites attended the premiere of the film, helping to extend the film's reach (and the entire medium of film) to the upper classes.
1912	The first American serial film was the Edison Company's melodrama What Happened to Mary? (1912) (12 episodes, each consisting of one-reel), starring actress Mary Fuller. A print version of the storyline was concurrently published in McClure's Ladies' World magazine.
1912	H. A. Spanuth's five-reel production of Oliver Twist was released - it was the first US-produced feature film to last over an hour, and to be shown in its entirety.
1912	The five-reel Richard III, starring Frederick Warde, is thought to be the earliest surviving complete feature film made in the US.
1912	The rare and restored German film Night and Ice (aka In Nacht und Eis) was one of the earliest disaster films. This film was the first of many feature films about the doomed ship that sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage, after striking an iceberg. This film was made and released a few months after the RMS Titanic's actual sinking! It was of epic length (35 minutes) in comparison to other films of the time. Also that same year, Saved From the Titanic, a one reel, 10 minute film, was also released (it premiered on May 14, 1912, a month to the day after the ship collided with the iceberg) - the second film about the disaster - it was based upon actress, star and screenwriter Dorothy Gibson’s true story of her own survival.
1912	D. W. Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley was released - possibly the first gangster or organized crime film.
1912	Thomas Ince pioneered the role of film producer by devising standard production budgeting formulas and introducing a detailed shooting script.
1912	Kalmus formed the Technicolor Company to market early versions of the color process.
1912	Director Enrico Guazzoni's overblown but successful two-hour spectacle Quo Vadis? was released - one of the first films with over two hours running time. It is often considered the first successful feature-length motion picture. Italian epics would briefly dominate the international film market.
1912	William Fox established The Fox Film Foundation - soon to become one of Hollywood's foremost studios.
1912-1913	Motion pictures moved out of nickelodeons and into real theaters. The first movie palaces began to appear in 1913. Movies became longer and more expensive as movie companies started hiring the biggest names in theater to star in their movies. Motion picture acting gained respect and was no longer looked upon as degrading, due in part to greater attendance from the American middle-class. The public singled out certain actors and actresses as special favorites. Some of the actors and actresses who were the very first movie stars included cowboy actor Bronco Billy Anderson and comedian John Bunny.