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Did
You Know...
The
first ever movie studio in the United States was Thomas Edison’s
Black Maria studio, which opened in New Jersey In 1893.
Here
Edison asked circus, vaudeville and dramatic actors to perform
for the camera, and he distributed the movies at vaudeville theatres,
penny arcades, wax museums and fairgrounds. Other studio operations
followed in New Jersey, New York City and Chicago, but by the
early 1900s, many started moving to Los Angeles, California, because
of the good weather and longer days.
The
first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios, opened
in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley.
By
the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production
companies into wealthy film industry conglomerates - who owned
their own studios, distribution divisions, and theatres, and contracted
with performers and other filmmaking personnel - led to the sometimes
confusing equation of “studio” with “production
company” in industry slang.
Five
large companies, 20th Century-Fox, MGM, Paramount, RKO and Warner
Bros., came to be known as the “Big Five”, the “majors,”
or “the Studios” in trade publications such as Variety.
In
the days of early silent films the names of the actors and actresses
appearing in the movies were not publicised or credited as they
are now. Some of these performers had to help build the sets,
clean up and carry out a variety of chores around the film studio.
But as the movie-going public became more interested in the performers,
the studios were forced to have a rethink, and started to publicise
the names of their leading men and women, and giving them billing
them in their credits.
Florence
Lawrence - referred to as “the first movie star” -
was previously known only as the “Biograph Girl” because
she worked for Biograph Studios. Mary Pickford was simply known
as “Little Mary”.
A
far-cry from Hollywood today, in which big name actors become
global icons commanding six- and even nine-figure sums per film.
The
first film actor to be paid a fee of $1,000,000 to star in a movie
was Elizabeth Taylor for Cleopatra (1963). For his appearance
in the 1978 movie Superman, movie star Marlon Brando received
almost $4,000,000 for eight minutes of screen time as Superman's
father, Jor-El. To date, Julia Roberts remains the highest paid
Hollywood actress - in her heyday commanding $20 million per film
- while the highest fee paid to any actor stands at $100 million
for Bruce Willis.
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