"Made for the masses with an appeal to the classes": The triangle film corporation and the failure of highbrow film culture

Cinema Journal

Volumn 44, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 3-33

  King, Rob ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 49749105862     PISSN: 00097101     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cj.2005.0009     Document Type: Review

References (112)

1. Harry Aitken, "Out of Quantity - Quality," Moving Picture World, July 11, 1914, 211
2. According to the trade press, Aitken was voted out as the president of Mutual on June 23, 1915. See, for example, "J. R. Freuler Succeeds Aitken as Mutual Head," Motion Picture News, July 3, 1915, 57-58. Extant documents show that Aitken had made up his mind to leave Mutual several weeks earlier, having finalized plans for the merger with Kessel and Baumann by early June. In a confidential letter to Mack Sennett dated June 4, Charles Baumann outlined those plans in detail, noting in passing that "Aitken intends to resign from the Mutual after June 16th." Baumann to Sennett, June 4, 1915, correspondence folder (1915-19), general files, Mack Sennett Collection, Margaret Herrick Library
3. "Triangle Completes First Releasing Plan," Motion Picture News, September 4, 1915, 41-42
4. For more about Triangle's corporate structure, see Kalton C. Lahne, Dreams for Sale: The Rise and Fall of the Triangle Film Corporation (South Brunswick, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1971), chap. 3
5. Baumann to Sennett, correspondence folder (1915-19), Mack Sennett Collection, Margaret Herrick Library
6. Janet Wasko, Movies and Money (Norwood, N.Y.: Ablex, 1982), 11
7. and Richard Koszarski, An Evenings Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 63-69
8. See Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), esp. chaps. 2 and 3
9. Sumiko Higashi, Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: The Silent Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 9
10. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899, reprint; New York: Random House, 1934), 167
11. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Continuum, 2001 [1944]), 124
12. Sidney Lee, "Shakespeare and the Modern Stage," Little's Living Age, February 10, 1900, 541
13. quoted in William Uricchio and Roberta Pearson, Reframing Culture: The Case of the Vitagraph Quality Films (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 85
14. Lewis Erenberg, Steppin' Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), 39
15. Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 84
16. For newer patterns of spending among the middle classes, see Daniel Horowitz, The Morality of Spending: Attitudes toward the Consumer Culture in America, 1875-1940 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), chap. 6
17. Harry Aitken, quoted in Al P. Nelson and Mel R. Jones, A Silent Siren Song: The Aitken Brothers' Hollywood Odyssey, 1905-1926 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000), 8
18. Harry Aitken to D. W. Griffith, April 15, 1914, D. W. Griffith Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, quoted in Richard Schickel, D. W. Griffith: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 211
19. Roy E. Aitken, with Al P. Nelson, The Birth of a Nation Story (Middleburg, Va.: Delinger, 1965), 33, 38
20. "The Great Triangle Idea - Its Full Scope and Purpose," The Triangle, October 23, 1915, 1
21. and "Editorial," The Triangle, October 23, 1915, 2
22. Keystone's production expenses are calculated from Keystone Film Company journal, September 1912-October 1915, and Keystone Film Company journal, November 1915-December 1922, Aitken Brothers Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society. Other production figures are from Lahue, Dreams for Sale, 85, 127
23. "Local Theatre Owners Start Big Special Letter-Writing Campaign," The Triangle, April 15, 1916, 1; emphasis added
24. "Movies Take over the Knickerbocker," New York Times, September 24, 1915, 11
25. Even in the early 1920s, the majority of theaters in the United States still charged less than a quarter for an evening show, while those charging a dollar or more accounted for less than 1 percent of all exhibition venues. See Koszarski, An Evening's Entertainment, 15
26. Triangle was far from the first motion picture company to organize a gala event for the screening of its product. As Lary May argues, the idea of the gala premiere "was brought to the movies [from the legitimate theater] almost without alteration starting about 1913." May, Screening out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 158
27. "Movies Take over the Knickerbocker," New York Times, 11
28. and "Flickerings from Film Land," Chicago Tribune, October 4, 1915, 14
29. "Two-Dollar Admission Price Is Triangle's Aim," Motion Picture News, August 14, 1915, 43
30. My discussion of Triangle's theatrical stars, both here and in the following paragraphs, combines my own research with material from the following secondary sources: Aitken and Nelson, The Birth of a Nation Story, 72-73
31. Lahue, Dreams for Sale, 56-60, 134-48
32. Nelson and Jones, A Silent Siren Song, 166-69
33. and Anthony Slide, The Kindergarten of the Movies: A History of the Fine Arts Company (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1980), chaps. 4 and 7
34. Further information on star salaries during this period can be found in Koszarski, An Evening's Entertainment, 114-16
35. "Sir Herbert Tree Dead," Variety, July 6, 1917, 4
36. Advertisement for Keystone Film Company, Motion Picture News, May 22, 1915, 84-85
37. For a concise overview of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company, see Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 225-27
38. D. W. Griffith, "Fine Arts Making Film Test 'Twixt Star and Legit," Variety, September 24, 1915, 17
39. Review of Macbeth, Variety, June 9, 1916, 23
40. Julian Johnson, "The Shadow Stage," Photoplay, September 1916, 127
41. Review of The Coward, Moving Picture World, October 16, 1915, 441
42. My description of Fatty and the Broadway Stars - a lost film - is based on production files for the film held in the Mack Sennett Collection, Margaret Herrick Library
43. Louis Reeves Harrison, "Her Painted Hero," Moving Picture World, October 30, 1915, 809
44. "What They Really Get - NOW!" Photoplay, March 1916, 29
45. Charles Kessel to Joe Weber and Lew Fields, April 14, 1916, Aitken Brothers Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society
46. Tree died suddenly from complications arising from knee surgery. See "Sir Herbert Tree Dead," 4
47. Stuart Hall, "Notes on Deconstructing 'The Popular,'" in Raphael Samuel, ed., People's History and Socialist Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 235, 239
48. "The Great Triangle Idea," 7
49. For more on the declining fortunes of Triangle's theaters, see Lahue, Dreams for Sale, chap. 5. The class composition of early film audiences has, of course, been a subject of much controversy. At the risk of oversimplifying, that debate has been waged between two basic positions - on the one hand, a traditional understanding of early cinema as a predominantly lower-class amusement and, on the other, a revisionist interpretation of the centrality of the middle-class audience. The key proponents of the revisionist position argue that nickelodeons attracted a middle-class audience virtually from the start
50. See, for example, Robert C. Allen, "Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906-1912: Beyond the Nickelodeon," Cinema Journal 17, no. 3 (spring 1979): 2-15
51. and Russell Merritt, "Nickelodeon Theaters, 1905-1914: Building an Audience for the Movies," in Tino Balio, ed., The American Film Industry (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 83-102. Ben Singer has recently queried the evidential basis for many of Allen's claims, arguing that moviegoers remained largely lower class during the teens
52. See Singer, "Manhattan Nickelodeons." Social historians tend to support Singer's findings, indicating that, in urban areas at least, regular middle-class movie attendance occurred at a significantly later date than has generally been assumed. Roy Rosenzweig, for example, suggests that filmgoing was a working-class recreation until at least 1914, while Lizabeth Cohen and Steven J. Ross argue that it was not until the 1920s that the film industry successfully expanded its audience base beyond the lower rungs of the white-collar workforce. Ross cites evidence to suggest that, even as late as 1924, film audiences were still chiefly composed of those from "poor or only moderately well off backgrounds. See Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), chap. 3
53. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 146 and chap. 7
54. and Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), chap. 8
55. For further critique of the revisionist position, see Robert Sklar, "Oh! Althusser! Historiography and the Rise of Cinema Studies," Radical History Review 41 (spring 1988): 10-35
56. Receipts for the Knickerbocker are calculated from the Triangle Film Corporation cash book, 1915, Aitken Brothers Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society
57. "Rothapfel Takes Hold of Knickerbocker Theatre," Motion Picture News, January 22, 1916, 347
58. "Hearing in Knickerbocker Theatre Suit Postponed," Motion Picture News, February 19, 1916, 974
59. and "Loew Gets Knickerbocker, New York," Motion Picture News, June 17, 1916, 3729
60. Receipts are calculated from Triangle's cash books for 1915 and for November 1, 1915, to April 22, 1916, Aitken Brothers Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society
61. Paul DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America," Media, Culture, and Society 1 (January 1982): 33-50
62. "Local Theatre Owners," 1
63. and "Exhibitors Tell Why They Bought Triangle," The Triangle, November 6, 1915, 1, 7
64. Letter quoted in "Editorial," The Triangle, February 12, 1916, 2
65. See Cohen, Making a New Deal, 120-47
66. My overview of Triangle's New York theaters is compiled from the following Triangle reports: "Editorial," February 12, 2
67. "Ten Big Theatres Signed Up in One Week by New York Office," April 8, 1
68. "Rothapfel Opens Two Million Dollar Rialto with Triangle," April 29, 1, 3
69. "Triangle Conspicuous in Columns of Dailies," May 20, 2
70. and "Activities at 14 Theatres on Broadway," June 3, 8
71. Data on Triangle's Chicago exhibition are drawn from theater listings in the Chicago Tribune, February to April 1916, and from the following 1916 Triangle, articles: "Biggest Chicago Theatre Owners Talk Triangle," January 29, 1, 7
72. "Triangle Scores New Triumph in Chicago," March 4, 2
73. "Chicago Strand Opens with Triangle Plays," April 8, 3
74. and "Exhibitors Organizing Local Advertising Clubs," May 6, 2
75. For useful statistics on Chicago land use during this period, see Homer Hoyt, One Hundred Years of Land Values in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933)
76. and "Exhibitors' Forum," The Triangle, August 26, 1916, 8
77. Financial figures are drawn from the Triangle Film Corporation cash record, April 29, 1916, to July 28, 1917, Aitken Brothers Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society
78. The question of open versus program booking was keenly debated in the film industry during this period. Numerous exhibitors and industry commentators began to vent their opposition to the restrictive booking policies that companies like Paramount and Triangle were beginning to introduce. The Motion Picture News addressed this growing discontent with a series of articles during October and November 1916 in which exhibitors and industry leaders (including Adolph Zukor and Lewis J. Selznick) answered the question "Open Booking or the Program - Which?" See Motion Picture News, October 14, 2351; October 21, 2515; October 28, 2655; November 4, 2813; and November 11, 2969
79. For a more detailed account of the events described in this paragraph, see Lahue, Dreams for Sale, chaps. 10 and 11
80. Harry Aitken to Mack Sennett, September 28, 1916, Mack Sennett Collection, Margaret Herrick Library
81. "New Triangle Exchange Proposition," Moving Picture World, October 14, 1916, 214
82. Strand Amusement Co. to Mack Sennett, January 15, 1917, correspondence file (1915-19), general files, Mack Sennett Collection, Margaret Herrick Library
83. Untitled document consisting of excerpts from letters written by Triangle exhibitors, correspondence file (1915-19), general files, Mack Sennett Collection, Margaret Herrick Library
84. For discussion of the disintegration of the genteel tradition, see T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), chap. 1
85. and Joan Rubin, The Making of Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992) intro. and chap. 1
86. Francis G. Couvares, "The Triumph of Commerce: Class Culture and Mass Culture in Pittsburgh," in Michael H. Frisch and Daniel J. Walkowitz, eds., Working-Class America: Essays on Labor; Community, and American Society (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 123-52
87. The contractual provision that Fairbanks's productions would be supervised by Griffith is described in "Fairbanks Endeavors to Break Contract with Triangle," Motion Picture News, January 27, 1917, 546
88. For more on Fairbanks's career at Triangle, see May, Screening out the Past, chap. 5
89. and Slide, The Kindergarten of the Movies, chap. 5
90. "Movies Take Over the Knickerbocker," 11
91. Lears, No Place of Grace, 48
92. See also Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Knopf, 1977)
93. See Warren Susman, "'Personality' and the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture," in Susman, Culture as History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 271-85
94. Fairbanks, quoted in Slide, The Kindergarten of the Movies, 44. My reading of Fairbanks's films is suggested by Lary May's persuasive interpretation of the star's significance in the changing climate of middle-class culture. As May argues, the role of sport and physicality in Fairbanks's films and published writings helped negotiate transitions under way in middle-class morality: an emphasis on physical training kept alive the parental ethics of temperance and discipline yet "allowed men to break from the overly routinized economy and the stifling family and revive the chancy, gambling, and instinctual side of life."
95. "Books Worth Having," Los Angeles Citizen, June 1, 1917, 8
96. and review of The Matrimaniac, Variety, December 8, 1916, 28
97. Gish, quoted in May, Screening out the Past, 73
98. and Griffith, quoted in Aitken and Nelson, The Birth of a Nation Story, 75
99. Griffith quoted in Slide, The Kindergarten of the Movies, 17
100. The question of Griffith's actual contributions to the Fine Arts output is a thorny one, which both Richard Schickel and Anthony Slide discuss in detail. "Throughout the Triangle year," Schickel observes, "Griffith contributed stories and some directorial moments to the program pictures (a credit reading 'Adapted from Granville Warwick's novel' signified a Griffith story idea, though of course no novels ever existed) and distractedly tried to fulfill his supervisory obligations to Aitken." Schickel, D. W. Griffith, 304
101. also see Slide, The Kindergarten of the Movies, chap. 2
102. "Movies Take Over," 11
103. Editorial, Chicago Tribune
104. quoted in "Great Newspaper Is Opposed to Its Critic," The Triangle, November 6, 1915, 1
105. "Three Companies for Keystone, Making Fifteen," Motion Picture, News, March 25, 1916, 1730
106. Financial information from Keystone Film Company journal, November 1915 to December 1922, Aitken Brothers Collection, Wisconsin State Historical Society
107. See Rubin, The Making of Middlebrow Culture, chap. 1
108. On DeMille's sex comedies, see Higashi, Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture, chap. 6
109. D. W. Griffith to Harry Aitken, October 16, 1916, D. W. Griffith Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, quoted in Schickel, D. W. Griffith, 338
110. Aitken and Nelson, The Birth of a Nation Story, 12-13
111. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, vol. 2, trans. Ephraim Fischoff (1924, reprint; New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 937. I am indebted to Paul DiMaggio for this reference to Weber. See DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston," 36
112. Aitken and Nelson, The Birth of a Nation Story, 83