The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company sent Chaplin an offer of $ 1, 250 a week with a signing bonus of $ 10, 000.

The " Edison Trust ", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay Studios, Kalem Company, George Kleine Productions, Lubin Studios, Georges Méliès, Pathé, Selig Studios, and Vitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution through the General Film Company.

The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture studio.

* Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum

* David Kiehn, Broncho Billy and the Essanay Film Company, Farwell Books, 2003.

* Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum Fremont, CA

it: Essanay Film Manufacturing Company

It was a seven-reel silent film by Essanay Film Manufacturing Co. directed by Arthur Berthelet.

For the past nine years, Niles ( now part of Fremont ), California, site of the western Essanay Studios, has held an annual " Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival.

In 1916, Linder was approach by American film producer George K. Spoor, the president of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, to make twelve short films for him in the US at a salary of $ 5, 000 a week.

Earlier that year Charlie Chaplin, then the most popular comedian in the world, had left Essanay for more money and independence at Mutual Film and Spoor wanted to replace Chaplin with Max Linder.

At the canyon's western mouth, Essanay Film Company had a studio located in Niles from 1912 – 1916, where Charlie Chaplin made The Tramp and a few other films in early 1915.

The " Edison Trust ,” as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay Studios, Kalem Company, George Kleine Productions, Lubin Studios, Georges Méliès, Pathé, Selig Studios, and Vitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution through the General Film Company.

His Hollywood career began in 1909 as a lab assistant with the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Chicago.

This film was not an official Chaplin film, even though it has many Chaplin directed scenes ; it was edited together out of outtakes and newly shot footage by the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, with Leo White as director for the new scenes.

The companies concerned were Pathé, Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Lubin, Selig, Essanay, Kalem, and the Kleine Optical Company, a major importer of European films.

The Motion Picture Patents Company ( MPPC, also known as the Edison Trust ), founded in December 1908, was a trust of all the major American film companies ( Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, Kalem, American Star, American Pathé ), the leading film distributor ( George Kleine ) and the biggest supplier of raw film stock, Eastman Kodak.

Lawrence and Solter began to look elsewhere for work, writing to the Essanay Company to offer their services as leading lady and director.

In 1912, she had her first taste of the movie industry by selling a script for $ 25 to the Essanay Company, once the home of Charlie Chaplin.

In 1915, the Lubin company entered into an agreement with Vitagraph Studios, Selig Polyscope Company, and Essanay Studios to form a film distribution partnership.

Lester then embarked on a film career in 1912 with the Chicago-based Selig Polyscope Company then joined Essanay Studios in 1914.

The Essanay building in Chicago was later taken over by independent producer Norman Wilding, who made industrial films.

The next step, in which two actors facing each other are shown in successive close shots from taken opposite directions towards each of them, is first to be seen at the end of 1911 in The Loafer, made by Arthur Mackley for Essanay.

Essanay was originally located at 496 Wells Street ( modern numbering: 1300 N. Wells ).

Chaplin made 14 short comedies for Essanay in 1915, at both the Chicago and Niles studios, plus a cameo appearance in one of the Broncho Billy westerns.

Chaplin's stock company at Essanay included Ben Turpin, who disliked working with the meticulous Chaplin and only appeared with him in a couple of films ; ingenue Edna Purviance, who became his off-screen sweetheart as well ; Leo White, almost always playing a fussy continental villain ; and all-purpose authority figures Bud Jamison and John Rand.

* San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, 21 Sep 1980, magazine section p. 54, about Essanay ( Spoor & Aronson ) studios at Niles, California

Essanay Studios was within walking distance of the Northwestern L, which ran right past the Howey residence ( they occupied at least two residences between 1910 and 1916: 4161 Sheridan and 4942 Sheridan ).

* The Prince of Graustark was made as a film in 1916 at the Chicago Essanay Studios, and is of note because it is claimed that Colleen Moore has a quick, uncredited role as a maid in the background of one scene.

He just left Niles Essanay Studio after doing five films at that location.

It was his third film while at the Niles Essanay Studio.

Chaplin's contract with Essanay ended at the beginning of 1916 when he went to Mutual ; Police ( 1916 film ), released on May 27, was his last authorized title with the company.

Essanay created Triple Trouble, their last " new " Chaplin comedy, by taking at least one — and perhaps two — sequences that had been intended for the unfinished Life, bridging them with outtakes from Police, and through borrowing the ending from Work ( 1915 film ).

The Essanay description of Police filed with the Library of Congress at the time of copyright on May 12, 1916 indicates a deleted scene similar to the content in Triple Trouble: " goes to a lodging house and in order to save his dollar from thieves puts it in his mouth, swallowing it while he sleeps.

Kalem operated in these Southern California locations until October 1913 when they took over the Essanay Studios property at 1425 Fleming Street ( now, Hoover Street ) in east Hollywood.

However, he had a strong interest in the fledgling motion picture industry and when Essanay Studios offered him the opportunity to become a scriptwriter, he took the job.

As his Essanay contract came to an end, and fully aware of his popularity, Chaplin requested a $ 150, 000 signing bonus from his next studio.

Anderson (" Broncho Billy "), directing his own Western dramas for Essanay, but in 1911 Tom Mix brought the kind of costumes and stunt action used in live Wild West shows to Selig film productions, and became the biggest cowboy star for the next two decades.

Essanay specialized in Westerns featuring " Broncho Billy " Anderson, and Kalem sent Sidney Olcott off with a film crew and a troupe of actors to various places in America and abroad to make film stories in the actual places they were supposed to have happened.

Exhausted by the lawsuits, Edison's competitors — Essanay, Kalem, Pathé Frères, Selig, and Vitagraph — approached him in 1907 to negotiate a licensing agreement, which Lubin was also invited to join.

Edison, Biograph, Essanay, and Vitagraph did not release their first features until 1914, after dozens, if not hundreds, of feature films had been released by independents.

In 1913, he moved to Chicago to work for Essanay Studios, cast as Sweedie, The Swedish Maid, a masculine character in drag.

Later, he worked for the Essanay Studios location in Niles, California.

* December 14 – ( b. June 20, 1870 ), comedy producer and actor for the Chicago based Essanay company

Rather than accepting this offer, however, Essanay reported the offer to Biograph's head office, and they were promptly fired.

Essanay produced silent films with such stars ( and stars of the future ) as George Periolat, Ben Turpin, Wallace Beery, Thomas Meighan, Colleen Moore, Francis X. Bushman, Gloria Swanson, Bebe Daniels, Tom Mix, Ann Little, Helen Dunbar, Harold Lloyd, Lester Cuneo, Eugene Pallette, Florence Oberle, Virginia Valli, Edward Arnold, and Rod La Rocque.

Allan Dwan was hired by Essanay Studios as a screenwriter and developed into a famous Hollywood director.

Both George K. Spoor ( in 1948 ) and Broncho Billy Anderson ( in 1958 ) received Oscars, specifically Academy Honorary Awards, for their pioneering efforts with Essanay.