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 building, at 1345 W. Argyle St, is a Chicago landmark in Uptown, Chicago | Uptown.

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.

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.

She was eventually sent to work under director Kenean Buel on the West Coast after Kalem acquired the old Essanay Studios property in East Hollywood in October 1913.

Chaplin made 14 films for Essanay, the last of which was a parody of Carmen named Burlesque on Carmen ( 1916 ).

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.

In late 1914 Essanay succeeded in hiring Charlie Chaplin away from Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios, offering Chaplin a higher salary and his own production unit.

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.

Chaplin was the studio's biggest moneymaker, and Essanay resorted to creating " new " Chaplin comedies from file footage and out-takes.

Finally, with Chaplin off the Essanay scene for good, Essanay signed French comedian Max Linder, whose clever pantomime was often compared to Chaplin's.

Today the Essanay lot is the home of St. Augustine's College, and its main meeting hall has been named the Charlie Chaplin Auditorium.

In 1915 Edna Purviance was working as a secretary in San Francisco, when Chaplin was working on his second film with Essanay Studios, working out of Niles, California, one hour southeast of San Francisco.

Chaplin and Purviance were romantically involved during the making of his Essanay, Mutual, and First National films of 1915 – 1917.

Since Chaplin did not have legal control over the films made during his time with Essanay, he could not prevent its release.

Chaplin filed to sue on May 6, but to no avail — on July 8, the court determined that Essanay had the right to reinvent the client work Chaplin had done for them in any way that they saw fit.

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 ).

Work is a 1915 silent film starring Charlie Chaplin ( his eighth film for Essanay Films ), and co-starring Edna Purviance, Marta Golden and Charles Insley.

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

Linder was offered a new contract from Charles Pathé, but accepted Spoor's offer and moved to the United States to work for Essanay later that year.

The Chicago studio, as well as the new Niles studio, continued to produce films for another five years, reaching a total of well over 1, 400 Essanay titles during its ten-year history.

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.

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

George Kirke Spoor ( December 18, 1872 – 24 November 1953 ) was an early film pioneer who, with Broncho Billy Anderson, founded Essanay Studios in Chicago in 1907.

One story has it she had gotten into the Essanay studios and waited in line to be an extra with Helen Ferguson: in an interview with Kevin Brownlow many years later Ferguson told a story that substantially confirmed many details of the claim, though it is not certain if she was referring to Moore's stints as a background extra ( if she really was one ) or to her film test there prior to her departure for Hollywood in November 1917.

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.

On April 9, 1916 Essanay had also issued a version of Chaplin's Burlesque on Carmen padded with additional material to bring it to a 4-reel length.

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.