>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Pause in speaking ]
>> Mary Lou Reker: My name is Mary Lou Reker and on behalf
of the Libraries of Congress' Office of Scholarly Programs
and the Motion Picture Broadcast Time Recorded Sound Division
of the Library, I want to welcome you to today's lecture
by Dr. Joel Frykolm titled "The Lost Tycoon: Rediscovering George Kleine
and Reframing Early American Cinema."
Now before we begin there's the usual cautions here please make sure
your cell phone is off and I want to also suggest to you that you sign
up for the libraries RSS feed,
particularly through the Kluge Center's LOC.gov LOC/Kluge website,
that's LOC.gov/Loc/kluge.
Dr. Joel Frykolm is a post doctorial research associate
at Stockholm University where he teaches in the Division
of Cinema Studies within the Department of Media Studies.
His primary research interest is in pre-classical,
or very early silent American film and his focus has included research
on interests such as industrial and cultural change in early cinema,
its historic reception and on local film history.
Joel Frykolm received his PhD from Stockholm University in 2009
for a dissertation entitled "Framing the Feature Film Multi Real Future
Film and American Film Culture in the 1910's" and he was awarded
for that year the honor of best dissertation published
by Stockholm University's Faculty of the Humanities.
As a John W. Kluge fellow here at the Library
of Congress his work has addressed the American film pioneer
George Kleine.
The research he has done will feed into a much larger project funded
by the Swedish Research Council entitled "From Business Commodities
to Revered Cultural Heritage Global Media Vernacular Strategies
and Cultural Negotiations."
But to segue back to the study of early American cinema and the topic
of George Kleine's role in the early days of American film history,
I ask you to help me welcome today Dr. Joel Frykolm.
[ Applause ]
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Thanks very much Mary Lou.
And sorry about the delay, I'll try to read very,
very fast so you'll be out of here on schedule.
But before I begin, I'd like to thank the Kluge Center
for giving me the opportunity to be here and taking good care
of me while here, especially Mary Lou Reker, Caroline Brown,
Jason Steinhower [assumed spelling],
and Travis Hensley [assumed spelling].
And also many thanks to Charlotte Handstand who's been my research
assistant over these last couple of months.
Thank you.
And finally thanks to the Motion Pictures Broadcasting
of Recorded Sound Division for co-sponsoring this event.
Today's talk is about George Kleine and yes it is Kleine with an E,
it's not my weird Swedish accent that messes the pronunciation up.
And as far as the title goes I'll admit
that I paraphrased a Scott Fitzgerald novel
that some of you might have read.
And if you have read the novel, don't expect anything
like that cause there were not much in common
between Fitzgerald's movie Mogul Monroe Star and George Kleine.
In 1913, a newspaper reporter described Kleine as quiet
in manner and terribly shy.
Kleine himself said that there was nothing interesting romantic
or sensational about him.
Perhaps not as a person but I will commence you
that he makes a great case for film historical re-discovery.
And this lecture won't give you a complete biography or full account
of Kleine's career, but I will try to tell the story
of how one man was caught up in the web of historical forces that lead
up to the emergence of Hollywood.
And as we shall see Kleine is conservative business policies
and his highbrow vision of what he believed America cinema could become
took him on a different path but one that would intersect
with early Hollywood many times in unrevealing ways.
Kleine was born in New York City in 1863, the son of German immigrants.
He moved to Chicago in 1890 to start an optical goods store,
a trade he had learned from his father.
In 1896, Kleine started marketing motion picture equipment
and soon added motion pictures to the product line.
This quickly became the area of business that dwarfed the others.
And by 1904 Kleine had become the leading distributor
of motion pictures in the United States,
acting as western sales agent for the major American Film Manufactures
as well as number of European firms.
Kleine would later recall this phase, especially the period
from 1906 to February 1908, as his golden days.
He came out of it more or less set for life
and at one point he had actually tried to retire
but he only lasted for two months.
Instead, he went on to become a founding member
of the Motion Picture Patents Company, a trust like combination
of film companies that controlled or tried to control the film industry
from 1908 but then a few years in the 19 teens.
And there are other career events large
and small that I could mention.
But for now what I'd like you to remember is the year 1915,
which will serve as our entry point today.
1915 marks the film historical turning point and a point
of convergence where Kleine's career significantly intersects
with larger film historical developments that become
to define cinema as we know it.
In many ways, even though Kleine remained active in the film business
until his death in 1931, he was at the peak of his career in 1915.
At the same juncture, the film industry was undergoing an extreme
makeover with the emergence of Hollywood
as the most crucial outcome.   In addition, a frantic negotiation
over the film mediums cultural status was taking place,
which would eventually lead up to the recognition of film
as cultural heritage, rather than as business pure and simple.
Finally, American cinema embarked
on a remarkably successful global expansion,
establishing Hollywood cinema as global culture, which added fuel
to the already heated debate over the role of America cinema.
So this is the basic scheme and the things I'll be talking about.
So now let's elaborate.
In the 19 teens, the American film industry underwent drastic change
The handful of film companies that had ruled the business
from its inception met increasingly fierce competition
and by the mid teen's the market was divided
between old timers and new comers.   But that was just the start of it.
Just a few years later the overhaul was complete.
Nearly all of the so called old timers were out of business
and by 1920 a new industry structure
and new business practices were in place.
In its mature state, this new structure became known
as the Hollywood studio system.
Kleine was an old timer for sure but he didn't join the market exodus,
but neither did he make a successful transition into the new era.
He remained active as a distributor and producer throughout the 1920's
but he became a mardinal player, never again taking center stage,
as he had done during the first 15 to 20 years of motion pictures.
The question is why?
And what does this case tell us about the industrial transformation
that was happening at the time?   A possible cause of Kleine's demise,
that previous historians have identified,
is a disastrous investment in production facilities
in Grugliasco outside of Turin in Italy.
Kleine was part of a joint venture
to build a large motion picture studio there in which he planned
to make lavish feature films with American stars in leading parts,
combining what he saw as the best of the European and American methods,
while also taking advantage of cheap Italian labor.
The studio was built and staffed but [inaudible] started to worry
about cracking out the pictures, World War 1 broke out
and postponed production for what turned out to be forever.
The Grugliasco fiasco did hamper Kleine's plans severely
and cost a considerable economic loss but in interest
of career history, it was more of an accident
than a root cause for his predicament.
Assuming that Kleine was a shrewd business man,
he would predict an adaptive maneuver, and change his strategy.
Indeed, Kleine did adapt by initiating production in the US.
He also continued to import films as far as it was possible in wartime.
And his national distribution organization continued
to handle Kleine's own production,
as well as the output of other companies.
A more plausible explanation points
to Kleine's reluctance to vertical integration.
Vertical integration in the film business means
that one company engages all three branches
that his production distribution and exhibition, rather than specializing
in one of them and this is a key principle
of the Hollywood studio system as it gradually emerged.
But Kleine swam against the curtains.
He did believe that close ties between production
and distribution was practical, perhaps even necessary.
But he argued that an ongoing hookup of film exhibition
to the other two branches was extremely harmful.
Above all, he feared that this would stifle competition
and independence throughout the industry.
One cause for concern was local
and regional conservation in movie theater chains.
The immediate new [inaudible] for Kleine was
that these movie theater chains were local monopolies
as he would call them used their bargaining power to drive
down film rental prices at the expense of distributors like Kleine.
Also, they tended to limit their purchases to a few
of the major producers which made it difficult for independent producers
like Kleine to circulate their films widely enough
to cover production costs.
But even worse producer distributors were beginning
to acquire first round theaters
and commercially theater chains were venturing into production.
Kleine feared that this double movement
with vertical integration would nail the doors shut
for independent producers and distributors once and for all.
He made his position known in the trade personal square
and he also did his best to supply the government with documents
that allegedly gave evidence to various forms of monopolization
within the film industry.   But their system was futile.
Accordingly, Kleine had to design actual business practices
in the face of vertical integration.
But why didn't he try to acquire first round theaters himself?
Well, from the sound of it he wasn't willing but even if he had been,
it is debatable whether he had a financial muscle
to carry the investment.
Either way, his main blunder was not the failure to venture
into exhibition but the decision
to dismantle his national distribution system in 1918.
Not all companies that thrived
in Hollywood were vertically integrated giants.
And if Kleine had strengthened his distribution branch,
he could perhaps have had a better future in store.
He made the decision however, on business grounds,
in other words due to unprofitability.
This points an underlying problem, mainly a lack of box office value.
If Kleine's films, including both his own productions
and the ones he distributed for others would have been
of higher quality, he would have had a better access
to the first round circuit of movie theaters.
And perhaps in the long run, even been able to mask the power
to start investing in movie theaters himself,
or at least retain his position as a leading national distributor.
This raises new questions.
Why the subpar standard of his product what kinds
of production policies were to blame?
More generally, how was box office value actually built?
What caused some pictures to hit the jackpot and others to flop?
To this day, and quite intriguingly no one really knows,
or as a screen writer William Goldmans adage
about the entertainment industry nobody knows anything.
This messy show business quality of film economics
as film historian Richard Kazarsky calls it has to do
with what economists talk about in terms of fundamental uncertainty.
The main problem for a film producer is that the economic value
of the commodity he's selling can only be determined
as it is being consumed, but not prior to the act of consumption.
Kleine was obviously aware of this.
Writing to an associate at the Edison Company in 1917,
he jokingly predicted that someday a man will be born
with mathematical certainty in selecting and making winners.
When he happens he will get all of the money in the world.
Excuse me.
Meanwhile, they all had to try to do their best to come
up with some kind of winning concept.
In other words, they had to act
as if they knew what the audience would like.
Kleine came to the same conclusion as many of his peers
and as many many producers after him,
namely that a film would go nowhere unless it had A, a female star,
and B high production values,
or what Kleine referred to as a bigness.
Kleine only rarely followed his own advice and many of the times he did,
the experience confirmed what he was already aware of,
namely that these were perhaps necessary conditions
but hardly sufficient.
Take the case of Dubarrie made in 1914 released in 1915.
This was a film adaptation of David Blascal [assumed spelling]
successful stage play from a few years earlier
and the film version starred Mrs. Leslie Carter
who had made her stage career
through the title role in the very same play.
Kleine spent over a hundred thousand dollars on this production
and it was supposed to establish him as high end American producer
in his own rights, and not just a mere importer
and distributor of foreign films.
But the production was beset by problems from the start.
To some extent caused by unwarranted interferences by Mrs. Carter
but also due to forces out of Kleine's control,
or other forces out of Kleine's control.
The picture was finished but test screens indicated
that its appeal was virtually zero.   Silly enough, the one thing
that test viewers couldn't swallow was Mrs. Carter's age.
She was much too old to play someone who was supposed
to be the most beautiful woman in the world, or so they argued.
For later reissue of the film, Kleine addressed the problem
by cutting out as many of the close-ups and tight framings
as possible without messing up the narrative continuity.
But the film never had much of a run and Kleine never recuperated more
than a small fraction of the production cost.
Debacles like this caused production practice
to clash with business theory.
As mentioned, Kleine recognized the importance
of large production values embodied
by the presence of the expansive star.
But it didn't seem to work out for Kleine in practice.
This made him reluctant to pay big bucks for the A list film stars
and instead he rallied
against rapidly rising star salaries in the film industry.
He based much of his reasoning on a conservative business philosophy,
evident in his growing fondness of self-identifying
as conservative business man.
It's not exactly clear what he meant by this
but his ideal business model involved the Stabler organization
running at maximum efficiency at minimum cost,
producing a steady output of films
that rendered predictable returns on investments.
But there was just one flaw, there were no predictable returns
on investment in the film business.
And the calculations of averages implied
by his model were mostly irrelevant.
An economist might explain this would reference
to the high keratosis of the revenue distribution in the film economy,
or in plain English a few monster hits account for most of the revenue
and these few hits have to carry the losses of the many non-hits.
And in fact Kleine realized this
and he also recognized the wide uncertainty of the movie economy
that we discussed earlier, yet he failed to connect the dots,
especially the role of unsuccessful films within this type of economy.
Over the second half of the 19 teens,
he grew increasingly convinced
that the average picture was unprofitable, which lead him
to two conclusions: One he believed that the film industry
as a whole was running on heavy annual losses.
Given what we have just said
about the movie economy being a curotcracy,
rather than a mediaocracy we know
that this wasn't necessarily the case
and Kleine might have been right, that's sort of besides the point.
Secondly, Kleine argued that the failure
of the average picture was an indication of over production
and waste in the film industry.   In open, as well as private letters,
he tried to convince his fellow film men to downsize their operations.
His activism gained some momentum during the First World War
when Kleine's calls for cutbacks appeared to dovetail
with the moral imperative of war time frugality.
In the end however the only one
who voluntarily scaled down was Kleine himself.
He almost completely dismantled his distribution organization
and he put a halt to virtually all of his production activity.
This inaugurated the next phase of his career, which was defined
by occasional bouts of independent film making
and ad hawk distribution arrangements.
Meanwhile, the companies that would make
up the Hollywood Studio system were expanding on a unprecedented scale,
setting up an industry structure that did in fact manage
to alleviate some of the effects
of the inherent uncertainty of the business.
Instead of nurturing a fantasy and fallacy
of profitable averages as Kleine had done.
What they had figured out, the emerging Hollywood companies
that is was that it didn't matter if many films were unprofitable as long
as a few films became huge hits,
which meant that increased production volume could improve the
odds of hitting the jackpot.
And he also realized that vertical integration would allow the flops
to earn back at least some of their money.
But this kind of expansion could not be financed
by previously accumulated profits.   Enter Wall Street.
So this is basically what happened the expansion
of the Hollywood companies was funded
by Wall Street bankers and investment firms.
In contrast, Kleine's conservative business philosophy prescribed
that he would only venture into project that made enough sense
for him to be willing to risk his own money.
And this may sound like a noble policy and Kleine did try
to pit himself as sort of morally superior to the Hollywood producers
who he said had indicated that they would be in business as long
as they had a nickel to pay for the subway fare down to Wall Street.
So Kleine sort of put himself sort of morally superior to that stance.
But that was so it sounds noble but it was a poor policy
for the mid-19th moment of transition that we're tracing here
when the industry took a turn toward booming production values
and mass production of a kind that necessarily involved an amount
of recklessness and risk preference that was at all incompatible
with Kleine's business philosophy.
And this again marks a shift in Kleine's career further
and further away from the commercial aspects of motion pictures and more
and more in the direction of work that aimed to fuse motion pictures
with other forms of value, the monetary value.
And the timing is interesting here cause on the one hand
in 1915 the Supreme Court handed down the so called mutual decision,
which legally defined motion pictures
as quote business pure and simple end quote.
Making fear that movies were not to be considered as a form
of speech subject to first amendment protection.
On the other hand, at the same juncture discourses
and films art were rampant and the campaign
to elevate the cultural status
of motion pictures had been going on for years.
In other words, movies were legally being defined as business
and as we have seen they were becoming big business
but they were also on path to being accepted as cultural heritage.
A major element of this film historical shift was the drive
to reclassify film as an object, reclassified as an object
that harbored not only commercial value
but also artistic educational and historical value.
And Kleine made it a career long pursuit to promote this idea.
He was far from alone in this but he was more identified
with this project than most other people in the industry.
In the 1914 book called "The Theater of Science A volume of Progress
in Achievement in the Motion Picture Industry" author Robert Grau dubbed
Kleine an up lifter in the moving picture field.
And this similar claims were repeated in film history later
on in the 1920s and 1930s.
Kleine garnered this reputation largely through his effort
within the field of educational cinema.
He had imported short educational films from Europe
since he entered the film business but received most attention
for the distribution of Charles Urban's film "The Fly Pest"
which was widely used in swat the fly campaigns
and anti-fly crusades all over the US,
aimed to sort of combat the spreading of disease
that flight supposedly spreading disease by flies.
So this was an activity that gained much attention for Kleine.
Another breakthrough came in 1910 when Kleine issued a catalogue
of educational motion pictures
that listed some one thousand short subjects grouped under labels
such as travel, history, naval, military, animal life, religion,
kindergarten studies and so on.
The catalogue was considered a decisive step onward and upward
for the status of motion pictures.
And film historians to this day discuss it as a landmark
in history of educational cinema.
Having been through more or less every scrap of paper
in the George Kleine papers here at the library, I sort of tend
to agree, but also arrive at the conclusion that we shouldn't sort
of overestimate the significance of one single catalogue.
Cause as it turned out, few of the films listed in this catalogue
and as I mentioned more than a thousand short subjects listed
but very few of them were actually available for distribution.
So many of the potential customers
who responded were left disappointed.
Still, the catalogue carried some symbolic value in terms
of the promotion of motion pictures as something more
than business commodities.
And perhaps this was what Kleine strived for in addition
to the accumulation of goodwill
or the possible accumulation of goodwill.
I would also like to suggest
that Kleine helped establish certain conditions of possibility
or pre-requisite for the later embrace
of film as cultural heritage.
In order to think of film as heritage at all,
a discovery of cinemas past had to take place.
And this hinged on the [inaudible] of old films,
which is something we take for granted now.
But well into the 19 teens,
film culture was nearly completely predicated on a primacy of the new.
Most picture theaters changed program at least two
or three times weekly and many of them every day actually
and even accounting for the sequential runs of films
through various different types of theaters, the total shelf life
of any given film was very, very short.
And most films were casually discarded
when their commercial value had been exhausted.
And all of this would change however with the appearance
of longer multi reel future films.
Since these longer feature length films were best exploited
through longer exhibitions pants and also elaborate publicity campaigns.
That sort of set the stage for later reissues.
Kleine was instrumental in this transition
from mixed cinema programs of short films to programs built
around feature length films as he imported some
of the earliest multi reel future films to appear on the US markets.
Above all, his exploitation
of the Italians spectacle film called Quo Vadis in 1913,
set new standards for the marketing and presentation of motion pictures.
The flexible release plans and extended commercial life
for features helped soften up the primacy of the new.
As did the increasingly common practice
of re-issuing old films pioneered by Kleine and others.
The educational catalogue that we discussed earlier is one example
of this practice of reissuing and Kleine and throughout the 19 teens
and 1920s, Kleine tried to make it a habit
to reissue his back catalogue of films.
Not without discrimination, but with neither sort
of the systematic criteria of inclusion and exclusion
that for example later film archives perhaps would do.
But the important point here is that five, ten, fifteen
or twenty year old films were being placed on the market again,
which was a precondition for the discovery
of cinema's past I'd argue.
Kleine also made a premature attempt to nominate a candor
of film masterpieces by issuing what he dubbed the George Kleine cycle
of film classics.
This cycle was first issued in 1916 and then
at various intervals throughout the rest of his career.
It consisted of the spectacles and epics that Kleine had imported
from Europe in 1913 and 1914 plus some American productions made
either by his own production company or the Edison company.
The word classic had several connotations, not least linked
to classical education but it was also meant
to signify film masterpiece as the following quote
from the promotional booklet from 1916 makes clear.
We call them classics and we use the term advisedly literature, music,
sculpture has classics, its masterpieces if you please
and so has this newer art.
The attempt of cannon building failed possibly
because of lacking merit of some of the films
that was included in cycle.
But the attempt was also premature in some more profound way.
We know that there's a politics of the cannon, and a sociology of taste
but how a film appears in the first place and why some attempts
to inaugurate a cannon like this attempt fails is a slightly
different issue.
In Kleine's case there was a lack of credibility since he only sort
of touted his own wares as cannon worthy so we have cast some doubts
as to its intentions, motives.
Either this sort of reduced Kleine's clout as taste maker or he lacked
such clout from the outside.
There could also have been a sort of catch 22 in force.
According to his masterpieces was identified as a key
for the recognition of film as art, but as film was not yet recognized
as an art, there was no point of authority from which
to articulate the cannon.
This is speculation but either way Kleine was not occupying this point
of authority either way.
Kleine's case of premature canonization was also burdened
by a high brow error that he wished to breath
into his cycle of classics.
This was part of a larger project that spanned the second half
of his career and that aimed to realize it from a high brow cinema
that catered primarily to a cultured elite, rather than the masses,
or only secondarily to the masses.
Kleine explicitly pitted this vision of an alternative cinema
against what he saw as the bland
and mindless entertainment promulgated by Hollywood.
In so doing, he tucked into wide ring societies
over the course American cinema was taking after 1915.
Anxieties that were exacerbated
by Hollywood's increasingly triumphant filled with expansion.
In Europe and other places outside the US,
Hollywood's [inaudible] cause of fear, anxiety, revulsion, and revolt
but there were pockets of resistance within the US too
and Kleine was one such pocket.
It was not expansion or globalization per say
that he argued against, it was the type of cinema
that was shipped overseas and the image of America
that this cinema would promote across the globe.
Kleine charged Hollywood films with being cheap, sensational
and offering too many images of fast life,
lawlessness and debased womanhood.
And here he echoed many progressive reformats of the era.
Kleine found the [inaudible]
of vampire movies especially objectionable
and condemned the numerous films quote involving the love triangle
end quote.
Underpinning this anxiety was a kind of injection theory
of film according to which moving images had instant power
to corrupt its audience, especially women, children and immigrants.
And this was linked to wider debate of the social role
of the film medium and not all views were as extreme
as what I'm calling the objection theory.
But if there was one point of consensus in these debates,
it was that movies had an immense potential
to influence people for good or for bad.
And the issue then was not as much whether to regulate but how
to regulate film content.
The Hollywood industry too agreed on this but apparently the system
of self-regulation that Hollywood put in place did not appease all,
especially those who kept clamoring for federal censorship.
Kleine was against federal censorship as were several
of the progressive reform groups but Kleine distanced himself
from these groups in other ways.
When he agreed with for instance the better films movement on many
of their basic ideas, he suggested that most reformers
and their movements engaged in lots of talk but little action.
In contrast he saw as his own mission to bring
about uplift and practice.
His idea was to launch an alternative American cinema based
on a combination of educational films, wholesome entertainment
and highbrow cultural ideals.   This involved a two-step process.
First, he had a mass a supply of such films or films
that met these standards.
Here he relied primarily, again on his own cycle of film classics,
as well as his back log of educational short films.
Then, he had to establish a distribution system that guaranteed
that these films would reach exhibition sites in a timely manner.
His strategy was to place these films at extension divisions
at state universities who in turn would distribute them to schools,
churches and community associations and so on.
So this was sort of setting
up of a non-theatrical market for motion pictures.
This resulted in information of so called institutional film exchanges
in about twenty different states in the early 1920s.
The goal was to set up institutional exchanges in all states.
But this was never reached, conditions varied too much
and the problem had to establish a stable system
for non-theatrical distribution remains unsolved.
Neither did Kleine reach his goal of establishing a higher standard
for film culture in general.
Kleine's assumption was that the inferior quality
of the standard Hollywood fare came
about because Hollywood producers catered to a mass audience,
or as Kleine referred to it the miscellaneous audience.
On average, this audience had primitive tastes, ethics clouded,
and culture under developed he argued.
And it was only too predictable
that the supply would be shaped by that sort of demand.
Hollywood was giving the masses what they wanted
and the result was deplorable according to Kleine.
As we've seen, Kleine's solution was the cultivation and expansion
of the non-theatrical markets.
This niche could effectively cater to a small minority of film lovers,
and this is Kleine's words, not mine,
thus establishing a culture and moral standard.
And once this non-theatrical markets grew sizeable enough,
the standard would quote win its weight
to the masses, or so Kleine imagined.
This was basically a conservative elitist sort of trickledown theory
of cultural refinement but the premise
of the theory outlived Kleine and became a staple
of anti-Hollywood sentiment across the globe.
From left to right and from Kleine's times to present day I would argue.
Unfortunately for Kleine and later champions of highbrow cinema,
Hollywood persists much thanks
to its remarkable capacity to absorb and to adapt.
And this brings us probably not full circle
but to some concluding remarks anyway.
In summary, Kleine's conservative business model,
as well as his highbrow aspirations placed him at odds
with historical trends of his time.
This brings into focus how the emergence of Hollywood
and in extension cinema as we still know it was predicated
on a massive influx of risk capital that made possible,
boosted production values, as well as vertical integration.
We've also seen how Hollywood's mass appeal
and middle brow sensibility were key to his remarkable success
as national as well as global film culture.
Pushed to the margins, Kleine came to devote less and less time
to commercial operations in the 1920s and more and more time
to various attempts to valorize motion pictures as art form,
educational tool, or historical documents.
These were important although premature steps toward the later
acceptance of film as cultural and heritage.
So what comes to the four is in a sense the anatomy of a failure
but as such it offers us not only renewed perspectives
on dominant film culture but also hint at the possible futures
of cinema at a historical moment
when nothing could be taken for granted.
Thank you.   [ Applause ]
Any questions?   Yes
>> [inaudible] Kleine mentions a production company called Kalem
which produced the first version of Ben Hur
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Yes that's right.
>> Unfortunately without the permission
of the copywriter the old owners which resulted
in a judgment in 1911 against them.   Do you know anything about the level
of the judicial judgment against him in 1911?
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: No, and in fact Kleine was not part
of Kalem at that point.   He was one of the founders of Kalem.
Kalem stands for KLM, K is Kleine, L is Samuel Long
and the M is for Frank Marion.   So Kalem KLM.
So he was one of the founders but he basically bank rolled Kalem
and then had to get out of it cause Kalem was awarded license
with the motion picture patents company
that I mentioned in the talk, the MPPC.
And in order for or actually Kalem received the license
from Edison before the MPPC was formed
and that forced Kleine out of Kalem.
So he was not part of Kalem at the point
when the Ben Hur issue came up.   So I don't know.
He had nothing to do with that and to be frank I haven't you know got
into the details about the Ben Hur decision.
But I know it's a key decision that sort of that settled once
and for all that you couldn't just go grab any source material
as you pleased.   So he totally changed the conditions
for American film production at the time.
So but it was it had little to do with Kleine
but it's very interesting and sort of key moments
in the early American film history.
So and it's true that Kleine was involved in Kalem but only
for a short period of time.
Basically, like I said bank rolling, or rather he guaranteed that Kalem
when they started production he guaranteed that he would buy loads
and loads of prints from them in spite of them being new and untested
on the market so that was his involvement.
>> Kleine was born in the United States right?
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Yeah.
>> Okay. What and how long did he remain in the business?
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Well,
throughout well, until he died in 1931.
>> 31 so [inaudible] right at the beginning of sound?
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Yeah exactly and he wasn't producing at the time
when sound film became the standards.
So he had nothing to do with that transition
into the sound era really.
He was still active but very peripherally for the margin.
>> And you said he wanted to do his films as high art.
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Yeah that was his.
>> Didn't he realize he was [inaudible] that great mass influx
of people coming to the US basically [inaudible] country.
Why did he have such aversion to doing things for the masses?
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Well, I wouldn't say it was an aversion,
and for a while anyway his slate of pictures were more diverse
than I maybe have given you the impression of but he was at least
in his correspondence and discourses and all
over the place he was very invested in some sort
of more traditional highbrow cultural ideal.
But he did cause he was a business man so he had to make a living.
So actually I mean he wasn't just into you know lavish features
or historical you know spectacle stuff,
which is supposed to be the high end.
He also produced pretty crude comedies to be honest that was
on a sort of different scale.
Crude, they were perceived to be crude;
I'm not saying they were crude.
So he was invested in this highbrow ideal of culture
but he was also a business man and wanted to make money so.
But he didn't talk very much about the comedies and the other stuff
that he was putting out there.
But sure he was [inaudible comment].   Yeah exactly.
Yeah there are many sides to him.
>> Did you find as much about [inaudible] details
about the production and distribution of the posters?
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: I didn't catch the question can you repeat it?
>> In the archives did you come across any information
about the production and distribution
of the posters that [inaudible]?
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Yeah not very much.
There are copies of some of the posters
and there's some business correspondence with these companies
that would make the posters for him and purchase orders and stuff
like that but I haven't looked at it very closely but there is something.
Yeah there is some stuff that you might find there.
I can give you yeah I can let's discuss it afterwards.
>> It seems from what you told us that Kleine had the potential
of becoming one of the major film makers [inaudible].
What do you think really was the major downfall.
I mean so many tries and then he cannot seem to break in.
Did he [inaudible]
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Well, actually my hypothesis
for the moment is this exactly this conservative business philosophy
that sort of made it impossible for him to expand, cause for the type
of expansion that was needed to transition into the Hollywood era,
well, basically you needed risk capital or some form
of outside investment and he produced.
He would only invest his own money and would only invest in projects
that were on a scale that would finance himself
or maybe partner up with someone.
But he refused any kind of you know involvement
from the bankers and from Wall Street.
So had he been more open to that who knows cause he kept on going
and he tried and he had a huge distribution organization
for a while and distribution is key for sort
of power of the Hollywood system.
If you control distribution you can sort of manage a way
to controlling pretty much everything else.
So there was potential there and he had a couple of hits even
after 1915, he had the occasional hit film like "The Unbeliever"
for example, it was a WW1 war film.
So there were the occasional hits and he had the distribution system
and maybe he could have yeah I'd say he could have
and for the moment I think it was his conservatism more
than anything else actually.
>> I was curious was brought to the courts cases that he had
to be decided as to whether film was in business or [inaudible].
>> Dr. Joel Frykolm: Yeah it's called the mutual case which refers
to a film company called the mutual company
and they had I don't know the exact details but cause
at the time censorship was a local thing
so many states would have their local censorship boards
and some were more harsh than others
and this case involved the Ohio sensors that had somehow interfered
or wanted to make cuts or something in films distributed
by mutual the mutual company, and they the mutual company brought this
to the courts cause the Ohio constitution had something similar
to the first amendment that they argued would protect their films
as a form of speech.
So that was what the whole issue was about the mutual was arguing
that film was a form a speech
and hence it should be protected by the first amendment.
So the Ohio sensor can go elsewhere.   So that was what the case was about
and yeah it's one of those landmark cases.
Like the Ben Hur case one of those landmark cases
from this period that we tend to discuss.
>> Alright folks thank you very much all for your patience.
[Applause]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.