Chicago and the Selig Polyscope Company

While the East Coast was thrown into turmoil by Edison’s court victory over Biograph in 1901, the Chicago area was not so directly affected. The Selig Polyscope Company continued to make films, often relying on local views to maintain interest in its programs. Nonetheless, the company suffered a major setback involving the Chicago-based theatrical manager J. D. Hopkins, who was then using the polyscope service in his several theaters. In late August 1901, Selig’s photographer filmed KNIGHTS TEMPLARS PARADE AT LOUISVILLE , K Y . and several related subjects for presentation at the Hopkins-run Temple Theater in Louisville. Shown between the acts of plays performed by the theater’s stock company, these local views were hits. Then, on the afternoon of 22 October, the polyscope exploded and the frightened spectators ran for the exits. Fourteen people were seriously injured in the stampede, and Selig’s exhibition service was promptly banished from the Hopkins circuit (Louisville, Chicago, etc.), to be replaced in some instances by the biograph. 41 Having lost its largest customer, the Selig Company’s receipts and earnings plummeted. Selig enjoyed few exhibition opportunities after the Louisville fire, and the disaster permanently hurt his service.

As soon as Biograph’s March 1902 victory over Edison made it safe, Selig advertised his goods in the New York Clipper, thus suggesting that the patent-infringement case also may have limited his opportunities for film sales. The copyright issue hurt as well. Although Selig’s fiction-film production at this time is hard to ascertain, the available evidence indicates that those fiction films his company did produce were not offered for sale during the period of copyright uncertainty. Selig’s New York Clipper ads from mid 1902 list dupes of European films and then ceased altogether. Otherwise Selig limited himself to producing actualities subsidized by railroad companies. By fall 1902, he was selling two dozen subjects taken in Colorado. Mostly scenery photographed from railway cars, these films were designed for lectures promoting the state as a tourist attraction. A second catalog issued in February of the following year listed more of the same. Selig’s “Western representative,” H. H. Buckwalter, was based in Denver and involved in organizing the shooting. Since the goal for these films was broad distribution, and since the railroads had absorbed most or all of the costs, sales policy was not affected by the copyright issue. Only after the question of copyright was resolved did the Selig Polyscope Company offer its own original, acted films for sale. Moreover, Selig was among those sued by Thomas Edison for infringement of the inventor’s reissued patents in November 1902. 42

In contrast to Selig, Spoor’s kinodrome service enjoyed relative prosperity as it became a permanent attraction in key Chicago theaters. In July 1901—at the very moment that Edison won his patent victory in Federal Circuit Court—a group of Western vaudeville managers who included Kohl & Castle, J. D. Hopkins, and the Orpheum Theater Company formed a “vaudeville trust” to oppose Eastern vaudeville interests then threatening to enter the Chicago market. 43 Preparing for a possible commercial confrontation, Kohl & Castle solidified a relationship with Spoor’s exhibition service. The kinodrome was regularly rotated among their Haymarket, Chicago Opera House, and Olympic theaters after 21 July 1901. Starting in October, Kohl & Castle rotated two projectors among the theaters. Perhaps the appearance of films related to McKinley’s assassination encouraged this expansion and underscored the value of having a film service. In May 1902, when the Olympic and Haymarket theaters closed for the summer, Spoor’s service remained as a permanent feature at the Chicago Opera House. When the two other houses reopened in late August, the kinodrome had a permanent position on all three bills. Selig’s misfortunes gave Spoor a clear field. Although his kinodrome lacked production capabilities, it not only won over the three Kohl & Castle vaudeville houses in Chicago but had secured the eastern portion of the Orpheum vaudeville circuit, notably its houses in Denver, Omaha, Kansas City, and New Orleans, by the early part of 1903. It soon achieved a commanding presence throughout the Midwest, the Far West, and much of the South.