Midwood Development Corporation - 1416 Avenue M #201
Here is where we will start. Look north to the end of E 15th street. That's where the Vitagraph Company of America once stood.Englishmen Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton founded the Vitagraph Company of America in 1900, with the help of William “Pop” Rock, who was the first president of the company.Prior to opening thier film production company, Smith and Blackton were partnered with their mutual friend, Ronald A Reader, and initially formed an entertainment trio called the International Novelty Company. They performed a mix of comedy, magic and illustration in front of live audiences.In 1895 they are introduced to Thomas Edison’s kinetoscope, one of the earliest films projectors. They decide to start to project films as part of their act. One of the most popular films they screened was the Black Diamond Express (1896). There was no sound in films at this time, so Blackton banged on pots and pans in the background to add to the effect of the train approaching.The original Vitagraph office was on the rooftop of a building on Nassau Street in Manhattan where Smith and Blackton started their business screening and advertising films.
Former Vitagraph Company studio site, South East corner on Chestnut street.
PLAY VIDEOThe lower left hand corner of the Vitagraph complex pictured in this photograph is where you would have been standing. You can see that the elevated BMT line, adjacent to the back of the studios, was running back then.Using his illustration skills, Blackton produced Humorous Phases of Funny Faces in 1906. Blackton was one of the first filmmakers to use the techniques of stop-motion and drawn animation and is regarded as the father of animation.By 1907, Vitagraph averaged the completion of eight one- and two-reel films a week - making it the most prolific film studio in the US at that time.
1277 E 14th used to be the Shulamith School for Girls
PLAY VIDEOBefore the former site of Vitagraph Studios was leveled for new residential development, it was utilized for over 30 years by the Shulamith School for Girls. This film footage includes point of view from the inner courtyard of the former Vitagraph site and from the roof of the old buidling.
Vitagraph smokestack and site of original entrance to Vitagraph Company studio to on Locust and
Here is the where the original Locust Ave enrance was. By 1908, Vitagraph directors were producing eight films a week, mostly one and two-reelers cast from the studio's stock company of four hundred players. Major stars included Florence Turner (the "Vitagraph Girl", one of the world's first movie stars), Maurice Costello (the first of the matinee idols), Jean (the "Vitagraph Dog" and the first animal star of the Silent Era) and John Bunny, who became one of the most popular comedians in the world, predating Charlie Chaplin. In 1910 a number of movie houses showed the five parts of the Vitagraph serial The Life of Moses consecutively (a total length of almost 90 minutes), making it one of many to claim the title of "the first feature film." In 1911, Vitagraph produced the first aviation film, The Military Air-Scout with stunt fliers. Smith sold the company to Warner Brothers in 1925.The original 1906 Vitagraph smokestack is still standing 110 years later! Look up!! VITAGRAPH is inlaid in bricks on the side facing the elevated train line.
Short directed by J. Stuart Blackton
PLAY VIDEOWhile your are walking, have a look at this Vitagraph 1908 short, The Thieving Hand (don't trip!). The film pioneered early special effects, in this case, stop-motion substitution and movement by hidden wires. And those exterior shots were probably done along Avenue M - but hard to tell exactly where (maybe you can guess?)!
Site of Vitaphone - new sound studios on west side of E. 14th street.
PLAY VIDEOVitaphone Studios - 1925 - 1952When Vitagraph was sold to Warner Brothers in 1925, a new sound stage was built directly across the street from the old Vitagraph studios (on East 14th street and Locust Ave) since the elevated BMT line directly behind the original studios produced too much noise for effective sound recording. Vitaphone Studios, introduced its early sound-on-disc technology, where the sound was captured on a record and played in sync alongside the film. The company made thousands of short films (called “short subjects”) using this method. Among those performers who made early film appearances in Vitaphone shorts filmed at the Midwood studios on East 14th street include Al Jolson, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, Bob Hope, Spencer Tracy, Jack Benny, Sammy Davis Jr., Sylvia Sidney, Pat O'Brien, Ruth Etting, Mischa Elman, Frances Langford, Betty Hutton, Burns and Allen, Giovanni Martinelli, Xavier Cugat, Bill Robinson, Lillian Roth, Joan Blondell, Ethel Merman, Abbe Lane, Eleanor Powell, Helen Morgan, The Nicholas Brothers, Milton Berle, Leo Carillo, Harriet Nelson, Brian Donlevy, Jane Froman, Jack Haley, Phil Silvers, Judy Canova, Nina Mae McKinney, Marjorie Main, Rose Marie, Joe Penner, Ethel Waters, June Allyson, Shemp Howard, Lanny Ross,Lionel Stander, Edgar Bergen, Cyd Charisse, and many more!!!NBC purchased the studios from Warner Brothers in 1952.
Vitaphone Sound Studios - Sound-on-Disc demo
PLAY VIDEOSound Engineer E B Craft demonstrates how to set up the Vitaphone recording system (edited). This was produced in 1926 - a year prior to the release of The Jazz Singer (1927) starring Al Jolson, the first feature-length motion picture with not only a synchronized recorded music score, but also lip-synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences utilizing the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system.
Baby Rose Marie
PLAY VIDEOA child star and vaudville veteran, Baby Rose Marie was featured in Vitaphone shorts and had her own radio show and numerous records. Rose Marie went on to adult fame on the Dick Van Dyke Show. Born in 1923, she celebrates her 94th birthday on August 15.
The Ghost of Fatty Arbuckle
If one believes that ghosts haunt places where they had unfinished business, the old Vitaphone studio building would certainly qualify. Fatty Arbuckle made a series of highly successful "comeback" Vitaphone two-reelers for the 1932-33 season, following eleven years of being banned from on-camera work due to the 1921 Virginia Rappe scandal. While acquitted, Arbuckle's performing career was essentially over until Vitaphone studio head Sam Sax signed him for sound shorts in 1932. Arbuckle had just signed to make features for Warner Brothers, but sadly died on the night following completion of TOMALIO (1933), his last Vitaphone short. With things were finally going his way, Arbuckle clearly was not ready to leave this earth yet. The longtime engineer for As the World Turns (shot in this building from 1999-2010), saw Fatty’s ghost several times in the old studio building.
NBC and Beyond
Classic TV and beyond - 1952 - 2014In the 1950s, the sound stages became NBC studios where hundreds of TV specials, series, and variety shows were taped. The original Studio 1 is along Locust Avenue .and had a swimming pool under the floor built specifically for taping The Esther Williams Aqua Spectacular (1956). A new larger studio known as Color Studio 2 is at 1268 East 14th Street at corner of Avenue M and was largest and most state-of-the-art color studio in the US at the time. Studio 2 was used for live taping of Peter Pan with Mary Martin (1960), Sing Along With Mitch Miller (1961–64), Hullabaloo (1965–66), The Sammy Davis, Jr. Variety Show (1966), Kraft Music Hall, three 1975 episodes of Saturday Night Live, and the first season of The Cosby Show (1984) among many others. The same Brooklyn studios were purchased by JC Studios and used in more recent decades to tape and broadcast the soap operas Another World (1964–99) and As the World Turns (1999-2010). In the last five years several feature films with marquee-name stars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, and Sandra Bullock were filmed in the 14th street studios.In 2014 JC Studios closed. In June 2015 OHEL Children's Home and Family Services began creating offices in the former Studio 1 on Locust Avenue, part of the original Vitagraph Studios. Studio 2, built by NBC, will become a self-storage facility.
Don Rickles gives a tour of the neighborhood
PLAY VIDEORickles was a frequent guest on the Kraft Music Hall variety show, recorded in the NBC studios. The show had a long history, starting in radio, moving to television in the late '50s with its first host, Milton Berle who was succeeded by Perry Como in 1959. It came and went and returned to taping in Midwood's NBC studios in the late '60s and as a weekly series in 1967, without Como, but with a roster of guest host that included Rock Hudson, Lorne Greene, George Burns, Dinah Shore, and Woody Allen. In the video, Rickles starts off standing on the elevated BMT line at the Avenue M stop right behind you. In the scene where he is with boys playing stickball, we're facing the deadend of east 15th (where you began your walk) and the wall in the background is the old Vitagraph building.
location of 'Buzzin Around - 1306 Avenue M
PLAY VIDEOHere is Arbuckle in Buzzin' Around - a 1932 Vitaphone short shot on location on Avenue M. Visible building numbers and street signs make this pretty easy to identify. You are standing on the spot!
