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Broncho Billy
Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson (born Maxwell Henry Aronson; March 21, 1880 – January 20, 1971) was an American actor, writer, film director, and film producer, who was the first star of the Western film genre. He was a founder and star for Essanay studios. In 1958, he received a special Academy Award for being a pioneer of the film industry. Early life Anderson was born Maxwell Henry Aronson in Little Rock, Arkansas, the sixth child of Henry and Esther (Ash) Aronson, both natives of New York. His younger sister was actress and singer Leona Anderson. His family was Jewish, his father's parents having emigrated to the United States from Prussia, and his mother's from the Russian Empire. His family moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas when he was three years old. He lived in Pine Bluff until he was 8, when he moved with his family to St. Louis, Missouri. When he was 18, he moved to New York City and appeared in vaudeville and the theater, supplementing his income as a photographer ...
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Little Rock, Arkansas
Little Rock is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Arkansas, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arkansas. The city's population was 202,591 as of the 2020 census. The six-county Central Arkansas, Little Rock metropolitan area is the Metropolitan statistical area, 81st-most populous in the United States with 748,031 residents according to the 2020 census. As the county seat of Pulaski County, Arkansas, Pulaski County, the city was incorporated on November 7, 1831, on the south bank of the Arkansas River close to the state's geographic center in Central Arkansas. The city derived its name from a rock formation along the river, named The Little Rock, the "Little Rock" by the French explorer Jean-Baptiste Bénard de la Harpe in 1722. The capital of the Arkansas Territory was moved to Little Rock from Arkansas Post, Arkansas, Arkansas Post in 1821. Little Rock is a cultural, economic, government, and transportation center within A ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city.
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Augustus Carney
Augustus Carney (1870–1920) was an American actor during the early 20th century. Born in Ireland in 1870, he got his start in vaudeville before entering the film industry. In his short seven-year career he appeared in over 130 films, mostly shorts. Life and career He began in vaudeville and entered films in 1909 with a featured role in a Ben Turpin comedy short, ''Tag Day''. He had been discovered by Broncho Billy Anderson, one of the founders of Essanay Studios, and was soon starring in comedy shorts for the studio. Beginning in 1910, he co-starred with Victor Potel in a series of shorts as the characters Hank and Lank (played by Carney and Potel, respectively). The series lasted for two years, after which Carney developed the character of "Alkali Ike." The character starred in its own series of shorts, such as 1911's ''Alkali Ike's Auto'' (which is still extant), and which co-starred Harry Todd. He was also in many of the popular episodes of the series of film shorts featuri ...
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Niles Canyon
Niles Canyon is a canyon in the San Francisco Bay Area formed by Alameda Creek, known for its heritage railroad and silent movie history. The canyon is largely in an unincorporated area of Alameda County, while the western portion of the canyon lies within the city limits of Fremont and Union City. The stretch of State Route 84 known as Niles Canyon Road traverses the length of the canyon from the Niles district of Fremont to the unincorporated town of Sunol. Two railroads also follow the same route down the canyon from Sunol to Niles: the old Southern Pacific track along the north side, now the Niles Canyon Railway, and the newer Union Pacific (formerly the Western Pacific) track a little to the south. At the west end of the canyon are the ruins of the Vallejo Flour Mill, which dates to 1853. History The route of El Camino Viejo à Los Angeles (Old Road to Los Angeles), the oldest north-south trail in the interior of Alta California, ran through Niles Canyon. I ...
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Western Pacific Railroad
The Western Pacific Railroad was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route directly competed with SP's portion of the Overland Route (Union Pacific Railroad), Overland Route for rail traffic between Salt Lake City/Ogden, Utah, and Oakland, California, for nearly 80 years. The Western Pacific was one of the original operators of the ''California Zephyr (1949–1970), California Zephyr'' passenger line. In 1982, the Western Pacific was acquired by the Union Pacific Corporation and it was soon merged into the Union Pacific Railroad. History The original Western Pacific Railroad (1862–1870) was established in 1862 to build the westernmost portion of the first transcontinental railroad, between Sacramento, California, Sacramento and San Jose, California, San Jose, California (later to Oakland). After completing the la ...
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Alameda County, California
Alameda County ( ) is a List of counties in California, county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 1,682,353, making it the 7th-most populous county in the state and List of the most populous counties in the United States, 21st most populous nationally. The county seat is Oakland, California, Oakland. Alameda County is in the San Francisco Bay Area, occupying much of the East Bay (San Francisco Bay Area), East Bay region. The Spanish language, Spanish word ''alameda'' means either "a grove of poplars...or a tree lined street". The name was originally used to describe the Arroyo de la Alameda; the willow and sycamore trees along the banks of the river reminded the early Spanish explorers of a road lined with trees. Although a strict translation to English might be "Poplar Grove Creek", the name of the principal stream that flows through the county is now simply "Alameda Creek". Alameda County is part of t ...
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Niles Junction, Fremont, California
Fremont () is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. Located in the East Bay region of the Bay Area, Fremont has a population of 230,504 as of 2020, making it the fourth most populous city in the Bay Area, behind San Jose, San Francisco, and Oakland. It is the closest East Bay city to the high-tech Silicon Valley network of businesses, and has a strong tech industry presence. The city's origins lie in the community that arose around Mission San José, founded in 1797 by the Spanish under Padre Fermín Lasuén. Fremont was incorporated on January 23, 1956, when the former towns of Mission San José, Centerville, Niles, Irvington, and Warm Springs unified into one city. Fremont is named after John C. Frémont, a general who helped lead the American Conquest of California from Mexico and later served as Military Governor of California and then U.S. Senator. History Early history The recorded history of the Fremont area began on June 6, 1797, when Mission San J ...
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Silent Film
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards. The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist, theater organist—or even, in larger cities, an orchestra—would play music to accompany the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music, or improvisation. Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema p ...
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Movie Studio
A film studio (also known as movie studio or simply studio) is a major entertainment company that makes films. Today, studios are mostly financing and distribution entities. In addition, they may have their own studio facility or facilities; however, most firms in the entertainment industry have never had their own studios, but have rented space from other companies instead. Day-to-day filming operations are generally handled by a production company subsidiary. Another type of company is an independently owned studio facility, which does not produce motion pictures by itself; such facilities only sell studio space. Beginnings In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States: he constructed the Black Maria, a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, and he asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgr ...
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George Kirke Spoor
George Kirke Spoor (December 18, 1871 – 24 November 1953) was an early film pioneer who, with Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, founded Essanay Studios in Chicago in 1907. He was a founding partner of V-L-S-E, Incorporated, a film distribution firm, in 1915. Biography Spoor and Anderson were responsible for discovering stars such as Wallace Beery, Francis X. Bushman, Ben Turpin, Gloria Swanson and Charlie Chaplin. Allan Dwan, who was hired as a screenwriter, went on to become a famous Hollywood director. Louella Parsons, also hired by Spoor as a screenwriter, later became a famous Hollywood gossip columnist. In 1894, while box office manager of the Phoenix Opera House in Waukegan, Illinois, George K. Spoor teamed up with the inventor Edward Hill Amet (1860–1948) to build and exhibit "The Magniscope", the first practical 35 mm movie projector ever designed and used in a large audience display. Spoor and Amet made films and distributed them with this device b ...
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Chicago
Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of United States cities by population, third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the county seat, seat of Cook County, Illinois, Cook County, the List of the most populous counties in the United States, second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, often colloquially called "Chicagoland" and home to 9.6 million residents. Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a Chicago Portage, portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but ...
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Bushman Chaplin Anderson
The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. They are thought to have diverged from other humans 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa. The San speak, or their ancestors spoke, languages of the Khoe, Tuu, and Kxʼa language families, and can be defined as a people only in contrast to neighboring pastoralists such as the Khoekhoe and descendants of more recent waves of immigration such as the Bantu, Europeans, and South Asians. In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San, making it the country with the highest proportion of San people at 2.8%. 71,201 San people were enumerated in Namibia in 2023, making it the country with the second highest proportion of San people at 2.4%. Definition The term "San" comes from the Khoekhoe langua ...
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