Gaumont: A Going Concern

Born this day Léon Ernest Gaumont (1864-1946), founder of the world’s first and oldest film studio (incorporated 1895, one year prior to Pathé Frères.)

Gaumont was an employee of a firm that manufactured film and camera equipment. To expand into the brand new field of cinema he obtained the backing of a financier named Alfred Besnier,Gustave Eiffel (builder of the Eiffel Tower), and astronomer, Alpinist, cartographer and botanist Joseph Vallot, builder of the Mont Blanc Observatory.

From 1896 to 1906 his head of movie production was his former secretary Alice Guy. She and her husband HerbertBlaché went to open the American branch of the studio in Flushing, New York (where W.C. Fields first movies were made), before founding their own studio, Solax. There was also Gaumont British, where Alfred Hitchock made several of his earlier films. Some English-speaking stars who worked for the studio included Cissy Fitzgerald,Bud Ross, Miles McCarthy, Harry Vokes, and Marcel Perez a.k.a. “Tweedy“. In France, Louis Feuillade created series like Fantomas and Les Vampires series for Gaumont, assisted by Robert Florey, who later came out to Hollywood. Abel Gance also directed for the studio. And as we say, they remain a going concern. An example of there well-known contemporary programming is the TV series Lupin with Omar Sy. To see what Gaumont is up to at the moment, see their official website here.

For more on the silent film era please read  Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.