1915 in film

The year 1915 in film involved some significant events.

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Events

• February 1: Fox Film Corporation founded
• February 8: D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune's Auditorium Los Angeles and breaks both box office and film length records (running at a total length of over three hours).
• February: Metro Pictures, a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is founded[1]
• February 22: The Allan Dwan directed film David Harum is released. The film is the first in long line of a successful romantic onscreen pairings of actors May Allison and Harold Lockwood.
• March 15: Universal Studios Hollywood opens (1964).
• June 18: The Motion Picture Directors Association (MPDA) is formed by twenty-six film directors in Los Angeles, California.
• July: Triangle Film Corporation is founded in Culver City, California and attracts filmmakers D. W. Griffith, Thomas H. Ince and Mack Sennett
• September 11: A nitrate fire at Famous Players in New York destroys several completed but unreleased silent films which are later remade. Films lost include Mary Pickford's Esmerelda and The Foundling and John Barrymore's The Red Widow.
• October 1: A US court rules in United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co. that the Motion Picture Patents Company trust is monopolistic and orders it to be dissolved.
• November 18: Release of Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude.
• December 13: Sessue Hayakawa becomes the first Asian actor to become a star in the US after his performance in The Cheat.
• The Duplex Corporation creates a Split Duplex, an early widescreen film format where the film image is rotated 90 degrees and occupies half of a conventional frame.

Top-grossing films (U.S.)

Highest-grossing films of 1915

Rank	Title	Gross
1	The Birth of a Nation	$10,000,000[2]
2	Carmen	$147,600
3	The Cheat	$137,364 [3]
4	Temptation	$102,437
5	The Girl of the Golden West	$102,224
6	The Warrens of Virginia	$85,770
7	The Golden Chance	$83,504
8	Chimmie Fadden	$78,944
9	Chimmie Fadden Out West	$72,036
10	The Arab	$66,036

Notable films released in 1915

All following films are American, except where stated.

• Are You a Mason?, directed by Thomas N. Heffron, starring John Barrymore
• Assunta Spina, starring Francesca Bertini – (Italy)
• Barnaby Rudge, directed by Thomas Bentley (Britain)
• The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, starring Lillian Gish
• The Caprices of Kitty, directed by Phillips Smalley, starring Elsie Janis
• Carmen, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Geraldine Farrar
• Carmen, directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Theda Bara
• The Champion, starring Charles Chaplin and Edna Purviance
• The Cheat, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Fannie Ward and Sessue Hayakawa
• The Crazy Clock Maker
• Double Trouble, starring Douglas Fairbanks
• Enoch Arden, starring Lillian Gish
• Fatty's Spooning Days, starring Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and The Keystone Cops
• Filibus – (Italy)
• A Fool There Was, starring Theda Bara
• Four Feathers
• A Gentleman of Leisure, directed by George Melford, starring Wallace Eddinger
• The Golden Chance, directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Cleo Ridgely and Wallace Reid
• The Golem (Der Golem), directed by and starring Paul Wegener – (Germany)
• The Immigrant
• Inspiration
• The Italian
• The Lamb, starring Douglas Fairbanks
• Madame Butterfly, directed by Sidney Olcott, starring Mary Pickford
• The Man Who Stayed at Home – (GB)
• Martyrs of the Alamo
• The Prisoner of Zenda, starring Henry Ainley and Gerald Ames (GB)
• The Raven
• Regeneration, directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Rockliffe Fellowes and Anna Q. Nilsson
• Sagebrush Tom, starring Tom Mix
• The Senator, directed by Joseph A. Golden
• The Soul of Broadway
• The Tramp, directed by and starring Charles Chaplin
• Le traquenard, starring Irène Bordoni – (France)
• The Two Orphans, starring Theda Bara
• Work, directed by & starring Charles Chaplin

Short film series

• Broncho Billy Anderson (1910–1916)
• Harold Lloyd (1913–1921)
• Charlie Chaplin (1914–1923)

Births

• January 9
  • Anita Louise, actress (died 1970)
  • Fernando Lamas, actor (died 1982)
• January 11 – Veda Ann Borg, actress (died 1973)
• January 26 – William Hopper, actor; son of Hedda Hopper (died 1970)
• January 29 – Bill Peet, Disney author and illustrator (died 2002)
• January 30 – Dorothy Dell, actress (died 1934)
• February 7 – Eddie Bracken, actor (died 2002)
• February 12 – Lorne Greene, actor (died 1987)
• February 21 – Ann Sheridan, actress (died 1967)
• February 23 – Jon Hall, actor (died 1979)
• February 28 – Zero Mostel, actor (died 1977)
• March 2 – Lona Andre, actress (died 1992)
• March 17 – Henry Bumstead, art director (died 2006)
• March 19 – Patricia Morison, actress (died 2018)
• April 10 – Harry Morgan, American actor (died 2011)
• April 21 – Anthony Quinn, actor (died 2001)
• May 5 – Alice Faye, actress, (died 1998)
• May 6 – Orson Welles, actor, director (died 1985)
• May 8 – John Archer, American actor (died 1999)
• May 19 – Renée Asherson, actress, (died 2014)
• June 12 – Priscilla Lane, singer, actress (died 1995)
• August 2 – Gary Merrill, actor (died 1990)
• August 15 – Signe Hasso, (died 2002)
• August 29 – Ingrid Bergman, actress (died 1982)
• September 5 – Jack Buetel, actor (died 1989)
• September 10 – Edmond O'Brien, actor (died 1985)
• September 14 – Douglas Kennedy, actor (died 1973)
• September 29 – Brenda Marshall, American actress (died 1992)
• October 29 – Evi Rauer, Estonian actress (died 2004)
• December 7 – Eli Wallach, actor (died 2014)
• December 12 – Frank Sinatra, singer, actor (died 1998)
• December 13 – Curd Jürgens, actor (died 1982)
• December 14 – Dan Dailey, actor (died 1978)

Deaths

• January 10 – Marshall P. Wilder, 55, American diminutive stage and screen actor
• April 26 – John Bunny, 51, American silent film comedian, A Strand of Blond Hair, Bunny's Little Brother, Bunny Backslides
• June 5 – John C. Rice, 58, stage and film actor, The Kiss
• June 16 – Elmer Booth, 32, American silent screen actor, brother of film editor Margaret Booth, The Musketeers of Pig Alley, The Narrow Road, An Unseen Enemy
• October 31 – Blanche Walsh, 42, American stage actress appeared in Zukor's 3 reel feature "Resurrection" 1912

Film debuts

• Mary Boland – The Edge of the Abyss
• Alice Brady – The Boss
• Donald Brian – The Voice in the Fog
• Marie Cahill – Judy Forgot
• Yakima Canutt – Foreman of Bar Z Ranch (uncredited)
• Laura Hope Crews – The Fighting Hope
• Reginald Denny – Niobe
• Elliott Dexter – Heléne of the North
• Marie Doro – The Morals of Marcus
• Douglas Fairbanks – The Lamb
• Geraldine Farrar – Carmen
• W. C. Fields – Pool Sharks
• Pauline Frederick – The Eternal City
• John Gilbert – Aloha Oe (uncredited)
• Charlotte Greenwood – Jane
• Otto Kruger – A Mother's Confession
• Edmund Lowe – The Wild Olive
• Victor Moore – Snobs
• Edna Purviance – A Night Out (short) (uncredited)
• Esther Ralston – The Deep Purple (uncredited)
• Valeska Suratt – The Soul of Broadway
• Erich Von Stroheim – actor, assistant director, The Birth of a Nation (uncredited); costume designer, wardrobe assistant, Ghosts
• Charlotte Walker – Kindling
• Fannie Ward – The Marriage of Kitty

References

1. "The Metro Corporation". Motography. XIII (8). February 20, 1915. p. 278. Retrieved May 12, 2018.
2. Rucker, Walter C.; Upton, James N., eds. (2007). Encyclopedia of American race riots. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-313-33301-9. ...earning more than $10 million at the box office in 1915. By 1949, it had earned $50 million
3. Birchard, Robert S. (2004), Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, p. 19, ISBN 0-8131-2324-0