The Erbograph Company
Introduction
In The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry, Anthony Slide devotes only a few lines to the Erbograph Company, writing that it « was formed in 1916 » and « closed its doors » in 1917. Not only is this description far too brief to convey how important the Company was at that time, but the dates mentioned are also incorrect.
The Erbograph was founded in Brooklyn in 1909 by Ludwig G. B. Erb and Joseph Golden. The company is at first a laboratory as Erb is not only a businessman, but above all a man of science, « responsible for countless improvements and innovations on the technical side of motion pictures ». In 1914, he built a 15.000-feet studio on the 146th street before embarking on the adventure of film production in 1916 with the serial The Crimson Stain Mystery, which would be extremely successful. The following year, Erbograph produced about seven films, which did not meet with the expected success, and then rented its studios to several companies for filming. After facing a major laboratory strike in 1920, Erbograph was eventually incorporated into Consolidated Film Industries in 1925, while Ludwig G. B. Erb flew to the West Coast where he became a consultant for the Associated Arts Corporation.
100 years after its disappearance, it’s time to restore the Erbograph to its rightful place in the history of cinema and to discover more about the « Erbograph Way », as touted in their trade ads.
1/ A man of science
Ludwig G. B. Erb was born on November 3, 1875, in New York. First and foremost a man of science, he studied pharmacology and served as president of the New York College of Pharmacy Cycle Club at the dawn of the 20th century. He authored several pharmaceutical notices, including for a pectoral syrup, suppositories, and a clover-based powder used to relieve headaches.
Until 1906, he was part of a firm called The Graham Drug Company, based on Madison Avenue, which was dissolved on May 28. In 1907, Erb turned to cosmetic research for two years before entering the motion picture industry in 1909.
2/ Centaur and Powers
Founded in 1907 by William and David Horsley in Bayonne, New Jersey, Centaur Film was the first independent film company in the United States.
G. B. Erb joined the firm in 1909 as treasurer, a company that notably included actor Francis Ford and director Al Christie among its ranks. At the time, Centaur Film was not exactly what one would call a studio: “It was really nothing but a workshop, with a lot of bathtubs used to develop the film. They would go out and shoot footage with an improvised camera — in violation of the Motion Picture Patents Company.”1 This infringement led the company to be sued by the Edison Trust for “infringing on camera patent No. 12,037,” and prompted the creation of the Nestor Film branch in 1911, which would become the first permanent studio in Hollywood.
After the company was denied entry into the Motion Pictures Patent Company, David Horsley temporarily suspended production, until G. B. Erb bought half of the company’s shares. Production then resumed, but the relationship between the two men quickly deteriorated, and Horsley eventually bought back Erb’s shares.
G. B. Erb did not stay long at Centaur and, according to an article in Moving Picture World, made a brief stop at the Powers Company, which at the time was producing a series of sound and talking films using a process developed by the American Fotophone Company, “a marvelously ingenious machine which runs the Talking Machine, so that every word of the dialogue appears to come from the lips of the actors and singers in perfect time.” For this series, Erb was in charge of the photography, “which is in itself a guarantee of quality.”2
A guarantee no doubt linked to the recent creation of a company specializing in motion picture equipment…
3/ The Wizard of film industry
An article published in the Billboard magazine on November 20, 1909, announced the creation of a new film company called the Erbograph Company, founded by G. B. Erb, his wife Emma, and Joseph Golden. Based in Brooklyn with a capital of $5,000, its purpose was “to deal in films for moving picture machines; to supply actors and other talent for subjects for the cinematograph and other moving picture machines, and to lease theatres.”3 In 1911, the Amusement Company rented premises from Erbograph at 289 East 203rd Street for a period of five years starting on October 13, 1911, for the sum of $3,000 (per year? For the entire lease?).
The primary purpose of this company was therefore mainly technical, even technological, as G. B. Erb had already proven himself in this field through his studies and experience in pharmaceutical and chemical laboratories. But Erb was not only a man of science and business—he was also interested in cinema as a new form of art, or at least artistic expression. This is why he created, once again with Joseph Golden, the Crystal Film Company, based at Wendover and Parks Avenues, with the aim of producing short one- or two-reel comedies distributed by Universal.
The articles we have read generally date the founding of Crystal Film to 1912 (“formed in the latter part of 1912,” according to Anthony Slide’s dictionary), but we have found an article published in The Moving Picture World announcing its creation as early as September 1911.
The company set up shop in the German Savings Bank building on Fourth Avenue in New York and could shoot without fear of being sued again by the Edison Trust, as G. B. Erb had developed a sophisticated camera himself. Filming with rising star Pearl White quickly followed and multiplied.
In 1914, G. B. Erb became president of the United Motion Picture Producers, Incorporated, which produced one- or two-reel films on a daily basis and brought together several companies such as Albuquerque Film Manufacturing, Features Ideal, Gene Gauntier Feature Players, and Crystal Film. Business was going well for Erb, who, at the end of the year, had a fully-fledged studio built to house the Erbograph on 146th Street in New York.
An advertisement published in 1915 described the new studio in detail : “In the only laboratory in the United States especially constructed for printing of motion picture negatives for producers of features, insures perfect results. Our plant is equipped with every modern appliance possible to obtain, in order that we may safely guarantee all our work to be absolutely flawless. Our building is constructed entirely of steel, brick and concrete; equipped with automatic sprinkler system and is absolutely fireproof. The 15,000 feet of floor space affords plenty of working room which insures cleanliness and quick dispatch of all orders. Don’t jeopardize the good work of your director and camera man by having your laboratory work handled by amateurs. Under our system of personal supervision you take no chances.”4
While he didn’t quite succeed in becoming a major film producer, as we’ll see later, G. B. Erb was at the time widely recognized for the quality of his work—especially in the fields of development, printing, tinting, toning, and other technical innovations—which earned him the nickname “Wizard of the Film Industry.” For instance, with the help of engineer Roscoe C. Hubbard, he developed a machine to automate these various processes, which were still being done by hand and therefore prone to numerous defects. Thus was born the Erbograph Machine, “a friction feed developing machine for developing positive motion picture film.”5
The Erbograph Machine
With its 5,000 square meters and state-of-the-art equipment, Erbograph had now joined the ranks of the major studios and employed a sizable team. Before making a name for itself with its first major production, the studio gained (unfavorable) publicity in the pages of the New York Clipper, which reported an inglorious anecdote in February 1916: “A quarrel between workmen in the developing room of the Erbograph Company last week developed into a free-for-all fight that would have gladdened the heart of any director. Five employees were busy developing film when two of them had words. Immediately a mix-up occurred, with the other three joining in. A miniature war was in progress when Policeman Tully, attracted by the noise, entered the building and took a hand in the proceedings. For a time the outcome was doubtful, but finally the lone policeman mastered the warriors and escorted them out of the dark room. Dr. Fitzpatrick, of the St. Laurence Hospital, was summoned as first aid to the injured, and succeeded in patching up the battered combatants. When arraigned before Magistrate Frothingham he fined each battler $5 on the charge of disorderly conduct. The participants identified themselves as Philip Klinger, George Annona, Frank Pressiome, Joe Pressiome and Thomas Pressiome.”6
Once peace was restored, Erbograph could fully focus on an ambitious project that would open the doors to fame…
4/ The most strange and startling motion picture
In 1916, Ludwig G. B. Erb’s studio finally embarked on the adventure of film production. To maximize its chances of success and secure strong backing, it partnered with the powerful Metro Pictures Corporation to create Consolidated Film, with Erb as treasurer and O. E. Goebel as president. This new entity would handle the distribution of their first large-scale project.
G. B. Erb enlisted the help of writer and journalist Albert Payson Terhune, who temporarily stepped down from his post at the New York Evening World—his first time away from the paper in 22 years—to devote himself fully to writing this dark tale of human guinea pigs transformed into fearsome predatory monsters.Direction was entrusted to T. Hayes Hunter, a filmmaker since 1912, who took on the challenging task of directing the 16 episodes of the serial, which starred Maurice Costello and Esthel Grandin.
Albert Payson Terhune
In July 1916, Variety announced that filming of the first four episodes of “the most strange and startling motion picture yet filmed”7 was complete. The studio spared no expense, neither in the resources provided to the production team nor in the promotional campaign, which benefited from “the most extensive newspaper advertising campaign yet attempted in any previous serial.”8
The Brand of Satan, the first episode, hit American screens as early as August, and it was an immediate success.
The press repeatedly praised “the extraordinary ability of Ludwig G. B. Erb,” who handled photography and the technical aspects of The Crimson Stain Mystery, “which bespeaks for this production the finest that human ingenuity can produce.”10
At a dinner held at the end of August 1916 to launch the serial, O. E. Goebel declared:
“You must admit without reservation that Ludwig G. B. Erb, my associate and treasurer of the company of which I have the honor to be president, is the best known technical expert in the world. Mr. Erb’s genius and untiring efforts are due the many amazing photographic innovations, with which The Crimson Stain Mystery is replete, among which may be mentioned the showing of the crimson stain in the eyes of the arch-criminal, from which this serial gets its name.”11
Thus, Erbograph joined the ranks of the major players, as also evidenced by its participation in the meeting of the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry held in New York in September 1916 under the presidency of William A. Brady, which brought together the thirty-five largest film companies in the country, alongside Famous Players-Lasky, Thanhouser, Gaumont, Kalem, Pathé…
5/ Art Dramas, Incorporated
At the end of 1916, Erbograph joined Art Dramas Incorporation, “a non-profit-making distributing organization, with the idea of evolving an efficient piece of machinery for the purpose of bringing the product of the manufacturers forming the company directly to the state rights buyers and exchanges men, and thus, doing away with the middleman’s or jobber’s profit.”12
Among its partners were other companies such as the Feature Corporation, U.S. Amusement, and Van Dyke Film Production, the latter being responsible for Art Dramas’ first release, The Lash of Destiny, directed by George Terwilliger.
In December 1916, Erbograph announced that it had signed a contract with actress Anna Q. Nilsson. Nicknamed “The Star of the North,” the Swedish-born actress was a rising star who had already made numerous films for Kalem since her debut in 1911. To direct her in his first production distributed by Art Dramas Inc., G. B. Erb hired veteran filmmaker Ashley Miller, who had already directed over 130 films, mostly for Edison.
Entitled Infidelity, the film “gets its peculiar interrogatory title from the fact that it does not tell definitely of any particular unfaithfulness, but concerns the subject only generally.”13
The film was released in American theaters on January 11, 1917, and the Miller-Nilsson duo returned a month later with The Moral Code, “described as a powerful screen presentment of a vital problem of everyday life in America and England, where the regulation of the marriage relation is in accordance with the laws and traditions of the past, and not the living present.”14
Anna Q. Nilsson would star in a third film for Erbograph, originally titled The Dragonfly but retitled The Inevitable upon its release on April 5, 1917, this time directed by Ben M. Goetz. The critics were rather divided, with one calling it “a masterpiece of the shadow art” while another described it as “an ordinary surface melodrama” with photography that was “too uniform.”15
In the same month of April 1917, editorial and publicity manager Arthur M. Brilant resigned from his position at Consolidated Film Company to join Erbograph as head of the scenario department, announcing that the studio “is in the market for first-class scenarios [and that] only stories of unusual merit and novelty of theme are desired.”16
A second artistic troupe was created within Erbograph, led by actress Marian Swayne and director Joseph Levering, a duo who had already been working together for some time, notably within Méliès’ New York branch.
Within Erbograph, the Swayne-Levering duo filmed three movies: Little Miss Fortune, The Road Between, and The Little Samaritan. In the first, Marian Swayne plays a poor 16-year-old orphan (she was actually 26 at the time of filming), scorned by all the other girls in her small village and dreaming of becoming an actress. The actress won over the audience with her beauty, her “winning smile and an amount of acting ability,”17 and the film was described as “probably the most satisfying Art Dramas offering that has been made to date.”18
The film met with some success and, following the release of Little Miss Fortune, “many requests have come in for another picture with the same star.”19 This led to The Road Between, released in June 1917, in which Marian Swayne played the wife of a chemist who developed a special compound that made him rich, thus becoming the target of a group of wealthy swindlers. This time, the critics were not kind to the film, even downright harsh: “I cannot figure that this production is worth a very stiff rental”20; “Take Miss Swayne and her personality out of the picture and you have left – just moving picture”21; “the picture fails to hold the attention and falls far below the standard of the present day requirements.”22
After this failure, the company did not get discouraged and gave the Swayne-Levering duo the means to redeem themselves with The Little Samaritan, for which “no expense in production has been spared by the Erbograph Company.”23 A church was built in full detail within the studios, hundreds of pews and a large pulpit were purchased, and about twenty real stained-glass windows were loaned by a major New York firm, all for a total of $3,000. Ludwig G. B. Erb personally handled the film’s photography and paid special attention to the tinted and toned sequences, sequences that “play an important part in making the photography of Erbograph pictures distinctive when compared to many feature films.”24
One sequence from The Little Samaritan required particularly complex double-exposure photography, showing Marian Swayne lying on a couch while in a vision countless fairies appear and dance before her, a sequence that required “careful manipulation to the minutest details.”25 These massive investments and special care paid off, as the film received widespread praise in the press, describing it as “a simple story of everyday happenings carrying with it a touch of delightful appeal,”26 “a clean, absorbing tale [in which] romance and sentiment are admirably blended,”27 and “an intelligent treatment of certain situations in this slender story, combined with some rather effective lightings and good closeups,”28 making this seventh production of Erbograph “the best Art-Dramas offering to come along in quite a time.”29
6/ One million feet of film a week
Despite this critical success, one may wonder whether the public success matched up, since afterwards Erbograph produced no more films before 1920, preferring to rent out its stages to outside productions and return to its core activity, namely being above all a cutting-edge film laboratory. A very long and detailed description appears in an article published in 1917, which deserves to be quoted here in full due to the many details :
“The lighting equipment consists of twenty-two overhead Cooper-Hewitt lighting banks, with Mirror reflectors; five large broadside, two small broadside Cooper-Hewitt floor stands; three Wohl lamps, four arcs each; two Duplex arc lamps; two Majestic arc lamps; also several Kliegel lamps and a spotlight. These lights are controlled from a General Electric switchboard, one of the most complete to be found in any studio.
A special system used to heat the studio is used in summer for cooling purposes. There are plenty of dressing rooms. Those for the women are on the mezzanine floor in the rear of the studio and the men’s are directly underneath on the ground floor. The laboratory and offices occupy the rest of the structure.
All air that goes into the laboratory is first washed; a part is then heated and by means of regulators the desired temperature is maintained in all departments of the laboratory at all times. Each room is fitted with a thermostat which regulates the temperature automatically. All water used in developing is first filtered. Corcoran tanks are used to develop the film.
There is also a room in which raw stock is perforated and cleaned; this is equipped with six Bell and Howell perforators. There are two large printing rooms which contain machines of the latest model, invented and perfected by Ludwig G. B. Erb, president of the Erbograph Company. These machines have, according to Mr. Erb, features not found in other printing machines. This model ensures absolute contact and will print film of any perforation. The film moves through the apertures on ball bearing rollers and the aperture is so fixed that it is absolutely impossible to scratch the film.
The automatic light change, an exclusive feature, allows the printing of thirty scenes of varying light densities without re-threading the machine. All the operator has to do is frame the picture and turn on power; everything else works automatically.
Another Erbograph feature, invented and perfected by Mr. Erb, is the test machine, which prints automatically fifteen pictures of varying light densities. In other words this test machine will print one foot of film in fifteen different light densities, a light for every picture, there being fifteen pictures to every foot of film.
There are two assembling rooms and a polishing room. The latter contains two polishers. The polishing machines, invented by Mr. Erb, are claimed to be the only machines of their kind in the world, no other laboratory possessing such apparatus. They are the last word in polishing machines and can polish both negative and positive film, and the absence of any sprockets ensures absolute safety to the film and impossibility of scratching. These machines can polish 1,000 feet of film every nine minutes.
In the drying room are installed eight specially constructed drums, each capable of handling 1,300 feet of film.
The projection room on the second floor contains Simplex projectors, each with ample accommodation, and the vault also on the second floor for storage of film was especially constructed for its purpose.
In the basement is a thirty-five-ton ice machine. This machine is used to cool the plant in the summer and reduce the humidity in the drying rooms. Thus the temperature is kept even throughout.
Realizing the inflammable nature of films in general, the management has taken care to ensure the safety of all films entrusted to them, hence the claim of an approved fireproof building. The Grinnell Sprinkler System has been installed.
Everything at the Erbograph plant is under the personal supervision of Ludwig G. B. Erb. Mr. Erb is responsible for most of the present-day methods used in developing, printing, tinting, and toning of film and also for many photographic innovations, such as double, triple, and quadruple exposures, dissolves, etc.
The output of this plant is approximately one million feet of film developed, printed, tinted and toned weekly.”30
One million feet—that’s over 300 kilometers of film printed each week! A remarkable achievement for a “small” studio now totally forgotten, which moreover owned machines and technologies unique in the world, like this “polisher.”
7/ God for rent
Alongside its cutting-edge technological activities, Erbograph made its studios available to host the filming of other productions. At that time, a coal shortage particularly affected companies in New Jersey, causing them to shut down several days a week, which made New York studios highly sought after.
Thus, Paragon Films Incorporated, based in Fort Lee, rented the Erbograph stages for three days early in 1918; the sisters Jane and Katherine Lee, child stars who had just created their own company, were “working on their first production at their new workshop, the Erbograph Studios”31 in June 1919; director Edward Jose planned to shoot The Way of a Man, adapted from a novel by Thomas Dixon Jr.; the Collier kids (Willie and Buster) “were having the time of their lives making comedies at the Erbograph studios in New York, for Joseph Schenk”32; and Samuel Goldwyn, wanting to keep Mabel Normand away from Hollywood temptations, brought her to New York to shoot The Slim Princess at Ludwig G. B. Erb’s studios.
At the same time, Erbograph also partnered with the Catholic Art Association, formed at the end of 1917 “for the purpose of taking and producing motion pictures, photographs, or other pictures of public or private events and occurrences, and of scenes, acts, plays, etc.”33 In 1919, G. B. Erb’s loyal associate O. E. Goebel directed an 8-reel (!) Catholic propaganda film titled The Burning Question, and the following year, the equally dedicated Joseph Levering shot The Victim, a 9-reel (!) drama in which a priest tries to help a family whose father was murdered by a criminal.
The Victim – 1920
8 / Trial and strike
In 1918, financial troubles began to surface at Erbograph. Having started his career alongside David Horsley at Centaur Film, Ludwig G. B. Erb retained negatives belonging to Horsley, which were claimed by the Chelsea Lithograph Company. In February or March 1918, a court ruling was issued, and the sheriff arrived at Erbograph to seize the films held illegally.
In 1919, G. B. Erb was sued in the Supreme Court by Samuel Fine, who sought to force him to return 305 shares of Erbograph stock « to replace a similar amount of stock which he says he gave to investors on the promise of Erb to make good the stock.« 34 Fine was also a longtime acquaintance and close collaborator of G. B. Erb, as the two had founded the Crystal Film Company together in 1911.
In 1922, Malcolm Strauss Pictures Corporation obtained a temporary injunction from the Supreme Court to prohibit Erbograph from exploiting the film The Silver Flower, copies of which were held by Erb’s company. Erbograph was even accused of « conspiracy » by a certain Charles Presbrey in this particularly convoluted case involving investments and percentage profits being resold. While the details remain unclear, these issues only compounded the company’s financial difficulties, which had already faced a significant strike two years earlier.
July 1920 : over 2,000 men working in film laboratories went on strike to protest large wage disparities. At that time, a negative developer could earn $28 per week in one lab and up to $150 in another. The discontent was widespread, affecting numerous labs: Erbograph included, but also Biograph, Republic, Famous Players, Paragon, Fox, Universal, Pathé, Eclipse, and others. By the end of July, the situation remained critical, with only 5% of Erbograph’s workforce active, and a complete shutdown (0%) at Famous, Paragon, Vitagraph, and Eclipse.
After fifteen years of loyal (?) service in the film industry, it was time for Ludwig G. B. Erb to retire from the business…
9/ A much needed rest
In 1924, Erbograph joined forces with the laboratories of Craftsmen, Republic, and Commercial Traders Cinema to form Consolidated Films Industries, pooling capital of $6,000,000. G. B. Erb stepped down from his position as president and took a seat on the board of directors alongside Edmund C. Dearstyne and the Morris and Joseph San brothers, embracing « the opportunity to take a much needed rest from the arduous duties which have occupied him so successfully for so many years.« 35
However, the « Wizard of the Film Industry » still passionate about cinema, continued for some time as a technical advisor and production supervisor, notably for the Hollywood-based Associated Arts Corporation, where he spent several months in 1924 working on the film On the Stroke of Three, produced by F.B.O. and starring Madge Bellamy.
Ludwig G. B. Erb
In 1930, the Cinema Patents Company acquired the rights, titles, and interests related to a number of machines developed by Ludwig G. B. Erb. The last trace we found of Erbograph dates back to 1947 in an article from Variety magazine, which explains that “[Harry M. Goetz and Ben Goetz] owned an interest in Erbograph, an early film processing outfit, which was later merged with Consolidated Film Labs, the parent company of Republic.”36
G. B. Erb died in 1958 in Los Angeles, and although he has been completely forgotten since then, his influence and stature were well recognized during his career, as shown by this laudatory article published in 1925 when he more or less officially retired from the film industry : « Mr. Er bis a man who has done really big and worth while things in film matters and is one of the few who were remained in its front ranks during the past twenty-five years of the industry’s unparalled growth. […] Under his skillful managment, the Erbograph grew and expanded tremendously, and when a few monthes ago it was merged into what is now known as the Consolidated Laboratories it was regarded as the best and most perfectly equipped laboratory in the world. He has been from the outset consistently for the clean picture, and even when for a time the salacious type of production swept the country he insisted that if the industry was to live it must be fed on the good, clean, moral picture – the type that would be fit for women and children to see. »37
1 – in The Parade’s Gone By – Kevin Brownlow
2 – The Moving Picture World – 16 avril 1910 – p.605
3 – Billboard 20 novembre 1909 p.29
4 – Motion Picture News – 17 juillet 1915
5 – Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers – numéro 17 – 1923
6 – Clipper -19 février 1916 – p.34
7 – Moving Picture World – 22 juillet 1916
8 – The Moving Picture World – 22 juillet 1916 – p.660
10 – Moving Picture World – 22 juillet 1916
11 – Motion Picture News – 2 septembre 1916
12 – Motion Picture News – 7 octobre 1916 – p.2173
13 – Motography – 3 février 1917
14 – Motion Picture News – 24 février 1917
15 – Wid’s – 12 avril 1917
16 – Motography – 7 avril 1917
17 – Motion Picture World – 19 mai 1917
18 – Wid’s 10 mai 1917
19 – Motion Picture News – 23 juin 1917
20 – Wid’s – 12 juillet 1917
21 – Moving Picture World – 14 juillet 1917
22 – Exhibitors Herald – 14 juillet 1917
23 – Motography – 25 août 1917
24 – Motion Picture News – 15 septembre 1917
25 – Motion Picture News – 15 septembre 1917
26 – Motion Picture News – 8 septembre 1917 – p.1625
27 – Motion Picture News –29 septembre 1916 – p.2176
28 – Wid’s – 13 septembre 1917