Flickering Empire

How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry

Michael Glover Smith, Adam Selzer

• Publisher: WallFlower Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780231850797
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

Flickering Empire tells the fascinating yet little-known story of how Chicago served as the unlikely capital of American film production in the years before the rise of Hollywood (1907–1913). As entertaining as it is informative, Flickering Empire straddles the worlds of academic and popular nonfiction in its vivid illustration of the rise and fall of the major Chicago movie studios in the mid-silent era (principally Essanay and Selig Polyscope). Colorful, larger-than-life historical figures, including Thomas Edison, Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Micheaux, and Orson Welles, are major players in the narrative—in addition to important though forgotten industry titans, such as "Colonel" William Selig, George Spoor, and Gilbert "Broncho Billy" Anderson.

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Persons Discussed in Flickering Empire
• Preface: Hollywood Before Hollywood
• Part 1: Thomas Edison, Invention and The Dawn of A New Chicago
• Part 2: Chicago Rising
• Part 3: The Golden Age of Chicago Film Production
• Part 4: It All Came Crashing Down
• Epilogue
• Post-Script: Oscar and Orson
• Appendix A: Selig Polyscope’s Pointers on Picture Acting
• Appendix B: A Complete List of the Extant Chicago-Shot Films Named in This Book and Where to See Them
• Appendix C: Some Censored Scenes of Chicago Films Noted in Local Newspapers
• Endnotes
• Index