Al Christie
Alfred Ernest Christie (* November 26, 1881 in London, Ontario, Canada, † April 14, 1951 in Hollywood, California, United States) was a Canadian film director, film producer and screenwriter. As the founder of the successful " Christie Film Company ", he was in the 1920 Mack Sennett and Hal a competitor Roach and worked on roughly 420 film productions.
Life and career
Al Christie grew up as an orphan because his father, a police officer, died of exhaustion, when Al was just six months old.
From 1909 worked Christie for David Horsley's film production company " Centaur Film Company " in Bayonne, New Jersey, who called herself after moving to Hollywood in 1911 " Nestor Motion Picture Company " and 1912 part of the newly formed Universal Studios was. As head of the respective departments Comedy monitored Christie between 1911 and 1913 the production of Mutt and Jeff - one-act plays ( live-action movie adaptations of newspaper strips ) and turned from 1912 itself numerous short films.
1916 founded Al with his brother Charles Christie his own film production company called " Christie Film Company ," which was dedicated to two-act comedy. Charles took care of the Organizational, while Al held the creative part. In 1922 the brothers opened the first luxury hotel in Hollywood, Hotel Christie.
The global economic crisis led in 1933 to the closure of the " Christie Film Company " and Al Christie had to sell all his possessions to make ends meet. In the following years he was able to establish itself in the movie business again and until the end of the decade as a director, producer and screenwriter involved in other films.
The Christie Comedies
The early phase of the studio was determined by rather tame sitcoms with well-dressed performers, of whom Know Thy Wife ( 1918) and Rowdy Ann (1919) which are known today. From about 1920, the slapstick took a broader space in the Christie Comedies and the studio came into direct competition with Sennett and Roach. Educational same was as a distribution partner, bringing ceased greater commercial success. From 1927, the films of Paramount were expelled.
The now well-known star of the studio was previously working for Keystone Bobby Vernon, other important names were the always trimmed as an old man Jack Duffy, sailors Actor Billy Dooley, Neal Burns and reminiscent of Charley Chase Jimmie Adams. Typical of the Christie comedies were garnished with expressive stick figure intertitles, which were drawn from the later Norman Z. McLeod Comedy Director.
Among the rarer long movies of the studio included the successful Charley's Aunt (1925 ) with Charlie Chaplin's half-brother Syd in the lead role as well as the lost Tillie 's Punctured Romance (1928, a remake of the film of the same name from 1914 ) with Louise Fazenda, WC Fields, Chester Conklin, Mack Swain and Babe London. The best-known sound film of the studio is the short film Dangerous Females who initiated the comeback of Marie Dressler.
Most Christie short films are now lost or just get as fragments: In the 1950s, the company Hollywood evaluated Movie Enterprises 108 of them for television from the intertitles replaced by spoken comments and cut the films to 8 minutes together, while the original negatives later were destroyed. In a similar form some of the comedies also ran on German television, within the ranks of the fathers of oldies and men without nerves.
Awards
He was given a star on the Walk of Fame.