Sidney Olcott
Sidney Olcott (actually John Sidney Alcott; born September 20, 1873 in Toronto, Ontario, † December 16, 1949 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California ) was a Canadian film producer, film director, actor and screenwriter.
Life
Olcott went with the intention of becoming an actor in New York, where he performed until 1904 at the theater. He then worked as an actor and later director at the Biograph Company and made it there to the General Manager.
In 1907, Frank Marion and Samuel Long, with financial support from George Little, the film production company Kalem Company and dedicated Olcott for $ 10 per film. According to his contract he should at least make a one- reeler per week. One of his first productions for Kalem was the Erstverfilmung Ben Hur, which focused on the chariot race.
1910 Sidney Olcott made the Kalem Studios the first U.S. film company, feature films outside the United States turned on location. Even of Irish descent and with the knowledge of a large Irish -born audiences in America, Olcott went to Ireland and made the film A Lad from Old Ireland. Until the outbreak of the First World War was followed by more than a dozen other films Olcott in Ireland.
Inspired by her experience in Ireland, the film crew was headed Olcott for the recordings of the Jesus Film From the Manger to the Cross ( 1912) to Egypt and Palestine. The film turned out to be a financial success for the Kalem Company, and was inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1998.
Despite the success with other films, the managing director of the Kalem Studios Olcott content refused on the $ 150, he deserved a week at that time to raise and the director left Kalem 1914, the studios were eventually taken over in 1916 by Vitagraph.
Olcott was a founding member of the East Coast branch of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a forerunner to today's Directors Guild of America. The mid- 1910s he moved to Hollywood and was a director of films of different production companies. For and with Mary Pickford he turned Poor Little Peppina (1916 ) with Rudolph Valentino Monsieur Beaucaire ( 1924). His last film was made in 1927.
Since 1915 he was married to the actress Valentine Grant, she died nine months before him. Sidney Olcott died in Hollywood in the house of his friend, director and actor Robert G. Vignola.