Sam Long and Pioneering Silent Film Studio, Kalem
The Kalem Company was an early silent film studio that began life in 1907. Kalem started its journey on the bustling streets of New York City, where it all started for the film industry long before Hollywood became the hub of the entertainment world. Many fascinating people worked at Kalem, including a very talented writer/director/actress, Gene Gauntier; a famous director, Sydney Olcott; and a whole constellation of early silent film stars.
Managing the company was a sometimes stern yet lovable part-owner and marketing manager, Frank Marion, and my great-great uncle, part-owner and president, Samuel Long. Sam was the technological leader of the dark room, developing, producing, and printing thousands of copies of early motion pictures at Kalem. George Kleine was also a part-owner. The films were distributed all over the United States and internationally. Kalem made Frank, Sam, and George very wealthy men. The company was a true pioneer in motion pictures, with many innovations and firsts in the industry.
Sam had one hundred dollars to contribute to start Kalem, and Marion provided another few hundred dollars. Kleine was more of a silent investment partner and kicked in several thousand dollars. They each owned one-third of the business. The initials of their surnames spelled out K-L-M, or Kleine-Long-Marion, which became what was known as The Kalem Company. Marion had a great personality and provided his marketing, managerial, and people skills and some of the scene writing. Sam was elected president of the company, and his main contributions were to the technical side of the operation, technical management, and production management.
Sam’s family was from North Carolina and East Tennessee. He settled in Baltimore, Maryland, and received an education that made him an expert mechanical engineer and chemist. In 1897, Sam moved to New York. He found work for an early motion picture studio, the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, later called the Biograph Company. Sam was the superintendent at Biograph’s factory in Hoboken, NJ, for 10+ years and was directly responsible for many technical improvements in producing moving pictures. Biograph reached a high level of quality in their films over that period, and Sam had a big role in achieving that.
A family story was that Sam worked on the first ‘fade-in and fade-out’ in film. I don’t know if this is true, or if it just a family story. Years ago, I looked into it at the U.S. patent office in D.C. once and found only motion picture patents by Edison. Google says the inventor is Linwood Dun, remembered as the “father of special effects” for single-handedly inventing a device that brought us fades, dissolves, and wipes. Also credited is George Melies, who created the Jump Cut, the Fade In and Fade Out, dissolves and wipes according to “Principles of Editing” by James Qualey in a section on the History of Editing. Multiple people were likely involved.
Sam was active as a director and, for a time, treasurer of The General Film Company. A group called the Motion Picture Patents Company had exclusive rights to make films based on Thomas Edison’s patents. Below is a picture of that group.
“The Kalem” became a prominent silent film studio different from other studios of the time because it primarily focused on outdoor productions. Kalem was one of a handful of the most successful Silent Film studios in the United States. Kalem distributed its films nationwide in cities all over the country. Sam’s niece, my great-aunt, Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Long West, told me she used to look forward to seeing Kalem films at the local theater in Knoxville, Tennessee.
One of the most historically significant of Kalem’s films was ‘From the Manger to the Cross,’ which is about Christ’s life. Filmed in the Holy Land in 1912, this historically significant movie featured title cards with biblical verse. A popular series of films created in Ireland led to the company’s employees being named ‘The O’Kalem’s.’ Popular selections you might be interested in watching are “The Lad from Old Ireland” and “An Irish Honeymoon”. Thought to be the earliest surviving Kalem film is the first adaptation of the novel ‘Ben Hur,’ by Lew Wallace – this 1907 movie of the same name as the novel featured chariot scenes filmed before large crowds at Coney Island.
That may seem kind of funny to us today, and the film is pretty crude by today’s standards, but people were enthusiastically drawn in and entranced by these pictures that jumped around jerkily and moved on a screen. My dad and I saw several Kalem films at the Library of Congress in the 1990s when I lived on Capitol Hill in D.C. The most extensive collections are at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Many of Kalem’s films are now available to view online for free. Photos from the era are well over 100 years old and are mostly considered public domain photos.
When my grandfather, who was said by the family to be Sam’s favorite nephew, Robert Earl Long, married my grandmother, Edith Rush Elmore, the couple took the train from New Market, Tennessee, to New York City to spend their honeymoon with their Uncle Sam and Aunt Alice. Sam and Alice gave them $100 each night to go out on the town, a tidy sum in 1913. For the wedding, Sam & Alice bought a beautiful Chrysanthemum sterling silver platter by Gorham from Tiffany’s in New York City, with the initial ‘L’ etched in it. Robert Earl was the son of George W. Long, Sam’s brother. My father, George W. Long, was named after George, his grandfather.
Tragically, Sam caught typhoid vacationing at Asbury Park, NJ, over the July 4, 1915 holiday. He died a young man on July 28, 1915. Sam and his wife Alice (McCombs) are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City. They are in good company in the beautiful cemetery. Many famous New Yorkers, such as F W Woolworth and Jay Gould, are buried there. I visited them once at the cemetery. At Sam and Alice’s plot, the stones are tasteful yet modest. A black marble headstone displays Alice and Samuel’s names in bronze lettering, with the year of their passing in Roman numerals. Marked at each corner of the plot in the Dogwood section of the cemetery are matching black marble tiles with an initial ‘L’ carved. A Linden tree with a matching black marble bench is at one corner of the lot. A financial endowment provides for care and maintenance in perpetuity.
Thought to be in the neighborhood of three to six million dollars, according to several movie magazine articles written upon his death, much of Sam’s fortune was in Kalem stock. The estate was split, half to his wife Alice, and half to be split between the two surviving brothers. I suspect Kalem stock shares had declined in value, as the company faced significant legal troubles from a copyright infringement case.
A court case over Kalem’s 1911 Ben Hur production came about because Kalem didn’t get permission from author Lew Wallace’s estate to make their film. It was a landmark copyright case that went to the US Supreme Court. Before Sam died, he began investing much of his money in other companies’ stocks, including a new startup studio called Paramount Pictures in California. I suspect Sam’s estate sold much of his stock after he died in 1915. What are several thousand early shares of Paramount Pictures worth today? I wonder?
I don’t know what ever happened to Aunt Alice Long and if any of her next of kin may have inherited her share of the “movie money” her husband Sam had made. William H. Long, practiced law in North Carolina. I am still investigating what became of him, his family, and their share of the inheritance. As for my great-grandfather, George W. Long, he was a successful businessman in New Market, Tennessee, but, unfortunately, he lost most of his inheritance in the 1929 stock market crash.
Kalem made many innovations and firsts in the motion picture industry. Kalem was the first studio to travel overseas to make movies, traveling to Ireland, England, Egypt, and Palestine. Kalem was building studios in California and Florida. Author Shawn C. Bean wrote a book about Kalem’s Florida studio called “The First Hollywood.” Kalem was the first and one of only two studios (also Selig Studios) making movies in Florida. The Kalem talent thought the location was perfect for making moving pictures, and they made many very nice pictures there and had a fantastic several years together as a close-knit and fun-loving bunch. But Florida never caught on as California did.
Here at the end, I thought I would include a family portrait of Samuel Long, father of the three brothers William, George, and Samuel. The elder Samuel has farming roots in North Carolina’s Perquimans County, near the state’s colonial capital. Also, I’ve included a few pictures of Sam and Alice’s homes and a picture of the Kalem Business offices. I’d like to write more installments on Kalem figures such as Gene Gauntier and Sydney Olcott, among others, in the future. Kalem was sold to the Vitagraph company in 1917, two years after Sam died, and ceased production.
