Essanay Studios
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The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was a motion picture studio founded in the neighborhood of Uptown, Chicago, IL by George K. Spoor and Broncho Billy Anderson under the name Essanay ("S and A"). It produced silent films with such stars as Ben Turpin, Wallace Beery, Francis X. Bushman, Gloria Swanson, Ann Little, Helen Dunbar, Lester Cuneo, Virginia Valli, Rod La Rocque and Charlie Chaplin. Allan Dwan was hired by Essanay Studios as a screenwriter and went on to be a famous Hollywood director. Louella Parsons was also hired as a screenwriter and went on to be a Hollywood gossip columnist. Both George K. Spoor (in 1948) and Broncho Billy Anderson (in 1958) received Oscars, specifically Academy Honorary Awards, for their pioneering efforts with Essanay.
Due to the Chicago seasonal weather patterns and the popularity of Westerns, Essanay opened the Essanay-West studio in Niles, California. Until that point the Chicago Studio, at 1345 W. Argyle Street, had produced over 450 movies — at a time when four out of every five U.S. movies were produced in Chicago. Essanay, by far, produced the most of any Chicago Studio at that time.
The Chicago studio, as well as the new Niles studio, continued to produce films for another five years, reaching a total of well over 1,400 Essanay titles during their ten year history. The Chicago studio produced many of Essanay's famous movies, including the very first "Sherlock Holmes" (1916), the first "A Christmas Carol" (1908) and the first Jesse James movie, "The James Boys of Missouri" (1908). They also produced some of the world's very first cartoons (Dreamy Dud was their most popular character) and even tried, unsuccessfully, to produce 3-D movies. When the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against the Motion Picture Patents Company, the Essanay company collapsed and was dissolved.
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