Buster Keaton, Roscoe Arbuckle, and Al St. John, 1918. Once his deadpan persona became established, Keaton avoided smiling in front of a camera.bremidon t1_j6lu66g wrote
Reply to comment by turdferguson3891 in Buster Keaton, Roscoe Arbuckle, and Al St. John, 1918. Once his deadpan persona became established, Keaton avoided smiling in front of a camera. by L0st_in_the_Stars
>It wasn't distance so much as court jurisdiction.
Well yeah, these two things are tightly correlated. The further away from Edison and his influence, the more likely the courts were to not just defer to him.
Once the decision was made to move so far away, then the question was: where? And now all those things you mentioned start to play a role. It should be someplace sunny, with a decent amount of good, stable weather, with some infrastructure already in place.
turdferguson3891 t1_j6m6p8h wrote
But, like I said, companies that were part of Edison's patent trust were shooting in California early on and they didn't need to worry about his lawyers. NYC based Biograph joined Edison's trust in 1908. They first started filming in California in 1910. Chicago based Essanay was also in the trust and they opened studios in California in 1912 after a failed attempt shooting in Colorado.
The studios that weren't part of the trust saw some benefit in being in a different court jurisdiction but the fact that studios that were part of the trust also relocated around the same time would indicate that was not the biggest factor.
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