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1、 V Valentin, Karl b. 1882; d. 1948 actor, Germany The greatest German comedian of the first half of the twentieth century, Valentin made only a handful of films in the silent era, opting instead to focus his energies on his improvisational, Bavarian-flavored variety act with his wife, Liesl Karlstad
2、t. Yet films such as Der neue Schreibtisch The New Writing Desk (1914), in which the height of a desk is adjusted until there is nothing left, testify to Valentins uncomfortable and almost nihilistic relationship to inanimate objects, technology, and his own body, an attitude that became popular wit
3、h Dadaists and the middle class alike. SCOTT CURTIS Valetta After a fruitful collaboration with Path-Frres from 1908 to 1911, Camille de Morlhon founded his own company, Valetta, in July 1912, choosing as its emblem the family coat of arms. For the next ten years, Valetta produced all of de Morlhons
4、 films, with the support of Paths distribution. His initial innovation was to shoot two films at the same time, casting the same actors in primary roles, even when that involved traveling to the south of France. Yet he soon resumed sequential production in order to shoot fewer but longer and more co
5、mplex social dramas. Une Brute humaine A Human Beast (1913), remains a landmark: exceptionally long for the time (1950 meters), it sold 200 prints worldwideas many as Albert Capellanis Les Misrables (1912). After a hiatus caused by World War I, Valetta resumed production in March 1915, with de Morlh
6、on producing and directing four films a year until 1917. When he began fighting for authors rights, in opposition to Charles Path, the company became dormant, eventually closing down in 1923. Encyclopedia of early cinema 966 Further reading Le Roy, Eric (1994) “Les relations entre Charles Path et Ca
7、mille de Morlhon: de lunion au dsaccord,” in Jacques Kermabon (ed.) Path, premier empire du cinema, 19095, Paris: Editions Centre Georges Pompidou. ERIC LE ROY Van Goitsenhoven, Louis b. 1874; d. 1942 exhibitioner, producer, distributor, Belgium Before Van Goitsenhoven opened the first permanent mov
8、ing picture theater in Brussels in December 1904, he worked as a businessman selling optical products, phonographs, and rubber tires. From 1907 on, he opened more and more theaters in order to receive optimal profits from the films he purchased. After 1908, he also became a film distributor, and a p
9、articularly important one by the end of World War I. GUIDO CONVENTS Vandal, Marcel b. 1882, Paris; d. 1965, Le Perreux industrialist, producer, France Marcel Vandal was one of the first shareholders of clair (Socit franaise des films lclair) which his friend and fellow lawyer, Charles Jourjon, found
10、ed in 1907. That same year, he became co-director of the company with Jourjon. He also took part (still with Jourjon) in establishing the Union des grands diteurs de films in 1911. While mobilized during World War I, Vandal was replaced in his duties by Perreau Auguste Agnel; when he returned, clair
11、 was almost moribund. In 1918, Vandal left clair to create (with Charles Delac) a combined company out of Film dArt and Socit gnrale de cinmatographie, and then went on to produce many films during the 1920s and the 1930s. LAURENT MANNONI Entries A-Z 967 vaudeville As the preeminent site in the USA
12、for the exhibition of projected moving pictures prior to the nickelodeon era, the vaudeville theater significantly influenced the course of cinema history. The nickelodeon boon had a consequential impact on vaudeville due to a subsequent rise in numbers of small-time vaudeville theaters that proved
13、a challenge to the vaudeville establishment. Threatened by a burgeoning feature film movement in the early 1910s, vaudeville managers invested heavily in talking pictures and when that endeavor failed, sought to cordon off their entertainment domain through a blacklist of actors appearing in films.
14、Ultimately, when sound film and radio became the nations dominant entertainment forms, those new corporate interests acquired the remnants of once-great vaudeville empires. Vaudeville and moving pictures reflected a number of cultural proclivities found in late 19th-century urban recreational instit
15、utions. Both have been identified as “democratic” in essence and “American” in spirit. Proponents of both adopted a rhetoric of refinement, respectability, and progress to promote entertainment forms frequently depicted as “low” and vulgar. By attracting women, children, mixed social classes, and im
16、migrants, both embodied a wider cultural shift from homosocial to heterosocial leisure activities. Not only did both encourage habits of spectatorship that exposed new city dwellers to urban consumer culture, but they also displayed hybrid sensibilities that accommodated Victorian and modern attitud
17、es. Both also were marked by racial segregation, discrimination, and stereotyping. Both eventually came to be structured as oligopolies, adopted modern business methods, and valued innovation as a competitive strategy. On occasion both functioned to provide public arenas where national issues were a
18、ddressed. In its heyday, vaudeville had some 1,000 theaters across the USA. A 1910 study of New York theaters claimed 60% of the vaudeville audience to be working-class and 36% clerical. The estimated number of vaudeville actors during the industrys peak period ranged from 20,000 to 30,000, although
19、 jobs seemed to be available for only half as many. Beginning approximately in 1907, vaudeville theaters were classified as either “big time” or “small time,” depending on the number of shows per day, admission price, salaries, and whether headliners appeared regularly. Performers strived to reach t
20、he “big time,” with success often symbolized by a booking at the foremost venue, New Yorks Palace Theatre. As a distinct form of entertainment, vaudevilles most characteristic traits were its modular format, its attempt to appeal to a diverse audience, and its dominant mode of direct presentation. V
21、audeville programs were composed of interchangeable acts presented with no connective story uniting them. The slogan, “Something for Everybody,” advertised the claim that a typical vaudeville bill could accommodate the preferences of a mixed audience by presenting a variety of types of acts. Common
22、types included acrobats, animal acts, singers, dancers, team acts, storytellers, comedians, magicians, impersonators, ventriloquists, mind readers, comic sketches, and playlets. The institution of American vaudeville developed from two immediately antecedent entertainment forms: the dime museum and
23、the concert saloon. Popularized in the 1840s by P.T.Barnum and other showmen, dime museums combined pseudo-scientific exhibits Encyclopedia of early cinema 968 of freaks of nature with variety shows featuring types of specialty acts common to minstrel shows. Concert saloons, gaining popularity in th
24、e 1850s, presented risqu theatrical entertainment in saloons frequented primarily by working-class men. “Waiter- girls” serving drinks in these establishments gained a reputation for prostitution. Following press outcry, the New York state legislature passed the “Anti-Concert Saloon Bill” in 1862, f
25、orbidding amusement establishments from selling liquor or employing female waiters. Although the law was widely ignored, later variety theaters took pains to differentiate themselves from the bawdy concert saloons. Tony Pastor, sometimes called the “Father of Vaudeville,” is generally acknowledged a
26、s the first variety show entrepreneur to establish a national reputation. A former circus clown turned concert saloon singer, Pastor advertised his Bowery theater in 1865 as a “great family resort.” In 1881, Pastor moved near Union Square, then the heart of New Yorks theater and shopping district, w
27、here he would remain active until his death in 1908. Unlike many others in the first generation of vaudeville entrepreneurs, Pastor remained a small businessman with no interest in creating an entertainment empire. The 1880s saw the first vaudeville theater chains. F.F.Proctor, formerly an acrobat,
28、began a circuit in the 1880s in New York state. The first theater in what would become the Wests dominant chain, the Orpheum circuit, opened in San Francisco in 1887. In Boston, dime museum operator B.F.Keith instituted a policy of “continuous vaudeville” in 1885, with the slogan, “Come when you ple
29、ase; stay as long as you like.” With his general manager Edward F.Albee, later big-time vaudevilles acknowledged “czar,” Keith opened theaters in Providence and Philadelphia, beginning what came to be known as the “Sunday school circuit,” due to explicit prohibitions against salacious language and u
30、ndignified behavior. When, in 1893, Keith acquired the Union Square Theatre, his first in New York City, the countrys hub for theater, he hired J.Austin Fynes, managing editor of the New York Clipper, as general manager. To compete with Proctors 23d Street Theatre, where a renowned opera tenor was d
31、rawing crowds, Fynes brought in dramatic actors and concert performers on a regular basis and convinced established playwrights to create oneact playlets, hoping to attract theatergoers unfamiliar with vaudevilles appeal. Both Keith and Proctor opened their first palatial theaters in the mid-1890s.
32、It was in this atmosphere of competition, innovation, expansive circuit building, palatial theaters, and appeals to refinement and respectability that projected moving pictures were first exhibited in the USA. The exhibition of the Edison Vitascope at Koster and Bials Music Hall, on 23 April 1896, i
33、naugurated a period in which moving pictures spread quickly to vaudeville programs across the country. Exhibition services, such as the Cinmatographe Lumire, American Mutoscope and Biograph, and Vitagraph, competed for profitable vaudeville venues. The demand for weekly program changes fostered the
34、growth of stable companies by providing a dependable market. In May 1900, in order to gain control over the booking of acts and to drive independents agents out of business, leading vaudeville entrepreneurs formed the Vaudeville Managers Association (in the East) and the Western Vaudeville Managers
35、Association, and began to charge performers a fee for hiring them. Outraged, vaudeville actors formed a proto-union, the White Rats of America, and in February 1901 struck theaters in the East and Midwest. The action induced some managers to use moving Entries A-Z 969 pictures to replace striking ac
36、ts. Although the White Rats prevailed, managers reinstalled the booking fee after the actors collective power dissipated. Intense sporadic battles between organized actors and managers would mark the next two decades. The managers experienced dissension within their own ranks as Proctor left the syn
37、dicate in 1901 and began to book with agent William Morris, a Jewish immigrant from Austria who rose from office boy to head the talent agency that still bears his name. Known for his shrewd dealing, innovative ideas, and fierce independence, Morris encouraged Proctor and other clients to shift from
38、 “continuous” to two-a-day programs built around well-advertised headliners, a style that soon became identified with big-time vaudevillle. As the novelty of moving pictures wore off, vaudeville managers regularly placed them in the “chaser” or concluding position on bills, so that patrons would not
39、 leave during more expensive acts. Although inauspicious, the chaser function provided a secure outlet for product. In order to furnish vaudeville theaters with a reliable supply, manufacturers increasingly turned to story films, which could be produced more efficiently than those dependent upon top
40、ical events. As this shift continued, exhibition spread to new small-time or “family” vaudeville houses popping up in the West, Northeast, and Midwest. The increased demand also led to a change in distribution policy: film exchanges charging rental fees by the reel began to replace complete exhibiti
41、on services. The institution of the film exchange, initially supplied largely with Path-Frres French films, fostered the proliferation of nickelodeons. While nickelodeon exhibitors often constructed programs according to the continuous format model, the differences from vaudeville exhibition practic
42、es were significant. Nickelodeons were cheaper to operate; cheap admission prices allowed children and working-class families to attend more frequently and afforded single women the opportunity to attend without relying on men to treat them. Boasting no reserved sections, nickelodeons advertised “de
43、mocratic” seating. Because programs often were changed three or four times a week or even daily, nickelodeons became more integral than vaudeville to the daily lives of masses of people. While the nickelodeon boom was underway, Keith secured agreements with rival managers to book with his agency rat
44、her than with Morris and formed the United Booking Office (UBO), the core institution of the burgeoning vaudeville oligopoly that would exert autocratic control over big-time theaters and performers east of Chicago (the Orpheum Circuit later would achieve hegemony in the West). Morris then teamed wi
45、th legitimate theater moguls Klaw labor movement: USA; leisure time and space: USA; monopoly capitalism: USA; music halls; Poli, Sylvester; synchronized sound systems; urbanization Further reading Abel, Richard (1999) The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 190010, Berkeley: University of Cal
46、ifornia Press. Allen, Robert C. (1980) Vaudeville and Film, 18951915: A Study in Media Interaction, New York: Arno Press. Gilbert, Douglas (1940) American Vaudeville, Its Life and Times, New York: Whittlesey House. Kibler, M.Alison (1999) Rank Ladies: Gender and Cultural Hierarchy in American Vaudev
47、ille, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. McDonnell, Patricia (2002) On the Edge of Your Seat: Popular Theater and Film in Early Twentieth-Century American Art, New Haven: Yale University Press. Musser, Charles (1990) The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907, New York: Scrib
48、ners. Slide, Anthony (1994) The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Snyder, Robert W. (1989) The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York, New York: Oxford University Press. ALAN GEVINSON Entries A-Z 973 Velle, Gaston b. 1872; d. 1942 filmmaker, France, It
49、aly An illusionist by training, Velle specialized in trick films and feries/fairy plays such as La Poule aux oeufs dor The Hen with the Golden Eggs (1905) for Path-Frres. In July 1906, he left the company, taking his set decorators and cameraman, to become artistic director at Cines. The films he made in Italy plagiarized some of the work he himself had done previously. In late 1907, he returned to Path to make several more films and write others such as Camille de Morlhons Cagliostro (1910). A remake of La Poul