Vitagraph Company

She then worked for the Vitagraph studio until late 1911, when she returned to Biograph. During this period she played both comic and dramatic roles, sometimes under the studio-assigned name of Muriel Fortescue.

Smith established Vitagraph; in 1899 they were joined by William T. Rock. Their first film, The Burglar on the Roof (1897), was followed by a long series of film successes that made Blackton a millionaire. He left Vitagraph for a while but returned to work for the…

…three-reel Passion Play, but when Vitagraph produced the five-reel The Life of Moses in 1909, the MPPC forced it to be released in serial fashion at the rate of one reel a week. The multiple-reel film—which came to be called a “feature,” in the vaudevillian sense of a headline attraction—achieved…

…as a property man for Vitagraph Studios and later played piano to accompany its silent films. He apprenticed as staff pianist and song promoter for the music publishers Stark & Cowan, who bought his first song, “Rose of the Rio Grande,” in 1922.