Movies - George K. Spoor

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	Movies - George K. Spoor

George K. Spoor (1872-1953) was an early film pioneer who, with Broncho Billy Anderson, founded the historic Essanay Studios in Chicago in 1907, which was responsible for establishing stars such as Wallace Beery, Francis X. Bushman, Ben Turpin, Gloria Swanson and Charlie Chaplin. Allan Dwan, who was hired as a screenwriter, went on to be a famous Hollywood Director. Louella Parsons, also hired as a screenwriter, went on to be a famous Hollywood Gossip Columnist.

Early in his career, (in 1894) while working as Box Office Manager of the Phoenix Opera House in Waukegan, (near Chicago) George K. Spoor teamed with Edward Hill Amet (inventor), to build and exhibit the first practical 35-Millimeter movie projector ever designed and used in a large audience display. Called "The Magniscope," Spoor and Amet made films and distributed them with this device before the 1895 device by the Lumiere Brothers of France. Edison's more famous Kinetoscope was exhibited in 1891, but was only able to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole.

Spoor and Amet are credited for having filmed the world's first Newsreel, the first Presidential Inauguration, (President William McKinley) the first use of film miniatures ("The Battle of Santiago Bay") in which tin replicas and cigar smoke created the illusion of live war footage, the first to experience local censorship (due to the graphic images of "China's Boxer Rebellion") and even the "fake newsreel" which used neighbors to act out battles such as the Battle of San Juan Hill in a local park.

Spoor received an Oscar, specifically an Academy Honorary Award in 1948, for his contribution to developing motion pictures as entertainment.

Spoor, George K. Spoor, George K.

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