Buccaneer: James Stuart Blackton and the Birth of American Movies

Film and History

by Donald Dewey

A man of many film firsts, James Stuart Blackton promoted motion pictures as a mass commercial medium by creating the first true movie studio, adopting the star system, pioneering film animation, and publishing Motion Picture Magazine, one of the first film periodicals. As much of a seminal figure to the film industry as Thomas Edison and D.W. Griffith, James Stuart Blackton nonetheless remains unknown to most film enthusiasts and even many cinema scholars.

In Buccaneer: James Stuart Blackton and the Birth of American Movies Donald Dewey recounts the drama, intrigue, and romance of this motion picture trailblazer. A gifted director, producer, and founder of Vitagraph studios, Blackton's personal escapades were nearly as dramatic as his contributions to the medium he helped establish. Decades ahead of his time, Blackton also played a critical role in propagating war-time sentiment during both the Spanish-American War and World War I and was an influence on such key historical figures as Theodore Roosevelt.

A fascinating look into the life of a truly distinguished filmmaker, Buccaneer narrates the volatile world of the early motion picture industry, as influenced by a man whose own story rivaled anything on screen. A must read for film lovers, this book will also prove to be invaluable to readers with an interest in American history.

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 15, 2016

Reviews

[Greta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seems to be well researched, it's a breezy read with plenty of snark. Too much snark in fact, though given that Blackton is the subject it's not entirely misplaced. But by the end, the snark is feeling gratuitous and petty and left me feeling annoyed. Unfortunately i'm more interested in Vitagraph as an artistic entity than i am in its business history or Blackton's personal life. One gets the feeling that the author has little background in early cinema and little interest in the films themselves (i'm sure he was happy not to have to watch Battle Cry of Peace, but he still got the plot slightly wrong). He casually dismisses key personnel like Norma Talmadge and Sidney Drew, and while he goes into detail about Vitagraph's early interest in longer films and mentions their pursuit of highbrow sources, you get little sense of Vitagraph's place in the ecosystem of early and nickelodeon-era cinema, particularly their innovative studio system, generally high artistic standards, and keen eye for talent. He also likes to pick fights with other film researchers, and devotes an entire tedious appendix to debunking the idea that Albert Smith didn't go to the Boer War front.