Sidney Olcott (born John Sidney Allcott; – December 16, 1949) was a Canadian-born film producer, director, actor and screenwriter.

Biography

Born John Sidney Allcott in Toronto, he became one of the first great directors of the motion picture business. With a desire to be an actor, a young Sidney Olcott went to New York City where he worked in the theatre until 1904 when he performed as a film actor with the Biograph Studios.

In 1907, Frank J. Marion and Samuel Long, with financial backing from George Kleine, formed a new motion picture company called the Kalem Company and were able to lure the increasingly successful Olcott away from Biograph. Olcott was offered the sum of ten dollars per picture and under the terms of his contract, Olcott was required to direct a minimum of one, one-reel picture of about a thousand feet every week. After making a number of very successful films for the Kalem studio, including Ben Hur (1907) with its dramatic chariot race scene, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1908), Olcott became the company's president and was rewarded with one share of its stock. In 1910, Olcott went to Ireland where he made a film called A Lad from Old Ireland. He would go on to make more than a dozen films there and later on only the outbreak of World War I prevented him from following through with his plans to build a permanent studio in Beaufort, County Kerry, Ireland. The Irish films led to him taking a crew to Palestine in 1912 to make the first five-reel film ever, titled From the Manger to the Cross, the life story of Jesus.

  • The Green Goddess (1923)
  • Little Old New York (1923)
  • The Humming Bird (1924)
  • Monsieur Beaucaire (1924)
  • The Only Woman (1924)
  • Salome of the Tenements (1925)
  • The Charmer (1925)
  • Not So Long Ago (1925)
  • The Best People (1925)
  • Ranson's Folly (1926)
  • The Amateur Gentleman (1926)
  • The White Black Sheep (1926)
  • The Claw (1927)

See also

  • Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood

References

Sources

  • Michel Derrien, Aux origines du cinéma irlandais: Sidney Olcott, le premier oeil, TIR 2013;
  • Olcott filming in Ireland (PDF)
  • Sidney Olcott, le premier œil