Silent Serial Sensations

The Wharton Brothers and the Magic of Early Cinema

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by Barbara Tepa Lupack

Type: Studies
Subject: History of Cinema
Keywords: early cinema, Wharton Brothers
Publishing date: 2020
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 408 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-5017-4818-9

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Book Presentation:
The first book-length study of pioneering and prolific filmmakers Ted and Leo Wharton, Silent Serial Sensations offers a fascinating account of the dynamic early film industry. As Barbara Tepa Lupack demonstrates, the Wharton brothers were behind some of the most profitable and influential productions of the era, including The Exploits of Elaine and The Mysteries of Myra, which starred such popular performers as Pearl White, Irene Castle, Francis X. Bushman, and Lionel Barrymore. Working from the independent film studio they established in Ithaca, New York, Ted and Leo turned their adopted town into "Hollywood on Cayuga." By interweaving contemporary events and incorporating technological and scientific innovations, the Whartons expanded the possibilities of the popular serial motion picture and defined many of its conventions. A number of the sensational techniques and character types they introduced are still being employed by directors and producers a century later.

About the Author:
New York State Public Scholar (2015-2018) and Senior Fellow at the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies (2014 & 2018), Barbara Tepa Lupack is former Professor of English at St. John's University and Wayne State College and academic dean at SUNY. She has written extensively on American film, literature, and culture. Her most recent books on silent film include Early Race Filmmaking in America and the award-winning Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking.

Press Reviews:
Lupack writes lucidly and with engagement as she champions her subject. Silent Serial Sensations casts new light on the formative years of American filmmaking.

― Shepherd Express

Lupack's account is especially adept at placing the Whartons in the context of the movie industry's rapid evolution. [She] reminds us of the modern impulses at work in early film production, provides a glimpse of the first 'empowered' women of the screen, and shows how current film has adapted prior techniques. Overall, the book is a model of solid historical research, clearly written, and tellingly tied to the broader story of American film.

― Technology & Culture

The rise and fall of the Wharton Brothers acts rather well as a microcosm for the rapid changes in the American film industry during the 1910s, and the book takes the necessary space to put their achievements in the context of the film world at the time and within society in general. Barbara Tepa Lupack's spotlight on the Wharton brothers makes for an entertaining read, and the book is a fine addition to the existing literature not only on silent serials of the 1910s but also on filmmaking of the period as a whole.

― Early Popular Visual Culture

An important contribution to the ongoing task of rewriting early American cinema history, Silent Serial Sensations offers a timely, informative study of the heady opportunities and perilous risks of local or regional commercial filmmaking as the Hollywood industry was consolidating its national and global power in the 1910s.

― The Journal of American History

It is in the pages of Lupack's wonderful book that my odd sensation of their tightly crafted and dynamic presentation of artfully devised delayed gratification as borne out by this exhaustively devoted film historian. She arrives at her most startling revelations even before her storied saga gets underway, in a preface and introduction that situate the Whartons as true aesthetic visionaries rather than merely or solely sensationalists. She does so by showing us how they literally invented a serial format that was still almost half a century away and wouldn't fully materialize until the advent of dramatic television experiments

― Critics At Large

Lupack's study offers valuable insight into a lost history of the film industry in Upstate New York. Lupack concludes that her study reveals the Whartons' 'profound impact on the early serial picture' while restoring 'Ted and Leo Wharton to the classical narrative of early filmmaking.' Lupack's Silent Serial Sensations reframes the history of the early film industry beyond the traditional narratives focused on New York City and New Jersey.

― New York History

In Silent Serial Sensations Lupack unpacks the astounding story of overlooked film producers Theodore and Leopold Wharton and their thrilling, even magical, contributions to early cinema. Lupack grounds her discussion, and the Wharton brothers themselves, in the evolution of silent film.Delving into fascinating primary sources-including business records and early motion picture periodicals-Lupack assembles a remarkable portrait of the duo's independent experiments in action serials. She does so with aplomb, writing in a readable and engaging style. In illuminating this neglected part of film history, Lupak has created a scholarly sensation.Essential.

― Choice