About

Known credits:
34
Birthday:
1867-04-15
Place of birth:
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Website:
Click here

Charles Urban

Overview

Charles Urban is an American producer, director, cinematographer and editor born April 14, 1867 in Cincinnati, Ohio (United States), died August 29, 1942 in Brighton (United Kingdom).

Urban made many types of non-fiction films at the Charles Urban Trading Company, including travel films, war reports, exploration films, sports films, commercials and natural history films. Filmmakers who worked for him include Jack Avery, Joseph Rosenthal, Charles Rider Noble, Harold Mease Lomas, mountaineer Frank Ormiston-Smith, George Rogers, J. Gregory Mantle, and naturalist F. Percy Smith. Smith directed one of Urban's most successful films, The Balancing Bluebottle (1908), which featured a fly balancing objects such as a wine cork with its legs.

In 1906, George Albert Smith and Charles Urban created a new process in England, Kinémacolor, which recreated the impression of (partial) colors in cinema. Marketed at the beginning of 1911, the process was used in some 250 short films.

In Paris, in 1913, Charles Urban built the Théâtre Édouard VII, which was above all a cinema using Kinémacolor. He sold his room to Alphonse Franck the following year.

Urban remained in the United States after the war to re-establish himself as a producer of educational films through his umbrella company, Urban Motion Picture Industries Inc. He produced the Charles cinemagazine series Urban Movie Chats (launched in 1919) and Kineto Review (launched 1921), and made the feature documentaries The Four Seasons (1921) and Evolution (1923). He built a large studio in Irvington, New York, where he planned to introduce a new color film system called Kinekrom, based on the old Kinemacolor, and to distribute educational films on disc using the Spirograph. However, his business interests collapsed in 1924 and he returned to the UK in the late 1920s. He died in Brighton in 1942, aged 75.

Known for

Directing
1923 Armenia, Cradle of Humanity Directing Director N/A
N/A
1921 The Four Seasons Directing Director N/A
N/A
1916 The Battle of the Somme Directing Director 59
Average
1915 Britain Prepared Directing Director N/A
N/A
1911 Banks of the Nile Directing Director 59
Average
1907 Torpedo Attack on H.M.S. Dreadnought Directing Director N/A
N/A
1904 Hunting the Red Deer, With the Devon and Somerset Staghounds Directing Director N/A
N/A
1904 Living London Directing Director N/A
N/A
1902 The Coronation of Edward VII Directing Director 58
Average

Production
1915 Fight for the Dardanelles Production Producer N/A
N/A
1914 The World, the Flesh and the Devil Production Producer N/A
N/A
1912 The Pageant Procession Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 Varieties of Sweet Peas Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 The Aerial Anarchists Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 A Run with the Exmoor Staghounds Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 Feeding Poultry at Prowse Jones Farm Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 Coronation Drill at Reedham Orphanage Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 Nubia, Wadi Halfa and the Second Cataract Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 Building a British Railway: Constructing the Locomotive Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 Trilby and Svengali Production Producer N/A
N/A
1911 Banks of the Nile Production Producer 59
Average
1910 The Birth of a Flower Production Producer 59
Average
1910 The Aerial Submarine Production Producer 58
Average
1910 Fording the River Production Producer N/A
N/A
1910 Lake Garda, Italy Production Producer N/A
N/A
1909 A Dash to the North Pole Production Producer N/A
N/A
1908 The Harvest Production Producer N/A
N/A
1908 Hackenschmidt-Rogers [The Great Wrestling Match] Production Producer N/A
N/A
1906 The Arlberg Railway Production Producer 59
Average
1904 Venice and the Grand Canal Production Producer N/A
N/A
1902 The Coronation of Edward VII Production Producer 58
Average

Editing
1921 The Four Seasons Editing Editor N/A
N/A
1916 The Battle of the Somme Editing Editor 59
Average
1915 Fight for the Dardanelles Editing Editor N/A
N/A