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I received an e-mail from someone asking about a silent film company called "Pyramid Pictures, Inc." I haven't heard of it and wondered if anyone here knew anything about its history. The person has a Syndicate Profit Sharing Agreement dated August 1921 and wants to learn more about the company.

Lisa

Hi Lisa
Don't know if this is the same company, but the only Pyramid that I'm familiar with produced comedies with a forgotten Chaplin imitator named Ray Hughes in 1917 -1918. Titles included IN AND OUT, LOVE AND LUNCH (at LOC), and BEACH BIRDS. MoMA also has something with him titled THE CAMOUFLAGE BALL. He did a decent Chaplin, but was too long and lanky to be convincing. Pyramids' tagline was "Make A Sphinx Laugh."

Steve

Lisa Bradberry wrote:I received an e-mail from someone asking about a silent film company called "Pyramid Pictures, Inc." I haven't heard of it and wondered if anyone here knew anything about its history. The person has a Syndicate Profit Sharing Agreement dated August 1921 and wants to learn more about the company.

Lisa

There was a Pyramid Photo Plays, founded in 1915 and I believe based in Los Angeles, and then there was a Pyramid Pictures, which was based in New Jersey. That company was active in the early 1920s; its last credited feature-length production was Wife in Name Only (1923), starring former Sennett girl Mary Thurman and distributed by Selznick, but the company made non-theatrical films too. I don't know when they went under, or if the company was acquired by another one.

Thank you, Steve and Chris.

Lisa

There was also a Pyramid Studio, on Mill Road in Astoria, Long Island, where the ever-popular Al Joy filmed at least some of his comedies in 1926.

Frank