Champion Film Company


The Champion Film Company was an independent production company founded in 1909 by Mark M. Dintenfass. The studio was one of the film companies that merged to form Universal Pictures.
Champion was the first film production company to establish itself in the area around Fort Lee, New Jersey, when the town was the home of America's first motion picture industry
It built its studio in the vicinity of Fort Lee, at the town line with Englewood Cliffs in Coytesville, then a relatively remote area, to make them look as little like a studio as possible. The building was demolished on 2013.
Dintenfass tried avoid the investigators of Thomas Alva Edison, always looking for the "pirates" who escaped the rigid conditions posed by the Motion Picture Patents Company, the monopoly of the sector that it imposed, between the other, to use only the technical material that was to be provided exclusively by the trust. To circumvent the MPPC, the independents - including Dintenfass - distributed their films through the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company of Carl Laemmle.
On April 30, 1912, Laemmle brought together Pat Powers of Powers Motion Picture Company, Mark Dintenfass of Champion Film Company, William Swanson of Rex Motion Picture Company, David Horsley of Nestor Film Company, and Charles Baumann and Adam Kessel of the New York Motion Picture Company, to merge their companies with Independent Moving Pictures and create Universal Film Manufacturing Company, with Laemmle assuming the role of president. Dintenfass later founded the Vim Comedy Company
In its four years of activity, Champion produced more than two hundred films. It specialized initially in westerns and historical reconstructions of military episodes of the American Civil War and American Revolution. Later, he produced numerous drama films, documentaries and some movies related to famous people, such as the aviators Blanche Scott and Robert G. Fowler. Among those who appeared in Champion films were John G. Adolfi, Irving Cummings, Jeanie Macpherson.

Filmography