Siegmund Lubin
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Siegmund Lubin (born Zygmunt Lubszyński, April 20, 1851 – September 11, 1923) was a German-American motion picture pioneer who founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company (1902–1917) of Philadelphia.
Biography
Siegmund Lubin was born as Zygmunt Lubszyński, a son of Samuel Lubszyński and Rebeka Lubszyńska, Polish Jews, in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) or in Poznań on April 20, 1851. His father was a successful ophthalmologist. the Lubszyński family moved to Berlin soon after Zygmunt birth for economic reasons. Young Zygmunt Germanicized his first name to Siegmund and graduated from the University of Heidelberg. In 1876 he emigrated to the United States, where he also worked as an optometrist in Philadelphia. Around 1881, he shortened his surname from the Polish Lubszyński to Lubin.
He soon progressed to making his own camera and projector combination, which he sold. In 1896 he began distributing films for Thomas Edison.In 1897 he started making films, notably Meet Me at the Fountain in 1904, and in 1902 formed the Lubin Manufacturing Company, incorporating it in 1909.His company also sold illegally copied prints of many films by other directors, notably those of Georges Méliès, making Lubin one of the foremost early practitioners of film piracy.
By 1910 his company had built a film studio, "Lubinville", in Philadelphia, at Twentieth Avenue and Indiana Street.
A fire at its studio in June 1914 destroyed the negatives for his unreleased new films. When World War I broke out in Europe in September of that year, Lubin Studios was among the American filmmakers who lost foreign sales. The Lubin Film Company went out of business on September 1, 1917, after having made more than a thousand motion pictures. Siegmund went back to work as an optometrist.
He died on September 11, 1923 at his home in Ventnor, New Jersey. He was buried on September 14, 1923.
Legacy
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Siegmund Lubin has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (with his first name as "Sigmund") at 6166 Hollywood Blvd.
