February 8: D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune's Auditorium Los Angeles and breaks both box office and film length records (running at a total length of over three hours).
November 18: Release of Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress (Audrey Munson) appears nude.
December 13: Sessue Hayakawa becomes the first Asian actor to become a star in the US after his performance in The Cheat.
The Duplex Corporation creates a Split Duplex, an early widescreen film format where the film image is rotated 90 degrees and occupies half of a conventional frame.
This List of American films of 1915 is a compilation of American films released in the year 1915.More
2 Are You a Mason? (1915 film)
Are You a Mason? is a 1915 American silent comedy film produced by Adolph Zukor and Charles Frohman, and distributed through Paramount Pictures. Directed by Thomas N. Heffron, it starred John Barrymore as a young husband who pretends to join the Masons as an excuse to get out of the house. It was based on a 1901 play by Leo Ditrichstein.More
3 Thomas N. Heffron
Thomas N. Heffron was a screenwriter, actor, and a director. He was born in Nevada, and started his career in movies in 1911, eventually landing him a role with Paramount Pictures a few years later. He left the movie industry in 1922, making all his movies in the silent era. He died in 1951 at the age of 79 in San Francisco, California.More
4 John Barrymore
John Barrymore was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. A member of the Drew and Barrymore theatrical families, he initially tried to avoid the stage, and briefly attempted a career as an artist, but appeared on stage together with his father Maurice in 1900, and then his sister Ethel the following year. He began his career in 1903 and first gained attention as a stage actor in light comedy, then high drama, culminating in productions of Justice (1916), Richard III (1920) and Hamlet (1922); his portrayal of Hamlet led to him being called the "greatest living American tragedian".More
5 Assunta Spina (1915 film)
Assunta Spina is a 1915 Italian silent film. Outside Italy, it is sometimes known as Sangue Napolitano.More
6 Francesca Bertini
Francesca Bertini was an Italian silent film actress. She was one of the most successful silent film stars in the first quarter of the twentieth-century.More
7 Lists of Italian films
A list of some notable films produced in the Cinema of Italy ordered by year and decade of release For an alphabetical list of articles on Italian films see Category:Italian films.More
8 Barnaby Rudge (film)
Barnaby Rudge is a 1915 British silent drama film directed by Thomas Bentley and Cecil M. Hepworth and starring Tom Powers, Stewart Rome and Violet Hopson. It was an adaptation of the 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens which was set amidst the 1780 Gordon Riots in London.More
9 Thomas Bentley
Thomas Bentley was a British film director. He directed 68 films between 1912 and 1941. He directed three films in the early DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, The Man in the Street (1926), The Antidote (1927), and Acci-Dental Treatment (1928).More
The Birth of a Nation, originally called The Clansman, is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. The screenplay is adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.'s 1905 novel and play The Clansman. Griffith co-wrote the screenplay with Frank E. Woods and produced the film with Harry Aitken.More
12 D. W. Griffith
David Wark Griffith was an American film director. Widely considered as the most important filmmaker of his generation, he pioneered financing of the feature-length movie.More
13 Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American pioneering actress of the screen and stage, and a director and writer. Her film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912, in silent film shorts, to 1987. Gish was called "The First Lady of American Cinema", and is credited with pioneering fundamental film performance techniques.More
14 The Caprices of Kitty
The Caprices of Kitty is a 1915 American comedy silent film directed by Phillips Smalley and written by Elsie Janis. The film stars Elsie Janis, Courtenay Foote, Herbert Standing, Vera Lewis, Martha Mattox and Myrtle Stedman. The film was released on March 8, 1915, by Paramount Pictures.More
15 Phillips Smalley
Wendell Phillips Smalley was an American silent film director and actor.More
16 Elsie Janis
Elsie Janis was an American actress of stage and screen, singer, songwriter, screenwriter and radio announcer. Entertaining the troops during World War I immortalized her as "the sweetheart of the AEF".More
17 Carmen (1915 Cecil B. DeMille film)
Carmen is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. The film is based on the novella Carmen by Prosper Mérimée. The existing versions of this film appear to be from the re-edited 1918 re-release.More
18 Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil Blount DeMille was an American film director and producer. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants.More
19 Geraldine Farrar
Alice Geraldine Farrar was an American soprano opera singer and film actress, noted for her beauty, acting ability, and "the intimate timbre of her voice." She had a large following among young women, who were nicknamed "Gerry-flappers".More
20 Carmen (1915 Raoul Walsh film)
Carmen is a 1915 American silent drama film, written and directed by Raoul Walsh, which starred Theda Bara. It is based on the 1845 novella Carmen, the film was shot at the Fox Studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It is now considered lost.More
21 Raoul Walsh
Raoul A. Walsh was an American film director, actor, founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and the brother of silent screen actor George Walsh. He was known for portraying John Wilkes Booth in the silent classic The Birth of a Nation (1915) and for directing such films as The Big Trail (1930), starring John Wayne, High Sierra (1941), starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart, and White Heat (1949), starring James Cagney and Edmond O'Brien. He directed his last film in 1964.More
22 Theda Bara
Theda Bara was an American silent film and stage actress.More
23 The Champion (1915 film)
The Champion is a comedy film released in 1915 by Essanay Studios, starring Charles Chaplin alongside Edna Purviance and Leo White. Essanay co-owner and star, Broncho Billy Anderson can be seen as an enthusiastic audience member in the boxing match scene.More
24 Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, The Tramp, and is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.More
25 Edna Purviance
Olga Edna Purviance was an American actress of the silent film era. She was the leading lady in many of Charlie Chaplin's early films and in a span of eight years, she appeared in over 30 films with him.More
26 The Cheat (1915 film)
The Cheat is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, and Jack Dean, Ward's real-life husband.More
27 Fannie Ward
Fannie Ward, also credited as Fanny Ward, was an American actress of stage and screen. Known for performing in both comedic and dramatic roles, she was cast in The Cheat, a sexually-charged 1915 silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Reportedly, Ward's ageless appearance helped her to achieve and maintain her celebrity. In its obituary for her, The New York Times describes her as "an actress who never quite reached the top in her profession ... [and who] tirelessly devoted herself to appearing perpetually youthful, an act that made her famous".More
28 Sessue Hayakawa
Kintaro Hayakawa, known professionally as Sessue Hayakawa , was a Japanese actor and a matinée idol. He was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Hayakawa was the first actor of Asian descent to achieve stardom as a leading man in the United States and Europe. His "broodingly handsome" good looks and typecasting as a sexually dominant villain made him a heartthrob among American women during a time of racial discrimination, and he became one of the first male sex symbols of Hollywood.More
29 The Crazy Clock Maker
The Crazy Clock Maker is a 1915 American silent comedy film starring Billy Bowers and featuring Oliver Hardy in a supporting role.More
30 Double Trouble (1915 film)
Double Trouble is a 1915 American silent romantic comedy film written and directed by Christy Cabanne, produced by D.W. Griffith, and starring Douglas Fairbanks in one of his earliest motion pictures. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Herbert Quick. The plot, a variant on the theme of Jekyll and Hyde, revolves around a very shy, "effeminate" banker who acquires a second, rakish and flirtatious personality after receiving a blow on the head. The film was a popular and critical success.More
31 Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Elton Fairbanks was an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro, but spent the early part of his career making comedies.More
32 Enoch Arden (1915 film)
Enoch Arden is a 1915 American short drama film directed by Christy Cabanne. It is based on the 1864 poem Enoch Arden by Tennyson. Prints of the film exists at the George Eastman House Motion Picture Collection and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.More
33 Mabel, Fatty and the Law
Mabel, Fatty and the Law is a 1915 American short comedy film starring Fatty Arbuckle and Mabel Normand, and directed by Fatty Arbuckle. The film is also known as Fatty, Mabel and the Law and Fatty's Spooning Days.More
34 Roscoe Arbuckle
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. He started at the Selig Polyscope Company and eventually moved to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd as well as with his nephew, Al St. John. He also mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s and one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1920 with Paramount Pictures for $14,000.More
35 Mabel Normand
Mabel Ethelreid Normand was an American silent-film actress, screenwriter, director, and producer. She was a popular star and collaborator of Mack Sennett in his Keystone Studios films, and at the height of her career in the late 1910s and early 1920s had her own movie studio and production company. Onscreen, she appeared in 12 successful films with Charlie Chaplin and 17 with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, sometimes writing and directing movies featuring Chaplin as her leading man.More
36 Keystone Cops
The Keystone Cops are fictional, humorously incompetent policemen featured in silent film slapstick comedies produced by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Film Company between 1912 and 1917.More
37 Filibus
Filibus is a 1915 Italian silent adventure film directed by Mario Roncoroni and written by the future science fiction author Giovanni Bertinetti. The film features Valeria Creti as the title character, a mysterious sky pirate who makes daring heists with her technologically advanced airship. When an esteemed detective sets out on her trail, she begins an elaborate game of cat and mouse with him, slipping between various male and female identities to romance the detective's sister and stage a midnight theft of a pair of valuable diamonds.More
38 A Fool There Was (1915 film)
A Fool There Was is an American silent drama film produced by William Fox, directed by Frank Powell, and starring Theda Bara. Released in 1915, the film was long considered controversial for such risqué intertitle cards as "Kiss me, my fool!"More
39 Four Feathers
Four Feathers (1915) is a silent film adaptation of A. E. W. Mason's 1902 novel The Four Feathers.More
40 A Gentleman of Leisure (1915 film)
A Gentleman of Leisure is a surviving 1915 American silent comedy film produced by Jesse Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It stars stage veteran Wallace Eddinger. The film is based on the 1910 novel A Gentleman of Leisure by P. G. Wodehouse and 1911 Broadway play adapted by Wodehouse and John Stapleton. A young actor named Douglas Fairbanks was a cast member in the play several years before beginning a film career. This film survives in the Library of Congress.More
41 George Melford
George H. Melford was an American stage and film actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. Often taken for granted as a director today, the stalwart Melford's name by the 1920s was, like Cecil B. DeMille's, appearing in big bold letters above the title of his films.More
42 Wallace Eddinger
Wallace Eddinger was an American stage actor. He started as a child actor, known as Wally Eddinger. As a child he played Cedric in Little Lord Fauntleroy which starred female child sensation Elsie Leslie.More
43 The Golden Chance
The Golden Chance is a 1915 American drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. A print of the film survives at George Eastman House. DeMille remade the film in 1921 as Forbidden Fruit.More
44 Cleo Ridgely
Cleo Ridgely-Horne was a star of silent and sound motion pictures. Her career began early in the silent film era, in 1911, and continued for forty years. She retired in the 1930s but later returned to make more movies. Her final film was Hollywood Story (1951), in which she had a bit part.More
45 Wallace Reid
William Wallace Halleck Reid was an American actor in silent film, referred to as "the screen's most perfect lover". He also had a brief career as a racing driver.More
46 The Golem (1915 film)
Der Golem is a 1915 German silent horror partially lost film, written and directed by Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen. It was inspired by a Jewish folktale, the most prevalent version of the story involving 16th century Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel who created the Golem to protect his people from antisemites. Wegener claimed the film was based on Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel The Golem, but, as the movie has little to do with existing Jewish traditions, Troy Howarth states "it is more likely that simply drew upon European folklore".More
47 Paul Wegener
Paul Wegener was a German actor, writer, and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema.More
48 Henrik Galeen
Henrik Galeen was an Austrian-born actor, screenwriter and film director considered an influential figure in the development of German Expressionist cinema during the silent era.More
49 List of German films of 1895–1918
This is a list of the most notable films produced in the German Empire until 1918, in year order.More
50 The Immigrant (1915 film)
The Immigrant is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by George Melford and starring Valeska Suratt, an actress who specialized in playing vamp roles and who was one of Theda Bara's film rivals. The film is now considered lost.More
51 Inspiration (1915 film)
Inspiration is a 1915 American silent drama film directed by George Foster Platt and written by Virginia Tyler Hudson and starring Audrey Munson, an artist's model known at the time for posing for several statues in New York City and the 1915 San Francisco Panama–Pacific International Exposition. It is the second non-pornographic American film to feature full female nudity. On its reissue in 1918, the film was renamed as The Perfect Model.More
52 The Italian (1915 film)
The Italian is a 1915 American silent film feature which tells the story of an Italian gondolier who comes to the United States to make his fortune but instead winds up working as a shoeshiner and experiencing tragedy while living with his wife and child in a tenement on New York's Lower East Side. The film was produced by Thomas H. Ince, directed by Reginald Barker, and co-written by C. Gardner Sullivan and Ince. The film stars stage actor George Beban in the title role as the Italian immigrant, Pietro "Beppo" Donnetti. In 1991, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.More
53 The Lamb (1915 film)
The Lamb is a 1915 American silent adventure comedy/Western film featuring Douglas Fairbanks in his first starring role. Directed by W. Christy Cabanne, the film is based on the popular 1913 Broadway play The New Henrietta, in which Fairbanks co-starred with William H. Crane, Amelia Bingham and a very young Patricia Collinge. D. W. Griffith, writing under the pseudonym Granville Barker, along with director Christy Cabanne, essentially expanded the play beyond the plush nouveau riche apartment setting of the play, and provided a western element to the story. This would give Fairbanks a chance to show his physical prowess cinematically and loosen the play from what would be stage bound constraints. Griffith also altered characters; Fairbanks' character's name is changed to Gerald, with his parent being his mother, whereas in the play his character was named Nick with his parent being his father played by Crane.More
54 Madame Butterfly (1915 film)
Madame Butterfly is a 1915 silent film directed by Sidney Olcott. The film is based on the 1898 short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long and the opera Madama Butterfly.More
55 Sidney Olcott
Sidney Olcott was a Canadian-born film producer, director, actor and screenwriter.More
56 Mary Pickford
Gladys Louise Smith, known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian-American film actress and producer with a career that spanned five decades. A pioneer in the American film industry, she co-founded Pickford–Fairbanks Studios and United Artists, and was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.More
57 The Man Who Stayed at Home (1915 film)
The Man Who Stayed at Home is a 1915 British silent thriller film directed by Cecil M. Hepworth and starring Dennis Eadie, Violet Hopson and Alma Taylor. It is based on the play by Lechmere Worrall and J. E. Harold Terry.More
Martyrs of the Alamo is a 1915 American historical war drama film written and directed by Christy Cabanne. The film is based on the historical novel of the same name by Theodosia Harris, and features an ensemble cast including Sam De Grasse, Douglas Fairbanks, Walter Long and Alfred Paget. Fairbanks role was uncredited, and was his first role in film, although his first starring role, in The Lamb, was released prior to this picture. The film features the Siege of Béxar, Battle of the Alamo and Battle of San Jacinto.More
60 The Prisoner of Zenda (1915 film)
The Prisoner of Zenda is a 1915 British silent adventure film directed by George Loane Tucker and starring Henry Ainley, Jane Gail and Gerald Ames. Shot at Twickenham Studios, it is an adaptation of 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. A film based on the 1898 sequel Rupert of Hentzau was released shortly afterwards with the same director and cast.More
61 Henry Ainley
Henry Hinchliffe Ainley was an English Shakespearean stage and screen actor.More
62 Gerald Ames
Gerald Ames was a British actor, film director and Olympic fencer. Ames was born in Blackheath, London in 1880 and first took up acting in 1905. He was a popular leading man in the post-First World War cinema, appearing in more than sixty films between his debut in 1914 and his retirement from the screen in 1928 in a career entirely encompassing the silent era. He was also a regular stage actor who took on many leading roles in the theatre.More
63 The Raven (1915 film)
The Raven is a stylized silent 1915 American biographical film of Edgar Allan Poe starring Henry B. Walthall as Poe. The film was written and directed by Charles Brabin from a 1904 play and 1909 novel by George C. Hazelton.More
64 Regeneration (1915 film)
Regeneration is a 1915 American silent biographical crime drama co-written and directed by Raoul Walsh. The film, which was the first full-length feature film directed by Walsh, stars
Rockliffe Fellowes and Anna Q. Nilsson and was adapted for the screen by Carl Harbaugh and Walsh from the 1903 memoir My Mamie Rose, by Owen Frawley Kildare and the adapted 1908 play by Kildare and Walter C. Hackett.More
65 Rockliffe Fellowes
Rockliffe Fellowes, born Rockliffe St. Patrick Fellowes, was a Canadian actor born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He starred in films such as Regeneration and Monkey Business.More
66 Anna Q. Nilsson
Anna Quirentia Nilsson was a Swedish-American actress who achieved success in American silent movies. She predates fellow Swedish born actresses Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman.More
67 Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies between 1909 and 1935. He appeared in 291 films, all but nine of which were silent movies. He was Hollywood's first Western star and helped define the genre as it emerged in the early days of the cinema.More
68 The Senator (play)
The Senator was a popular 1890 comedic play by David D. Lloyd and Sydney Rosenfeld, also made into a 1915 silent film.More
69 The Soul of Broadway
The Soul of Broadway is a 1915 American silent crime drama film produced and distributed by the Fox Film Corporation and directed by Herbert Brenon. Popular vaudeville performer Valeska Suratt starred in the film which was also her silent screen debut. The Soul of Broadway is now considered lost. It is one of many silent films that were destroyed in a fire at Fox's film storage facility in Little Ferry, New Jersey in July 1937.More
70 The Tramp (film)
The Tramp is Charlie Chaplin's sixth film for Essanay Studios and was released in 1915. Directed by Chaplin, it was the fifth and last film made at Essanay's Niles, California studio. The Tramp marked the beginning of The Tramp character most known today, even though Chaplin played the character in earlier films. This film marked the first departure from his more slapstick character in the earlier films, with a sad ending and showing he cared for others, rather than just himself. The film co-stars Edna Purviance as the farmer's daughter and Ernest Van Pelt as Edna's father. The outdoor scenes were filmed on location near Niles.More
71 Le traquenard
Le traquenard (1915) is a French crime silent film starring Fernand Mailly, Irène Bordoni and Jacques Grétillat.More
72 Irène Bordoni
Irène Bordoni was a Corsican-American actress and singer.More
73 Lists of French films
This is a list of films produced in the French cinema, ordered by year and decade of release on separate pages.
For an alphabetical list of French films see Category:French films.
The Two Orphans was a 1915 American silent romantic drama film directed by Herbert Brenon and starring Theda Bara. This film was based on the 1872 French play Les deux orphelines, by Adolphe D'Ennery and Eugene Cormon which was translated into English by N. Hart Jackson. It was the play that was being performed at the time the Brooklyn Theater Fire broke out. The film was made by Fox Film Corporation and was partially shot on location in Québec, Canada. It is now considered to be lost.More
75 Work (film)
Work is a 1915 American silent film starring Charlie Chaplin, and co-starring Edna Purviance, Marta Golden and Charles Inslee. It was filmed at the Majestic Studio in Los Angeles.More
^Rucker, Walter C.; Upton, James N., eds. (2007). Encyclopedia of American race riots. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 35. ISBN978-0-313-33301-9. ...earning more than $10 million at the box office in 1915. By 1949, it had earned $50 million
^Birchard, Robert S. (2004), Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood, Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, p. 19, ISBN0-8131-2324-0
^Kinnard,Roy (1995). "Horror in Silent Films". McFarland and Company Inc. Page 65. ISBN0-7864-0036-6.