Decline
The studio was rented out to others, and was eventually demolished. Unlike the case with The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908), Baum invested none of his own money in the venture and was not financially affected by the studio's failure, though it is probable it impacted his health, which took a turn for the worse not long after the failure.
Frank Joslyn Baum, Baum's eldest son and sometime attorney, who handled East Coast distribution from an office in Times Square, took over the company and renamed it Dramatic Feature Films, which made one feature and one short, probably from scripts by the younger Baum. Although ads announced the release of the feature film, The Gray Nun of Belgium, it does not appear to actually have been released. While some speculate that Baum would have allied himself with United Artists had he been able to sustain the company, there is no evidence for this, nor evidence that he had ever met UA's founding members, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith, though Gottschalk went on to work with all of them. It is known that fairy tale/fantasy films were produced more frequently by 1917.
The four feature films were considered lost for many years. By the 1980s, all three fairy tale films were made available on home video. All of the feature films have been released on both DVD and VHS with the exception of The Last Egyptian. The Museum of Modern Art owns a worn copy that was used in Bill Morrison's Decasia, but it remains unreleased and is not part of their screening repertoire. The shorts remain lost.
Read more about this topic: The Oz Film Manufacturing Company
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Families suffered badly under industrialization, but they survived, and the lives of men, women, and children improved. Children, once marginal and exploited figures, have moved to a position of greater protection and respect,... The historic decline in the overall death rates for children is an astonishing social fact, notwithstanding the disgraceful infant mortality figures for the poor and minorities. Like the decline in death from childbirth for women, this is a stunning achievement.”
—Joseph Featherstone (20th century)