906 Girard St., Los Angeles
Site active 1911-1925
Biograph occupied 1911-1916

In January 1910 the Biograph Company sent its Director General, D.W. Griffith, to the West Coast to determine if it was a suitable place to build a studio.  He brought a company of players with him, found a vacant lot, and begin making movies right away. 

Griffith was already a recognized as the industry's premier director.  He is credited with creating much of the movie "vocabulary" (techniques) we take for granted today. Griffith started as an actor with Biograph.  Among his Biograph associates were Mack  Sennett, who would become the greatest of the early Comedy producer/directors, and Mary Pickford, the biggest actress in the silent era who would own a studio of her own.

Griffith had been promoted from actor to director and quickly became Biograph's Director-General, the man who got the best assignments.  It was clear that Griffith was a director unlike the industry had seen before.  His movies were unlike anything seen before.  Griffith would go on to produce the biggest movies of the silent era.

American Biograph and Mutoscope Company was one of the early giants. It was founded in 1895 by W.K.L Dickson, the man who helped Edison become the man credited with inventing the motion picture (see Edison's biography).  Dickson, along with inventors Herman Casler, Henry Marvin, and businessman Elias Koopman incorporated the American Mutoscope Company in New Jersey on December 30, 1895.  Their product was a machine to play flip card type movies, becoming Edison's chief competitor.  In 1899 the name became American Mutoscope and Biograph Company as they began to make their own movies, and in 1908 it was shortened to just the Biograph Company.