Mark Dintenfass was born April 17, 1872 in Tarnow, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now Poland), and died November 23, 1933 in Cliffiside Park, NJ

Dintenfass' first foray into the movie business was a 130 seat theater in Philadelphia called Fairyland.  Feeling he needed to generate his own output for the theater he acquired a "Cameraphone," a very early movie sound system.  He called this new company "Actophone" operating it from 1909-1910 in a loft in Manhattan.  Finding himself in violation of Edison's patents and being pursued by Edison's patent detectives, Dintenfass shut it down and moved to Fort Lee where he built Fort Lee's first Studio, The Champion Studio.

In 1912 Dintenfass was one of the original owners of the major movie company now known as Universal Pictures (NBC/Universal).  His Champion Studio became Universal's first studio.

His next venture was Vim Comedies in Jacksonville, FL from 1915 and, due to an internal partnership squabble and financial mismanagement, closed its doors in 1917.  Dintenfass followed that venture with the short live Amber Star Studio aka Mark M. Dintenfass Productions (1917) and National-Evans Film Labs in Fort Lee (ca 1923).