Rothacker Film: "Largest and Best Laboratory in America"?

ABSTRACT:Watterson Rothacker (1885–1960) probably is best known as both the pioneering maker of industrial and advertising films in the early 1910s and the producer of The Lost World (1925). Between 1917 and 1924, however, with large factories in Chicago and Los Angeles, he also was a major industry leader in developing negatives and manufacturing positive film stock for many Hollywood features. By analyzing the little-known output of Rothacker Manufacturing, especially for First National, this essay seeks to explain how Rothacker's company became the "largest and best laboratory in America" and to argue for the significance of the film laboratory as a long-ignored, essential component of the industry's infrastructure.