Asta Nielsen film trade in Great Britain: pioneering the exclusive long feature star series before the First World War

ABSTRACT This article examines Asta Nielsen’s exceptional position in the British film market in connection with the film renter Walturdaw’s pioneering star-based exploitation of long feature films on exclusive terms, in the seasons 1911–12 to 1913–14. Close readings of renters’ advertising in leading trade journals and of star portraits in fan magazines, supplemented by OCR research in The British Newspaper Archive on exhibitors’ advertising of a number of film stars in the local press, provide strong evidence that Asta Nielsen was the most prominent star of the multiple-reel feature format in Great Britain before the First World War. The unrivalled number of twenty long features offered for hire by one single renting company allowed Asta Nielsen to perform the renowned versatility of her acting with considerable frequency and even in unique repertoire programme formats. While comparatively high numbers of OCR hits are not synonymous with popularity, trade paper notes and local cinema ads allow heuristic conclusions on her popularity, at least in certain circumstances. Because she was promoted as a Scandinavian actress who was not bound to any production company, the German provenance of her multiple-reel features was quite unknown: thus, screenings of Asta Nielsen films which had been released before the war did not stop during the 1914–15 season.