Sources
Books
Charles Urban's name is mentioned in many film reference works, usually only in connection with Kinemacolor, and seldom in any depth. These are some of the main publications that each deal with aspects of his career and in many cases provided information for this website. The best single account is D.B. Thomas's The First Colour Motion Pictures, while Kevin Brownlow's silent film history The War, the West and the Wilderness includes a good portrait of the man, concentrating on his First World War period.
- John Barnes, The Beginnings of the Cinema in England 1894-1901: Vols. 1-5 (University of Exeter Press, 1996-98)
- Kevin Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness (Secker & Warburg, 1979)
- Michael Chanan, The Dream that Kicks: The Prehistory and Early Years of Cinema in Britain (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980)
- Brian Coe, The History of Movie Photography (Ash & Grant, 1981)
- Colin Harding and Simon Popple, In the Kingdom of Shadows: A Companion to Early Cinema (Cygnus Arts/Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996)
- Cecil Hepworth, Came the Dawn: Memories of a Film Pioneer (Phoenix House, 1951)
- Stephen Herbert, Theodore Brown's Magic Pictures: The Art and Inventions of a Multi-Media Pioneer (The Projection Box, 1997)
- Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan (ed.), Who's Who of Victorian Cinema: A Worldwide Survey (BFI, 1996)
- Adrian Klein, Colour Cinematography (Chapman & Hall, 1936)
- Rachael Low and Roger Manvell, The History of the British Film 1896-1906 (George Allen & Unwin, 1948)
- Rachael Low, The History of the British Film 1906-1914 (George Allen & Unwin, 1949)
- Rachael Low, The History of the British Film 1914-1918 (George Allen & Unwin, 1950)
- Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture (Simon & Schuster, 1926)
- D.B. Thomas, The First Colour Motion Pictures (HMSO, 1969)
- Charles Urban, The Cinematograph in Science, Education, and Matters of State (Charles Urban Trading Company, 1907)
- Charles Urban (ed. Luke McKernan), A Yank in Britain: The Lost Memoirs of Charles Urban, Film Pioneer (The Projection Box, 1999)
A huge number of articles were written about Urban in his day, and a great many of these are held in the Charles Urban papers held at the National Media Museum (see below). Too few have been written subsequently. These are some of the most important, of which the most useful from a biographical point of view is the obituary in The Cine-Technician, while Natalie S. McIntosh provides the most interesting interview, and Richard Brown's paper is the most notable academic study.
- Anon., 'Charles Urban', The Cine-Technician, November-December 1942
- Anon., 'Some Interesting Experiments With the Camera That Open Up Suggestive Fields Of Usefulness in Science of Photography', New York Times, 12 December 1909
- Stephen Bottomore, '"An Amazing Quarter Mile of Moving Gold, Gems and Genealogy": filming India's 1902/03 Delhi Durbar', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, vol. 15 no. 4, 1995
- Richard Brown, '"England is not big enough..." American rivalry in the early English film business: The case of Warwick v Urban, 1903', Film History, vol. 10, 1998
- Oliver Gaycken, 'The Sources of The Secrets of Nature: The Popular Science Film at Urban, 1903-1911', in Alan Burton and Laraine Porter (eds.), Scene-Stealing: Sources for British Cinema Before 1930 (Flicks Books, 2003)
- Julius Junior, 'Mayfair Gallery Men of the Day: Mr Charles Urban', Mayfair, 14 August 1912
- Gorham Kindem,'The Demise of Kinemacolor: Technological, Legal, Economic, and Aesthetic Problems in Early Color Cinema History', Cinema Journal 20, no. 2, Spring 1981
- Arthur Edwin Krows, 'Motion Pictures - Not for Theaters', The Educational Screen, 1938-1944 [series]
- Thierry Lefebvre, 'Charles Urban et le film d'éducation - Brèves réflexions sur quelques documents des Archives Will Day', 1895, October 1997
- Natalie S. McIntosh, 'Stardust and the Rainbow's End', Brooklyn Life, 2 April 1921
- Luke McKernan, 'The American Invasion and the British Film Industry, 1894-1903', in Alan Burton and Laraine Porter (eds.), Crossing the Pond: Anglo-American Film Relations Before 1930 (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 2002)
- Luke McKernan, 'The Brighton School and the Quest for Natural Colour’, in Simon Popple and Vanessa Toulmin (eds.), Visual Delights – two: Exhibition and Reception (Eastleigh: John Libbey, 2005)
- Luke McKernan, '"The Modern Elixir of Life": Kinemacolor, royalty and the Delhi Durbar', Film History, vol. 21 no. 2 (2009)
- Luke McKernan, 'Propaganda, Patriotism and Profit: Charles Urban and British official war films in America during the First World War, Film History, vol. 14 nos. 3/4 (2002)
- Luke McKernan, 'Putting the World Before You: The Charles Urban Story', in Andrew Higson (ed.), Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain, 1896-1930 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002)
- Luke McKernan, '"That Slick Salesman in the Silk Hat": Charles Urban Arrives in Britain', in Simon Popple and Vanesa Toulmin (eds.), Visual Delights: Essays on the Popular and Projected Image in the 19th Century (Flicks Books, 2001)
- W.T. Stead, 'The Mission of the Cinematograph', Review of Reviews, 1902
- Charles Urban, 'The Romance of the Bioscope', Cassell's Magazine, February 1910
- Charles Urban, 'Terse History of Natural Colour Kinematography', Living Pictures: The Journal of the Popular and the Projected Image Before 1914, vol. 2 no. 2 (2003) [originally written 1921]
Unpublished Sources
The major source of information on Urban is the Charles Urban Papers collection now held in the archives of the National Media Museum, Bradford, a collection which he originally donated to the Science Museum in 1937. It has been a valuable resource for film scholars ever since, and the contents break down as follows:
- URB1 Letters and other documentation mostly relating to the exhibition of Kinemacolor.
- URB2 Programmes and press clippings relating to Kinemacolor programmes worldwide.
- URB3 Press cuttings and programmes relating to Kinemacolor.
- URB4 Papers relating to Urban's propaganda work during the First World War.
- URB5 Movie Chats catalogues.
- URB6 Papers of Edward R. Turner relating to three-colour cinematography. [A later addition to the collection]
- URB7 Papers, patent specifications and court report relating to the Urban v Bioschemes court case 1913-1915.
- URB8 Papers, cuttings and photographs relating to Percy Smith.
- URB9 Papers on the history of colour cinematography.
- URB10 Film catalogues for Warwick Trading Company, Charles Urban Trading Company, Eclipse and Kineto.
- URB11 Photograph albums
- URB12 Programmes and promotional material relating to Kinemacolor and Kinekrom.
- URB13 Papers on the Spirograph.
The original copy of the Charles Urban memoirs has now been acquired by the Science Museum Library.
Luke McKernan's PhD thesis on Urban, 'Something More than a Mere Picture Show': Charles Urban and the Early Non-Fiction Film in Great Britain and America, 1897-1925 (2003) is available for consultation by researchers at Birkbeck, University of London. one chapter, on the history of Kinemacolor, is downloadable from www.lukemckernan.com.
Film Archives
The surviving films of Charles Urban, which number several hundred titles, are (appropriately enough) distributed among film archives worldwide. Few film archives have put their catalogues online at present, but those listed below should be able to provide further information on their holdings of Urban films, and on early cinema in general. Easily the largest single collection of Urban films is that held by the BFI National Archive in London.
- The American Film Institute, Los Angeles, USA
The AFI acquired an Urban title in 1999, though details have now disappeared from their reorganised site. - Les Archives du Film du Centre National de la Cinématographie, Bois d'Arcy, France
In the Will Day Collection, preserved by Les Archives du Film du CNC, there are a number of Charles Urban Trading Company titles, and one short Kinemacolor film, given the title A Highland Lassie. - BFI National Archive (part of the British Film Institute), London, UK
The BFI National Archive holds a substantial number of films from all parts of Urban's career, including productions by the Warwick Trading Company, the Charles Urban Trading Company, Kineto, the Natural Color Kinematograph Company, Eclipse and the Kineto Company of America. Three or four of these films include shots of Urban himself, who had the habit of appearing in a number of his non-fiction productions. The Archive holds a few Kinemacolor experiments made by G.A. Smith. The Archive also holds many original Urban catalogues. - Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Bologna has the largest single collection of surviving Kinemacolor films, twenty-three titles, comprising two fiction films (The Vandal Outlaws and Choosing the Wallpaper) and the remainder travelogues of Italy, Egypt and Britain. The collection was only discovered in 1992. - Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium
The Cinémathèque has been central in the preservation of the Alan Roberts collection of early cinema titles (compiled by a New Zealand collector), which includes a number of fiction and non-fiction titles made by Urban's French company Eclipse. - George Eastman House, Rochester, USA
Rochester has recently restored the 1913 Kinemacolor Company of America fiction film The Scarlet Letter. - Imperial War Museum Film & Video Archive, London, UK
The film archive of the Imperial War Museum preserves many of the British Official films of the First World War that Urban distributed in the USA. Among them are Urban's major production Britain Prepared, and the most celebrated actuality film of the war, The Battle of the Somme, which Urban edited, and which the IWM has made available on PAL VHS tape. - Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.,USA
Urban films in the Library of Congress include titles in the Theodore Roosevelt Collection donated by Urban himself, and some Kineto Company of America titles, traceable via the Online Catalog. The Library of Congress also holds some Kinemacolor material, apparently recovered from a 1930s compilation film, a report on which at the Cinecon film festival is here. - National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C., USA
The NARA holds Official War Review, the Committee on Public Information's propaganda newsreel of 1918 which Urban edited and printed. Catalogue records for these can be traced via the online database NAIL. - Nederlands Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Filmmuseum holds a number of fiction titles made by Eclipse. - Russian State Documentary Film & Photo Archive, Krasnogorsk, Russia
Krasnogorsk holds the film catalogued as a World War One military review which Adrian Wood of TWI identified as being a section from the Kinemacolor Delhi Durbar film while researching the television series The British Empire in Colour. - Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin, Germany
The Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek holds a number of Eclipse and Charles Urban Trading Company fiction films.For the addresses of other film archives, see FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives.