Harry Aitken

He was born on 4 October 1877. He grew up on a family farm near Goerke's Corners, Wisconsin.[1][2] The brothers operated Keystone Studios and eventually Harry became a partner in the Mutual Film Company.

Along with his brother Roy Aitken (1882-1978), he helped pioneer the production and distribution of movies during the early silent film era in the United States.[3] In 1906 they founded the Western Film Exchange with John R. Freuler.[4] They moved to California in 1908 and in 1912 founded the Mutual distribution company. Within three years they were distributing movies to 45 towns and cities.[5]

Aitken worked with D. W. Griffith and Charlie Chaplin. He was involved with the Majestic and Reliance studios.[6] With D. W. Griffith he co-founded Epoch Producing Company under the umbrella of which The Birth of a Nation was produced. The profits from that film were used to set up the Triangle Film Corporation in 1915, which was on a triangular plot in Culver City. This produced the infamous Intolerance but failed soon after due to over ambition and was sold to Goldwyn.[7]

He returned to in home town of Waukesha, Wisconsin around 1918 and died there on 1 August 1956 and is buried there in Prairie Hills Cemetery.[8]

The Wisconsin Historical Society has a collection of his papers.[3]

• Home Sweet Home (1914) as writer
• The Surgeon's Experiment (short, 1914)
• The Life of General Villa (1914)
• The Electric Alarm (1915)
• The Birth of a Nation (1915)
• Intolerance (1916)

Aitken is portrayed by Jim Broadbent in the 2003 HBO TV movie And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself.

• King, Rob (Winter 2005). "Made for the Masses with an Appeal to the Classes": The Triangle Film Corporation and the Failure of Highbrow Film Culture". Cinema Journal. University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies. 44 (2): 3–33. doi:10.1353/cj.2005.0009. JSTOR 3661092.