1915 in film

The year 1915 in film involved some significant events.

Fandom movies:1915

Events

February 1: Fox Film Corporation founded
February 8: D.W Griffith's The Birth of a Nation premieres at Clune's Auditorium Los Angeles and breaks both box office and film length records.
February: Metro Pictures, a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is founded
February 22: The Allan Dwan directed film David Harum is released. The film is the first in long line of a successful romantic onscreen pairings of actors May Allison and Harold Lockwood.
March 15: Universal Studios Hollywood opens.
June 18: The Motion Picture Directors Association is formed by twenty-six film directors in Los Angeles, California.
July: Triangle Film Corporation is founded in Culver City, California and attracts filmmakers D. W. Griffith, Thomas H. Ince and Mack Sennett
September 11: A nitrate fire at Famous Players in New York destroys several completed but unreleased silent films which are later remade. Films lost include Mary Pickford's Esmerelda and The Foundling and John Barrymore's The Red Widow.
October 1: A US court rules in United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co. that the Motion Picture Patents Company trust is monopolistic and orders it to be dissolved.
November 18: Release of Inspiration, the first mainstream movie in which a leading actress appears nude.
December 13: Sessue Hayakawa becomes the first Asian actor to become a star in the US after his performance in The Cheat.
The Duplex Corporation creates a Split Duplex, an early widescreen film format where the film image is rotated 90 degrees and occupies half of a conventional frame.
Max Fleischer invents the rotoscoping animation process in the US.
The Kinematograph Renters’ Society of Great Britain and Ireland is formed to represent film distribution companies

Top-grossing films (U.S.)

The top ten 1915 released films by box office gross in North America are as follows:

Rank	Title	Studio	Gross
1	The Birth of a Nation	Epoch	$10,000,000
2	Carmen	Paramount	$147,600
3	The Cheat	Paramount	$137,364
4	Temptation	Paramount	$102,437
5	The Girl of the Golden West	Paramount	$102,224
6	The Warrens of Virginia	Paramount	$85,770
7	The Golden Chance	Paramount	$83,504
8	Chimmie Fadden	Paramount	$78,944
9	Chimmie Fadden Out West	Paramount	$72,036
10	The Arab	Paramount	$68,526

Notable films

Films produced in the United States unless stated otherwise

Short film series

Births

January 1 – Maxine Doyle, actress
January 9
*Anita Louise, actress
*Fernando Lamas, actor
January 11 – Veda Ann Borg, actress
January 18 – Catherine Craig, actress
January 26 – William Hopper, actor; son of Hedda Hopper
January 29 – Bill Peet, Disney author and illustrator
January 30 – Dorothy Dell, actress
February 7 – Eddie Bracken, actor
February 12 – Lorne Greene, actor
February 18 – Phyllis Calvert, actress
February 20 – Philip Friend, actor
February 21 – Ann Sheridan, actress
February 23 – Jon Hall, actor
February 28 – Zero Mostel, actor
March 2 – Lona Andre, actress
March 17 – Henry Bumstead, art director
March 19 – Patricia Morison, actress
April 10 – Harry Morgan, American actor
April 21 – Anthony Quinn, actor
May 5
*Alice Faye, actress,
*Ben Wright (English actor),
May 6 – Orson Welles, actor, director
May 8 – John Archer, American actor
May 15 – Bill Williams, actor,
May 19 – Renée Asherson, actress,
May 31 – Barbara Pepper, actress,
June 1 - John Randolph (actor), American actor
June 12 – Priscilla Lane, singer, actress
June 16 - Anthony Sharp, English actor
June 20 - Terence Young (director), Irish director and screenwriter
July 18 – Phyllis Brooks, American actress, model
August 2 – Gary Merrill, actor
August 11 – Jean Parker, American actress
August 15 – Signe Hasso, Swedish actress
August 29 – Ingrid Bergman, Swedish-born actress
September 5 – Jack Buetel, actor
September 10 – Edmond O'Brien, actor
September 14 – Douglas Kennedy, actor
September 25 – Betty Box, English producer
September 29
*Brenda Marshall, American actress
*Anne Nagel, American actress
October 29 – Evi Rauer, Estonian actress
October 31 - Lennard Pearce, British actor
December 7 – Eli Wallach, American actor
December 12 – Frank Sinatra, American singer, actor
December 13 – Curd Jürgens, German actor
December 14 – Dan Dailey, American actor
December 17 – Joan Woodbury, American actress
December 22 – Barbara Billingsley, American actress
December 29 – Jo Van Fleet, American actress

Deaths

January 10 – Marshall Pinckney Wilder, 55, American diminutive stage and screen actor
April 26 – John Bunny, 51, American silent film comedian, A Strand of Blond Hair, Bunny's Little Brother, Bunny Backslides
June 5 – John C. Rice, 58, stage and film actor, The Kiss
June 16 – Elmer Booth, 32, American silent screen actor, brother of film editor Margaret Booth, The Musketeers of Pig Alley, The Narrow Road, An Unseen Enemy
October 31 – Blanche Walsh, 42, American stage actress appeared in Zukor's 3 reel feature "Resurrection" 1912

Film debuts

Mary Boland – The Edge of the Abyss
Laura Hope Crews – The Fighting Hope
Reginald Denny – Niobe
Elliott Dexter – Heléne of the North
Douglas Fairbanks – The Lamb
Pauline Frederick – The Eternal City
John Gilbert – Aloha Oe
Charlotte Greenwood – Jane
Otto Kruger – A Mother's Confession
Edmund Lowe – The Wild Olive
Victor Moore – Snobs
Esther Ralston – The Deep Purple
Erich Von Stroheim – The Birth of a Nation
Charlotte Walker – Kindling
Fannie Ward – ''The Marriage of Kitty''