Charles J. Hite — Who’s Who in the Film Game (1912) 🇺🇸

The first thrill of a country lad comes with his red topped boots. It is the day he discovers his spine. He sees things from a course.

When motion pictures began to manifest a boy who was born in the country has an edge on the fellow who wasn’t. He knows what it means to earn a dollar. He got his first one by digging twenty rows of potatoes. A dollar has the meaning of a hundred cents to the man who was a country boy twenty-five years ago. That same boy never forgot his early associates. He learned to take their measure and he never forgot how he did it. When he grew up he made his estimate of men by the same rule.

Charley Hite [Charles J. Hite] was born in the country — on a farm near Lancaster, Ohio. His family sprung from those fighting Virginians, who helped in the forming of this country. They knew what Culpepper minute men stood for when they fought under the emblem of the rattlesnake. Virginians in those pioneer days picked out Fairfield county. Ohio, as the place “farther west.” and among them were Charley Hite’s parents. The Hite family still retains the land that has always been their home. Young Hite tackled the district school with his noon-day lunch and a bean-shooter as the prime factors. He fell heir to “Skinney,” because he was built that way. Even with this slight handicap, he learned to like school days, and followed up his graduation from the grades with a three years’ academic course in the Ohio Central Normal College. Then he taught school for several years and during his vacations he served as reporter for the local papers. When he gave up teaching he engaged in the mercantile business, at Bremen, but the excitement attending the keeping of a country store got on his nerves and he gave it up. Hite put in four years behind the counter, first in Bremen and then in the county seat of Fairfield county.

During these and preceding years. Charlie Hite developed a bug for lyceums, lyceumites, bureaus, courses and causeways. Being of a bashful and retiring disposition he found freedom in the turmoil of the lyceum program. There was more fun in sitting on the back bench at the town hall and listening to the “show”‘ than there was going swimming with the gang After a time he worked up to the front seats and a little later he became identified with the business end of the Midland Lyceum Bureau. He traveled in the southern states, organizing lyceum courses at so much a course. When motion pictures begun to manifest themselves, Hite had met them more than half way. With a half of one of his good bright eyes he saw a place for motion pictures in the lyceum programs. They would help with the entertainment. That was what they were for and he gave them a welcome.

In 1906, Charlie Hite organized himself into the C. J. Hite Moving Picture Company. He would supply the Midland or any other lyceum with part of their entertainment at so much per part. He found lots of demand for his services. He rapidly outgrew the days when Bill Bryan was the afternoon stunt and Charlie Hite with his pictures was the evening attraction. In the meantime, Hite was garnering up film subjects and other increments that failed to shake off. His collection of reels consisted of scenics, fairy tales and religious subjects — the best that could be had in those days, and it was the most natural thing in the world for Hite to embark in the exchange business, as early as the demand for films came on.

Early in 1908, C. J. Hite gathered up his precious reels and stored them in a vault in the Monadnock Building, Chicago. It was the least pretentious film exchange in the world. You could walk right into it — all the way up to Hite’s mean little desk with the rickety drawers. But you would find the whole force there, day or night, and if you wanted some pictures, Hite would get ‘em for you. He was the whole force on the day and night shift. There wasn’t any go-betweens. You know how long that would last in the film business. Hite got thinner and thinner. He had the address of his home, but he never got that far away from his little old desk. One day he called in the doctor — a physician he had known all his life — and the doctor looked him over. He listened to Hite’s proposition and left a big, fat check, instead of a prescription. Now and then you find a smart one. This was Dr. Wilbert Shallenberger, one of Charlie Hite’s boyhood chums. He’s all tangled up with the film business by now.

This first Chicago film exchange was modest like its owner. It was called the C. J. Hite Company, just like that, telling nobody what it stood for. After a little time a partition was knocked down to make room. The name was changed to the H. & H. Film Service Company. More people were hired; more money was let in; the place moved down a flight of stairs and across the hall; bang, went a lot of walls; the place strung out on the Federal street side and got bigger and bigger. Hite was too busy to eat. Then Des Moines was taken in and Detroit was added. People began to lose track. One day Hite grabbed some stock in the American Film Manufacturing Company, and the next he bought the Globe, the Royal, and the Union Film Companies and formed the Majestic Film Exchange. After a while, Hite said he was going to New York to look around. He had only been down there a week or two until it was announced that he had bought the Thanhouser Company. Then things got all woozey. The plot thickened and obscured the stage. Since the mist has blown away, Hite’s name looms large as a stockholder, a director or an officer; and sometimes all three, in these concerns: Mutual Film Corporation; Film Supply Company of America; American Film Manufacturing Company; Carlton Motion Picture Laboratories; Majestic Manufacturing Company; Thanhouser Company, and Thanhouser Film Company, Ltd., London.

So you will agree that Charlie Hite has been hitting the pace. He is one of the very few film men who recognized the possibilities of outside investors. He is the personal representative of many stockholders in his various enterprises and these stockholders have learned to believe in Hite and his projects. It is far cry from the Slayton and Midland Lyceum circuits to the film game, but it proves that you can play both and win if you play fair.

Charles Jackson Hite is only thirty-seven years young. He married Miss Gertrude Monroe, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Dr. J. O. Monroe, in 1905, and there is little Elizabeth Marjorie Hite to complete the family. Hite says his only diversion is motion pictures, but that is pardonable. As a matter of truth he’s a baseball fan — a Cub rooter, who is trying to switch his affections to Mugsy McGraw. His nearest friends say he’s crazy about automobiles, now that he has several to help him cover ground in his activities. Right this minute, he is knitting his brow over Thanhouser classics, without regard to the length. Hite has only started. You will hear from him often, if you stick around.

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You will hear from him often if you stick around.

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The Poets of Essanay

Evebelle Prout, of the Essanay Eastern Stock Company, is developing into a formidable rival to Frank Dayton, “heavy” man of the company, in the art of writing poetry. Dayton has always been recognized as somewhat of a genius in turning the various happenings about the big Chicago studio into verse that is both clever and original, but he will have to look to his laurels, for Miss Prout is working hard and has had some extremely classy poems accepted by various publications. One of her latest compositions is a little masterpiece of wit and conception, and concerns the opening of two new photoplay theaters

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Scene from Essanay’s “Not on the Circus Program.”