Vitalux was a unique amateur film system that utilized wide strips of cellulose diacetate film, each spliced into a loop which could support a spiral of over 1,600 frames. Introduced in the early 1920s at a time of considerable experimentation and competition within the amateur film market, Vitalux was sold as an affordable alternative to other formats. Unfortunately, its limitations, coupled with the release of Kodak’s 16mm Cine-Kodak system, doomed the company to dissolution by late 1927 (Kattelle, 2000: pp. 65–68).

The seeds of Vitalux were sown in 1914, when German engineer Herman Schlicker filed a patent for a ‘kinetograph’ (Schlicker, 1918). Schlicker had worked in the technical and mechanical departments of several German motion-picture production companies, before traveling to the United States in 1909 (Mahoney, 1913: p 18). His patent attracted the attention of John Freuler, a Wisconsin-born businessman who invested in numerous film-related enterprises including theaters, production companies and film exchanges – the two quickly formed a partnership, with Freuler acting as president (Bruce, 1922: pp. 170–173; Kattelle, 2000: pp. 65–66).

The company was first listed, in a 1917 Milwaukee directory, as Vitalux Products Company, but by 1921 the organization had been renamed the Vitalux Cinema Company. The main thrust for the format came in the fall of 1922 through the spring of 1923, when advertisements appeared initially in Milwaukee newspapers and then in national trade publications, such as Motion Picture News. Vitalux advertising focused on the simplicity and affordability of the format: projector and camera were priced at US$125 and US$175 respectively; negative and positive films were sold at 75 cents each; development cost 25 cents total (Anon., 1922; McKay, 1924: p. 23). In addition to shooting and projecting your own home movies, the company also offered a small library of films for purchase, at $1.25 each: such as documentaries on ice fishing and shipyards; views of Hawaii and Mt. Rainier; and Al Christie comedy shorts (Kesselman O’Driscoll Co., 1922).

However, despite its novelty and affordability, there were obvious downsides to the Vitalux system. For one, editing of any kind was impossible as the loop design prevented it. There was also a length issue: the advertised 1,664 frames per film amounted to a meager two minutes of projection time. Consequently, many of the shorts available from Vitalux were likely edited down and still had to be split into two, or even three, loops. Compounding these issues was the historic unveiling of Kodak’s 16mm Cine-Kodak system in January 1923, right in the midst of the Vitalux advertising push (McKay, 1924: pp. 20–23).

The company pivoted in a number of ways over the next couple years. In 1925, Freuler and Schlicker rebranded Vitalux as the Automatic Movie Display Corporation and began marketing to exhibitors, rather than consumers. They leased Vitalux projectors, in custom display cabinets, to present continuously running still and moving-image promotional material in the lobbies of movie theaters. Freuler claimed that distribution stations for this new venture were being opened in all principal cities east of Chicago and that he expected to place in service no less than 2,000 projectors in 1927 – there is no evidence that either of these claims came to pass (Anon., 1927). Around this time, the Automatic Movie Display Corporation started to advertise laboratory and vault storage space in trade papers, and began distributing their shorts, and other films, as 16mm prints, partnering with Willoughby’s camera store in New York City (Motion Picture News, 1926: p. 1512; Amateur Movie Makers, 1928: p. 147). Ultimately, despite these maneuvers, the company was formally dissolved in August of 1927 – just ten years after that initial Milwaukee directory listing, and only five years after the system was first commercially available (Kattelle, 2000: p. 68).