PATH, CHARLES

born Dec. 25, 1863, Paris died Dec. 26, 1957, Monte-Carlo French pioneer motion-picture executive who controlled a vast network of production and distribution facilities that dominated the world film market during the first years of the 20th century. With his brother mile, he founded Path Frres (Path Brothers, 1896) in Paris, a company that manufactured and sold phonographs and phonograph cylinders. The company placed the Kinetoscope, Thomas A. Edison's newly invented viewing device, in theatres throughout France. Using the camera developed by Louis and Auguste Lumire, Path Frres filmed numerous short subjects, the majority of which are sensational criminal adventures, melodramatic love stories, and comic anecdotes. In 1909 Path produced his first long film, Les Misrables, a four-reel screen version of the novel by Victor Hugo. That same year he originated the Path Gazette in France (U.S.: 1910; U.K.: 1911), which was an internationally popular newsreel until 1956. In 1914 Path Frres released from its studios in the United States the first episodes of The Perils of Pauline, one of the earliest and best remembered screen serials. The company also began publishing the screen magazine Path Pictorial. Path Frres, with production facilities in France, England, and the United States and distribution offices throughout the world, was an enormously lucrative company. Profits on some pictures were 50 to 100 times the original cost of production. In 1917 Path began to sell the company's equipment, production studios, and exhibition circuits. He retired in 1929, but the company remained in existence as a leading film distributor.