A year-by-year accounting of some of the significant events in Billy B. Van’s movie-making career.
Timeline
1923
With Reelcraft in receivership and its Royal Comedy program effectively at an end, Billy B. Van returns to the stage, appearing in an extended Broadway run of “Adrienne.”
For unknown reasons, it’s reported that the long-time business relationship between Billy B. Van and his partner “Gentleman” Jim Corbett has ended and that they will each be “securing other partners.” Other than his marriage to Rose Beaumont (and their life together with her sister Nelle), no other relationship was as long nor important as the one with Corbett.
Right: Publicity photo for the comedy duo Billy B. Van and “Gentleman” Jim Corbett- a professional relationship which spanned more than a decade on stage and screen. (Getty Images)
As an aid in the hunt for the lost films of Billy B. Van, this curated collection of contemporary trade press coverage serves as the foundation everything we know so far about one of New England’s earliest filmmakers. It is drawn from research on Lantern at the Media History Digital Library, a project of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, which provides access to over three million pages of digitized trade journals, books, and magazines documenting the histories of early twentieth-century motion picture production, distribution, and industry activity as it occurred.