Timeline
A year-by-year accounting of some of the significant events in Billy B. Van’s movie-making career.
1936
By 1936, Billy B. Van is long removed from motion pictures, but remains an active and evolving figure. In a Motion Picture Herald article, he reflects on his earlier career while outlining his current pursuits as a motivational speaker and head of a soap manufacturing business based in Newport, New Hampshire.
The piece also captures Van’s forward-looking imagination. Describing what he sees as the future of commerce, he envisions a system in which a customer’s written order is instantly transmitted to a central office, triggering rapid fulfillment and delivery:
“The customer will have an order blank and pen in his hand. The pen will be equipped with a photoelectric cell and, as he signs, the customer’s order will be automatically transmitted to the home office and the merchandise in turn will rocket forth and arrive probably before the salesman leaves.”
Nearly a century later, the concept reads as a striking anticipation of modern electronic ordering and rapid fulfillment systems, suggesting that Van’s creativity extended well beyond the stage and screen.
Promotional material for Billy B. Van’s Pine Tree Products, one of his many post-show business ventures.
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.