Jules Greenbaum

Jules Greenbaum hat to struggle against serious health problems, moreover he had to settle a long lasting lawsuit with the UFA. He died at the age of 57 in 1924.

Jules Greenbaum especially worked often together with the great mime Albert Bassermann till 1920.

In 1919 Greenbaum affiliated with UFA, which the State had quietly established as the giant of German film industry during the war, but the deal led to a series of legal disputes and the virtual bankruptcy of Greenbaum-Film. Greenbaum had a monopoly contract with Ufa to supply films to Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey. Despite the political events in the Balkans, Ufa claimed millions from Greenbaum for lost sales and the dispute escalated through the courts. Ufa's interests were represented by Hemann Fellner, Greenbaum's former business partner. Greenbaum lost the factory and everything else, and died in 1924 in a mental hospital aged 57. The studios were taken over by UFA after his death; his two sons George and Mutz managed Greenbaum-Film until it was taken over by Hermann Millakowsky and eventually liquidated in 1932.

The movie "Der Andere" (1913) directed by Max Mack with Albert Bassermann in the leading role went into film history as the first author's film.

His first feature movie was "Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes" (1910) with the later movie star Viggo Larsen.

Greenbaum's firm invented and used Synchroscope, which synchronized the visual picture of films with phonograph records to create a working sound and vision system. Greenbaum produced a number of these sound shorts of vocal classical music, and in 1908 entered into contracts to supply the machinery to Carl Laemmle's Movie Service Company in Chicago and to another American, Charles Urban, in Britain. Carl Laemmle installed the system in a number of American cinemas, mostly in German-speaking communities. Synchroscope largely petered out because not enough sound films were made to meet demand and because it could only last for two or three reels while the standard length of films was increasingly four or five reels long. Costs had soared by the end of 1908 (the Synchroscope was originally priced at $750 (around $20,000 in 2015); and Schleussner AG bought out Greenbaum's share of Deutsche Bioscope to free up his operations.

Founder of Greenbaum-Film, Deutsche Bioscope (1899) and Deutsche Bioscope GmbH (1902) production companies.

After spending several years in the USA he returned with his family to Germany where he already got in touch with the still very young film business as a distributor in 1897. Only two years later he founded the production company "Deutsche Bioscope GmbH". In 1907 he also founded the "Deutsche Vitascope GmbH".