Ludwig G. B. Erb (November 3, 1875 – July 31, 1958) was an American cinematographer, film laboratory executive and producer active during the silent film era. After working as a pharmacist in New York, he entered the independent motion-picture industry and was associated with the Centaur and Powers companies. He organized the Crystal Film Company in 1911 and served as its president before selling his interest to his production partner, Joseph A. Golden, in 1914.

Erb subsequently headed two cooperative production organizations, United Motion Picture Producers and Combined Photoplay Producers. In 1915 he opened a purpose-built motion-picture laboratory for the Erbograph Company, which he had established in 1909. Erbograph was absorbed into Consolidated Film Industries in 1924, with Erb remaining a director and technical adviser. He then supervised feature production in Hollywood for Associated Arts Corporation, including On the Stroke of Three and Drusilla with a Million, released by Film Booking Offices of America.

Early life and pharmacy career

Erb was born at 57 Suffolk Street in the Lower East Side, Manhattan part of New York City on November 3, 1875, to Ludwig J. Erb and Gretchen Wagner, both natives of Bavaria. His birth certificate recorded father and son as Louis Erb; in an affidavit attached to Erb's 1924 passport application, his father stated that their correct names were Ludwig J. Erb and Ludwig G. B. Erb.

Erb attended the New York College of Pharmacy as a member of the class of 1894. By the late 1890s, he was working as a pharmacist in Manhattan. On November 30, 1898, he married Emma Zimmermann, and the following month purchased the H. Reinholdt pharmacy at Madison Avenue and East 130th Street.

Erb later registered trademarks for several proprietary products, including an insect exterminator, “Clover Powders” for headache and neuralgia, and toilet preparations.

Motion-picture career

Centaur, Powers and Erbograph

By 1909 Erb had entered the motion-picture business as treasurer of the Centaur Film Company, where Joseph A. Golden was working as a director. Later accounts credited Erb with helping David Horsley organize Centaur and stated that he briefly held a half interest in Horsley's film business. Erb’s association with Golden continued in November 1909, when Erb, Golden and Emma Erb incorporated the Erbograph Company in New York with capital of $5,000. The company was organized to produce and distribute motion pictures, contract with performers and lease theaters.

Erb also worked for Pat Powers. In April 1910, he photographed the first of a proposed series of synchronized-sound comedy and dramatic subjects produced by Powers for the American Fotophone Company, while Golden staged the films. By that year, Erb was working as a cinematographer in independent films. In 1911, The Moving Picture World described him as the former treasurer of the Powers company and reported that he had perfected a non-infringing motion-picture camera.

Crystal Film Company

The Crystal Film Company of the Bronx was incorporated in Albany in August 1911 with capital of $150,000. Its incorporators were Erb, Henry L. Slobodin and Samuel Fine. By October the company had opened offices in the German Savings Bank Building at Fourth Avenue and Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. Erb was president and Golden vice-president, with Golden in charge of the studio and its productions. Crystal operated its studio at Park and Wendover avenues in the Bronx. Erb oversaw the laboratory, correcting and improving negatives after photography. Known as a skilled technician, he notably salvaged under- and overexposed footage from an Alaska expedition through intensification and reduction.

Crystal also undertook industrial cinematography. In 1912, Erb and Golden devised filmed engineering tests for the Pennsylvania Railroad to document the effects of heavily loaded trains on tracks and ties and the displacement of their centers of gravity while rounding curves. That year, a patent for an improved film-feeding mechanism invented by Crystal cameraman John Urie was issued to Urie as assignor to Erb and Golden. Intended for cameras or projectors, the mechanism used sprockets mounted on a reciprocating frame to create intermittent film movement.

In November 1912, Crystal reported installing two film-drying drums, with two more planned; the completed drying room was said to hold 9,524 feet of film per cycle. Later that month, Erb was appointed to the ways and means committee of the newly organized Feature Manufacturers Association.

Crystal continued to develop its laboratory operations during 1913. In April the company was publicly identified as “Crystal (Erb & Golden)” among the film brands in Universal's program. A report that year identified engineer Leo Zoeller as the designer of laboratory equipment used by Crystal and the Independent Moving Pictures Company. In November, after falling behind in filling printing orders, Crystal enlarged its capacity sufficiently to meet demand. Erb remained president until June 1914, when he sold his interest in Crystal to Golden. At the time, Crystal's commercial developing and printing business had grown beyond the laboratory's ability to accept all the work offered to it.

Producer combinations and Erbograph laboratories

Later in 1914 Erb became president of United Motion Picture Producers, whose one- and two-reel subjects were distributed by Warner's United Film Service as a daily program totaling 21 reels a week. Crystal was one of its producing units, while Erb separately operated the L. G. B. Erb Company, whose films used the Pyramid brand. After United Film Service entered receivership in 1915, the participating producers formed Combined Photoplay Producers. Erb was elected president, Golden treasurer and H. M. Goetz secretary; the ten affiliated producers included Crystal, Gaumont, Erbograph and several regional companies. Standard Pictures distributed the combination's output.

Erbograph continued to operate while Erb headed Crystal. In November 1914, several months after selling his interest in Crystal, the company leased a parcel on West 146th Street for a purpose-built motion-picture plant. The facility opened in 1915 at 203–211 West 146th Street, with Erb as president and Benjamin Goetz as treasurer, and provided developing, printing and production facilities. Erb was its general manager by 1918 and its president in 1924.

Erb personally supervised the Erbograph laboratory and designed much of its specialized machinery. A 1917 studio directory credited him with printing machines capable of accommodating different film perforations, an automatic light-changing mechanism, a test printer producing fifteen different exposure densities and sprocketless machines for polishing negative and positive film. He also directed the plant's developing, printing, tinting and toning processes and its photographic-effects work.

Erbograph also produced films. Erb supervised the photography and technical work on its best-known production, the sixteen-episode serial The Crimson Stain Mystery (1916), made with Consolidated Film Corporation and starring Maurice Costello. The company was credited with productions released in 1917 including Infidelity, The Little Samaritan, Little Miss Fortune and The Road Between. Erb personally photographed The Little Samaritan, employing tinting and toning and a double-exposure sequence in which dancing fairies appeared before its reclining heroine.

After Erbograph's regular feature-production program ended, Erb concentrated increasingly on contract laboratory work and renting the company's studio to outside producers. In 1918, journalist Stephen H. Horgan described a continuous workflow at the plant in which exposed negatives received from producers were developed, washed, dried, printed, polished and prepared for shipment; he also observed a dramatic production being filmed there. Under Erb, the laboratory continued to expand its equipment and joined the Allied Film Laboratories Association in 1921. By 1923 the plant used a 75-ton refrigeration machine to control heat and humidity, and an apparatus for continuously processing positive film was described in the Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers as the “Erbograph Machine.”

In April 1924 Erbograph, Craftsmen Film Laboratories, Republic Laboratories and Commercial Traders Cinema Corporation were combined as Consolidated Film Industries, capitalized at $6 million. Erb joined the new company's board as chief technical adviser. The merger marked his retirement from laboratory management, but he returned to production work later that year.

Associated Arts and Hollywood production

In 1924 Erb joined O. E. Goebel, Dr. Conde B. Pallen and three other investors in organizing the Associated Arts Corporation, capitalized at $1.5 million. Pallen became president, Goebel secretary and general manager, and Erb assumed supervision of the company's Hollywood productions. Associated Arts contracted to make six features for distribution by Film Booking Offices of America.

Erb and Goebel adopted a policy of producing wholesome pictures of what Erb called a “high moral calibre.” Both opposed sexually sensational films, which they believed had alienated much of the public. Goebel envisioned cooperation between exhibitors and community leaders in selecting pictures, while Erb argued that cleaner productions would restore audiences that had drifted away from motion-picture theaters.

The company's first feature, initially produced under the working title Hard Cash and subsequently called Sold for Cash, was released as On the Stroke of Three (1924). Directed by F. Harmon Weight, it starred Kenneth Harlan, Madge Bellamy and Mary Carr. Erb next supervised Drusilla with a Million (1925), also directed by Weight and featuring Harlan, Carr and Priscilla Bonner. In August 1925, Erb and Goebel announced that the oil-field drama Flaming Waters, to be directed by Weight, was planned as Associated Arts' next production for FBO.

Later life and death

In 1930, Erb and his wife, Emma, were living at the Château Élysée apartment hotel on Franklin Avenue in Los Angeles, where they remained through at least 1950.

In 1942, Erb established a trust for Emma’s benefit, with the remainder designated for six Southern California charities.

Erb died of arteriosclerotic heart disease at his residence in the El Royale apartment building in Los Angeles on July 31, 1958. He was buried the following day at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. His net taxable estate was subsequently valued at $537,628.18. Emma survived him and died in 1962.

Selected filmography

+ Films photographed, produced or supervised by Erb Year Title Function Production company 1916 The Crimson Stain Mystery Photography and technical supervision Erbograph / Consolidated Film Corporation 1917 Infidelity Producer Erbograph 1917 The Little Samaritan Cinematographer Erbograph 1917 Little Miss Fortune Producer Erbograph 1917 The Road Between Producer Erbograph 1924 On the Stroke of Three Production supervisor Associated Arts Corporation 1925 Drusilla with a Million Production supervisor Associated Arts Corporation

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