2023 Essays

Alice Rosenthal

McKernan, Luke

Alice Rosenthal was, for a short period, the linchpin on which the nascent British film industry rested. Present at the beginning of film exhibition in Britain, her role as stock keeper and sales manager of the Warwick Trading Company, the leading British film business of the 1890s, made her a familiar and vital figure to all exhibitors engaged with the new medium. If you wanted to put on a good film show, you had to see “Rosie.”