page_title: L. Lawrence Weber
section_title: Cinema
hierarchical_section_title: L. Lawrence Weber / Cinema
caption_attribution_description: English: Film poster for Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917) with John Barrymore.
context_page_description: L. Lawrence Weber was an American sports promoter, stage show producer and theater manager. He was active in arranging vaudeville shows, legitimate theater and films. He once tried to bypass laws against importing a boxing film to the USA by projecting it on a screen just across the border in Canada and filming the screening from the USA side.
context_section_description: Weber was one of the sponsors of a film made of a boxing match in Havana, Cuba, on 5 April 1915 between Jack Johnson and Jess Willard. He obtained the copyright on the film.
  He was refused permission to import it on the basis of a Federal law prohibiting import of such films for public exhibition.
  Weber argued that this law was not constitutional, since it infringed on the rights of states. 
  The case was heard in the Supreme Court in December 1915, and decided against Weber.
  In 1916 Weber made a widely publicized attempt to bypass the restriction. He set up a motion picture camera 8 inches (200 mm) south of the border between New York and Canada, pointing to a screen on the Canadian side on which each frame of the film of the 1915 Havana fight was projected, thus creating a duplicate negative. He lost the court case that followed on the basis that he had violated the spirit of the law.
  Weber, Bobby North, Aaron Hoffman and Harry J. Cohen organized Popular Plays and Players, the precursor of Metro Pictures.
  In 1914 the Popular Plays and Players production company issued a film version of Jules Verne's Michael Strogoff.
  In March 1915 Weber, whom Variety described as a "colorful showman, sports promoter", was involved in founding Metro Pictures.
  As of June 1915 Weber was acting head of Popular Plays and Players.
  Weber later formed the L. Lawrence Weber Photodrama Corporation to make films, and in 1917 made Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, starring John Barrymore.Variety said, "By virtue of its artistry, intensely sustained suspense and irrefutable logic, [the film] must grip audiences for many seasons."
  The production company made The Blue Pearl in 1920 based on the play by Anne Crawford Flexner, starring Edith Hallor, Lumsden Hare, Earl Schenck and John Halliday.
caption: Film poster for Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917)
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