Ivan Abramson

{{short description|Silent film director}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Ivan Abramson

| image = File:Ivan Abramson 1920.jpg

| birth_date = 1869

| birth_place = Russia

| death_date = September 15, {{death year and age|1934|1869}}

| death_place = Manhattan, New York City, New York

}}

Ivan Abramson (1869 – September 15, 1934) was a director of American silent films in the 1910s and 1920s.Klein, Uru (10 December 2009). [http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/cinema-in-the-time-of-war-1.2416 Cinema in the time of war] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924052441/http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/cinema-in-the-time-of-war-1.2416 |date=2015-09-24 }}, Haaretz

Abramson emigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire in the 1880s and soon became involved in the Jewish newspaper field. In 1905, he founded an opera company. In 1914, he founded Ivan Film Productions to produce silent films, with Sins of the Parents as the first release. In 1917, after success with pictures including One Law for Both and Enlighten Thy Daughter, he partnered with William Randolph Hearst to form the Graphic Film Corporation (GFC).Pizzitola, Louis. [https://books.google.com/books?id=KW7ago9Wo3MC&pg=PA111 Hearst over Hollywood], p. 111-125 (2002)

Abramson's films are often melodramas with titillating titles such as Forbidden Fruit (1915) and A Child for Sale (1920), and sexual hygiene films such as The Sex Lure (1916) and Enlighten Thy Daughter (1917).McLaren, Angus. [https://books.google.com/books?id=0ndUbVIHCOUC&pg=PA42 Twentieth-century sexuality: a history], p. 42 (1999)[https://books.google.com/books?id=DI47AAAAIAAJ&dq=%22Sex+Lure%22+1916&pg=PA123 Ivan Film Productions v. Bell] (New York Courts, 1916) Abramson often aimed to make a moral argument with his films. He stated that the intention of his films was to "point out an evil in life through one character and at the same time show the manner in which that evil might be cured through another character."{{cite book |last=Pizzitola |first=Louis |date=2002 |title=Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KW7ago9Wo3MC |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press|page=119 |isbn=9780231116466}} The GFC ended with the 1919 release of The Echo of Youth.

In 1923, Abramson and Sidney M. Goldin directed East and West, filmed in Austria and starring Molly Picon, and which had English and Yiddish subtitles.

Abramson died on September 15, 1934, in New York's Mount Sinai Hospital, survived by his wife Liza Einhorn.(16 September 1934). [https://www.nytimes.com/1934/09/16/archives/ivan-abpmson-0-ni-man-bie-chupion-of-the-independent-producer-and.html Ivan Abramson, Movie Man, Dies] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211009043112/https://www.nytimes.com/1934/09/16/archives/ivan-abpmson-0-ni-man-bie-chupion-of-the-independent-producer-and.html |date=2021-10-09 }}, The New York Times(16 January 1945). [https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0B11FE355C1B7B93C4A8178AD85F418485F9 Mrs. Ivan Abramson (obituary)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221023134540/https://www.nytimes.com/1945/01/16/archives/obituary-5-no-title.html |date=2022-10-23 }}, The New York Times