Coming soon to a theater near you: a long-lost film featuring the world's first movie star dog -- a Scotch collie named Jean from Eastport, directed by Robbinston native Laurence Trimble, a silent film director, writer and actor. The film is being shown as part of a statewide series of screenings during the state bicentennial event Maine in the Movies from March 5 through 15. The Maine Film      Center and 19 other arts and education organizations and independent cinemas are collaborating on the 17‑city festival of 35 feature films set in Maine.
     The film starring Jean also will be screened by the Northern Lights Film Society at the Eastport Arts Center on Sunday, March 15, at 6:30 p.m. March 15 is also the first day of Maine statehood, so the stars are aligned for the showing of Jean the Match-Maker, the first movie made in Maine and featuring the first animal movie star -- all where the sun first rises over the state.
     David Weiss, executive director of Northeast Historic Film in Bucksport, says the nonprofit archives of New England movies knows "a lot about Maine's oldest narrative movie, Jean the Match-Maker, featuring the first certifiable animal movie star: Jean, the Vitagraph Dog. Before Rin Tin Tin, Lassie and Toto, Eastport-born Jean was the most famous dog in the world." She and Trimble, her owner, trainer and director, made 25 silent films together.
     Tom Wilhite, a film producer who lives in Camden and volunteered to help organize the Maine in the Movies series, comments, "She started a whole genre." He points out that the films with Jean, made from 1910 to 1916, established movies starring animals as a commercially resilient and popular genre, as evidenced 110 years later by the $25 million opening of The Call of the Wild in 2020.
     "It's amazing what a big star she was," says Weiss. "Jean was definitely known coast to coast. Jean was the first animal star in the world, I would say."
     Northeast Historic Film learned about Jean and Trimble in 1988 when they received a postcard from a curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City who had been to a silent film festival in Italy and had seen a film that appeared to have been shot in Maine. "We bought the print of The Sailor's Sacrifice that was shot in 1910 and was the only Jean film known," says Weiss.      Then in 2012 a cache of old U.S. films was discovered in New Zealand, and one was Jean the Match-Maker. An effort was made to get the films repatriated to the U.S., and Weiss showed Wilhite a copy of the original film. Wilhite tracked down a copy of Jean the Match-Maker and just recently had an orchestral score written for it by Mikel Hurwitz, a Los Angeles‑based film composer and musician. The Sailor's Sacrifice had a silent film piano accompaniment added later.
     Along with those two films, the only other Jean films that are believed to survive are Playmates and Jean Rescues, which exists only as a Library of Congress paper print. They were shot in Maine for Vitagraph Studios and are one-reeler films of about 12 to 15 minutes. Other film titles featuring the Eastport collie include Jean Goes Foraging, Jean Goes Fishing, Jean Intervenes, Jean Rescues, Jean and the Waif and Jean and the Calico Doll.
     Weiss relates that in The Sailor's Sacrifice, with heartbreaking scenes of poverty and despair, Jean can be seen helping to dig clams and carrying a note back to a house. Jean also could do other tricks such as rolling over and playing dead and knew how to tie knots, which could come in handy, as in the film she was sold to a sailor, but she eventually gets reunited with her owner.
     Film historian Anthony Slide wrote, "Jean was equal in popularity to Vitagraph's human stars, Florence Turner and Maurice Costello." Actress Helen Hayes had roles as an eight-year-old girl in two of Jean's 1910 films and in 1931 stated in a New York Times interview, "I had long curls and they let me play the juvenile lead in two pictures in support of Jean, the collie." She added, "Jean was the most famous dog of the day, and I was very thrilled."

Becoming an international filmmaker
     Film director Laurence Trimble's parents John and Maria emigrated from Ireland to Maine in the late 19th century, arriving in New Brunswick before settling in Robbinston, where Trimble Mountain bears the family name. Laurence was born in 1885 in Robbinston and evidently had a close bonding with dogs and other animals.
     Trimble later wrote: "I wanted a dog more than anything, but my family could not afford to let me have one. By the time I had worked my way through school I had owned a number of dogs.      Mostly they had bad reputations and nobody else wanted them, but I loved them and learned from them."
     Trimble's grandniece Pearl Hart says, "Uncle Larry had a way with animals and evidently discovered this talent as a teenager when a troupe of performing animals came to Robbinston. He went back every day they were there. Pretty soon he was training the farm animals and Jean, the family's dog."
     In 1907, Trimble, 22, and Jean, 5, boarded a Maine Central train at Ellsworth and moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he pursued a career as a freelance journalist. Their big break was recalled by Trimble's second wife Marian Blackton in a 1985 interview with historian Anthony Slide: In 1909, Trimble visited Vitagraph Studios, a major film company at that time, researching a series of articles about how movies were made. He learned that a story of particular interest to studio head Albert Smith had been set aside because it required a dog who could act. Trimble scanned the script and said, "Tomorrow I'll bring you the right dog for the picture." The next morning he arrived with Jean and, after she proved her talent for performing on cue, she and Trimble were quickly signed to contracts.
     By the time Jean and Trimble started making movies, the family had moved to Yarmouth, Maine, where it's most likely Jean the Match‑Maker and The Sailor's Sacrifice were filmed in the summer of 1910.
     "Launching into being an international filmmaker anywhere is hard," points out Weiss about Trimble's perseverance. He ended up making 100 silent films between 1908 and 1926. He also began his career as an actor in 1910 in the silent film Saved by the Flag.
     While Jean was known as the Vitagraph Dog, in a branding strategy by Vitagraph Studios, actress Florence Turner was known as the Vitagraph Girl. Wilhite notes that Turner was "the most prominent actress in the world at the time." And Trimble was one of Vitagraph Studio's leading directors. However, he, Turner and Jean left the studio in 1913 and went to England, where Trimble worked as head of production in Turner's own independent film company. Over a three-year period Trimble wrote and directed some highly regarded British films, including Far from the Madding Crowd, based on Thomas Hardy's novel, and My Old Dutch.
     Trimble returned to the U.S. in 1916 with Jean, who died later that year. He continued directing films for Goldwyn and other companies and later found another dog, a German shepherd who had been a Red Cross dog during the war and who was renamed Strongheart. Trimble trained Strongheart, who became a major canine film star, and directed him in four outdoor adventure films, including The Silent Call and White Fang, based on the Jack London book. Trimble's daughter Jan recalled growing up on her father's ranch in Hollywood and the many visitors, including Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino. After losing most of his investments in the stock-market crash of 1929, Trimble left filmmaking and trained guide dogs for the blind.
     In a 1950 Los Angeles Times report on a presentation Trimble gave on training dogs, he told those at the talk how dogs could help them make friends with people. "A dog has no politics or religion, so you can tell people about him freely, and when you have finished you have talked to them about themselves. I can tell more about people from what they say about their dogs than from what they say about themselves."
     Trimble died in February 1954 in Woodland Hills, Calif., and was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Screenings scheduled
     Along with the showing at the Eastport Arts Center, Jean the Match‑Maker will be screened with a number of longer different films in the Maine in the Movies series at the following venues at the beginning of March: Friday, March 6 -- Maine Historical Society, Portland, 5:30 p.m.; Harbor Theater, Boothbay Harbor, 7 p.m.; Saturday, March 7 -- Colonial Theatre, Belfast, 10 a.m.; Temple Cinema, Houlton, 11:30 a.m.; The Gem Theater, Bethel, 1, 4 and 7 p.m.; Sunday, March 8 -- Lincoln Theatre, Damariscotta, 2 p.m.; Monday, March 9 -- Alamo Theatre, Bucksport, 6 p.m.; Tuesday, March 10 -- Spotlight Cinemas at the Strand, Skowhegan, 7 p.m.; Wednesday, March 11 -- Lincoln Theatre, Damariscotta, 7 p.m.; Thursday, March 12 -- Alamo Theatre, Bucksport, 6 p.m.; Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville, 7 p.m.; Friday, March 13 -- Lincoln Theatre, Damariscotta, 2 p.m.; Saturday, March 14 -- Nordica Theatre, Freeport, 9:30 a.m.; Eveningstar Cinema, Brunswick, 10 a.m.; Stonington Opera House, Stonington, 7 p.m.; Waterman's Community Center, North Haven, 7:30 p.m; and Strand Theatre, Rockland, 1 p.m.