Albert Brooks: …in Defending Your Life (1991); Mother (1996), which starred Debbie Reynolds in the title role; The Muse (1999); and Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (2005). He also appeared in the crime dramas Drive (2011) and A Most Violent Year (2014) and portrayed a doctor in Concussion (2015), about…

lactation: Composition and properties of milk: The nutritional status of the mother is important throughout this period. The mother’s daily caloric intake must increase significantly in order to replenish the mother’s nutrient and energy stores. The use of drugs or smoking by the mother can adversely affect the infant; many drugs are secreted in breast milk,…

Maxim Gorky: Plays and novels: Mat (1906; Mother) is probably the least successful of the novels, yet it has considerable interest as Gorky’s only long work devoted to the Russian revolutionary movement. It was made into a notable silent film by Vsevolod Pudovkin (1926) and dramatized by Bertolt Brecht in Die Mutter…

Vsevolod Pudovkin: He then directed Mat (1926; Mother). Based on Maxim Gorky’s novel, it exemplifies Pudovkin’s use of elaborate crosscutting of images (montage) to represent complex ideas; e.g., a sequence of scenes showing a prison riot is intercut with shots of ice breaking up on a river. Other important films were Konets…

Annette Bening: Career: … (2006), The Women (2008), and Mother and Child (2009), Bening received her fourth Oscar nomination, for her starring role opposite Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right (2010), a dramedy about a married lesbian couple whose two children seek out their birth father.

Ann Lee was a religious leader who brought the Shaker sect from England to the American Colonies. Lee was the unlettered daughter of a blacksmith who was probably named Lees. In her youth she went to work in a textile mill. At the age of 22 she joined a sect known as the Shaking Quakers, or

Anna Warner Bailey was an American patriot, the subject of heroic tales of the Revolutionary War and early America. Anna Warner was orphaned and was reared by an uncle. On September 6, 1781, a large British force under the turncoat General Benedict Arnold landed on the coast near Groton and stormed

Ella Reeve Bloor was an American political organizer and writer who was active as an American socialist and communist, both as a candidate for public office and in labour actions in several industries. Ella Reeve grew up in Bridgeton, New Jersey. After her marriage to Lucien Ware in 1881 or 1882

Philippe de Champaigne: …of his later period is Mother Catherine-Agnes Arnauld and Sister Cathérine (Ex Voto de 1662), which was painted after the miraculous curing of his daughter, a nun at the Jansenist convent of Port Royal. Champaigne’s academic art theory emphasized drawing and was possibly the originator of the drawing-versus-colour controversy that…

First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Mother Church of Christian Science, established in Boston by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879 and reestablished as an international organization by Eddy in 1892. The church building was constructed in 1895; a domed extension was added later (1903–06). The Mother Church

Marilynne Robinson: Early nonfiction and other works: …in her first nonfiction book, Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989). The work was a finalist for the National Book Award. Nearly a decade after Mother Country, Robinson published a book of scholarly essays titled The Death of Adam (1998), which challenged the accepted views of…

Mother Courage and Her Children, play by Bertolt Brecht, written in German as Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder: Eine Chronik aus dem Dreissigjährigen Krieg, produced in 1941 and published in 1949. The work, composed of 12 scenes, is a chronicle play of the Thirty Years’ War and is based on the

Earth Mother, in ancient and modern nonliterate religions, an eternally fruitful source of everything. Unlike the variety of female fertility deities called mother goddesses (q.v.), the Earth Mother is not a specific source of vitality who must periodically undergo sexual intercourse. She is simply

Emma Goldman: In that year she founded Mother Earth, a periodical that she edited until its suppression in 1917. Her naturalization as a U.S. citizen was revoked by a legal stratagem in 1908. Two years later she published Anarchism and Other Essays.

mother goddess, any of a variety of feminine deities and maternal symbols of creativity, birth, fertility, sexual union, nurturing, and the cycle of growth. The term also has been applied to figures as diverse as the so-called Stone Age Venuses and the Virgin Mary. Because motherhood is one of the

Mother Goose, fictitious old woman, reputedly the source of the body of traditional children’s songs and verses known as nursery rhymes. She is often pictured as a beak-nosed, sharp-chinned elderly woman riding on the back of a flying gander. “Mother Goose” was first associated with nursery rhymes

Mother Goose: …Lullabies of old British nurses,” Mother Goose’s Melody; or Sonnets for the Cradle (1781), published by the successors of one of the first publishers of children’s books, John Newbery. The oldest extant copy dates from 1791, but it is thought that an edition appeared, or was planned, as early as…

fable, parable, and allegory: Beast epic: …of material; in his “Mother Hubberd’s Tale,” published in 1591, a fox and an ape go off to visit the court, only to discover that life is no better there than in the provinces. More sage and serious, John Dryden’s poem of “The Hind and Panther” (1687) revived the…

Sunil Dutt: …came six movies later with Mother India (1957). His role in that movie was that of the outlaw hero Birju, and it remains one of Bollywood’s most-memorable performances of all time. Some of Dutt’s other successes at the box office were in Ek-hi-rasta (1956; “The Only Way”), Gumrah (1963; “Astray”),…

Roz Chast: Career: American, Harvard Business Review, Redbook, Mother Jones, and many other magazines.

Paul Theroux: The satirical Mother Land (2017) centres on a dysfunctional family headed by a narcissistic matriarch. In Under the Wave at Waimea (2021), an aging surfer examines his life after killing a man while driving drunk. Some of Theroux’s short fiction was collected in Mr. Bones (2014).

sugar: Crystallization: …added, and the sugar “mother liquor” yields a solid precipitate of about 50 percent by weight crystalline sugar. Crystallization is a serial process. The first crystallization, yielding A sugar or A strike, leaves a residual mother liquor known as A molasses. The A molasses is concentrated to yield a…

Mother Lode Country, gold rush belt, stretching through the Sierra Nevada foothills in central California, U.S. About 150 miles (240 km) long but only a few miles wide, it extended north and northwest from the vicinity of Mariposa through Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador, El Dorado, Placer, and Nevada

Michael Moorcock: …wrote mainstream novels such as Mother London (1988), an impressionistic evocation of London from the Blitz to the 1980s, and the Pyat Quartet, a fictional history of the 20th century consisting of Byzantium Endures (1981), The Laughter of Carthage (1984), Jerusalem Commands (1992), and The Vengeance of Rome (2006).

Rita Dove: …House (1988), Grace Notes (1989), Mother Love (1995), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999), American Smooth (2004), Collected Poems: 1974–2004 (2016), and Playlist for the Apocalypse (2021). In 1993 Dove was appointed poet laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress, becoming the youngest person and the…

Maybelle Carter: From 1943 to 1948, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters were featured performers on the Richmond, Virginia, radio program Old Dominion Barn Dance. In 1950 they began performing on WSM’s Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, and they soon became stars. Many of their recordings from the time, such…

Kurt Vonnegut: …science fiction tropes altogether in Mother Night (1961; film 1996), a novel about an American playwright who serves as a spy in Nazi Germany. In Cat’s Cradle (1963) some Caribbean islanders, who practice a religion consisting of harmless trivialities, come into contact with a substance discovered by an atomic scientist…

Grayson Perry: …embroidery, creating such pieces as Mother of All Battles (1996), a woman’s folk costume stitched with ethnic symbols and images of weapons and killings, and Claire’s Coming Out Dress (2000). Perry was also the author of a novel, Cycle of Violence (1992).

Dionisy: …work of his authorship is The Mother of God Hodegetria (1482) in the Voznesensky monastery of the Moscow Kremlin. Bringing together the aspirations of Rublyov’s many disciples, Dionisy is the one who drew the most radical lessons from Rublyov’s style. The outlines of his figures are even clearer and closer…

The Mother of Us All, opera in two acts with libretto by American writer Gertrude Stein and music by American composer Virgil Thomson, first performed and published in 1947. The opera concerns the woman suffrage movement of 19th-century America, as exemplified in the life and work of American

Rice Mother: …is that of an all-nourishing Mother Rice (Me Posop), who is the guardian of crops and good fortune and whose milk is rice—which is considered to be the soul-stuff of every living thing. The third is the last sheaf of harvested rice that is ritually cut and dressed as a…

rite of passage: Birth rites: …and Indonesia, a practice called mother roasting, which requires that the mother be placed for some days over or near a fire, appears once to have had the goal of protecting the mother from such evil influences. This practice survives today in an altered form in the rural Philippines, where…

factory ship, originally, a large ship used in whaling, but now, more broadly, any ship that is equipped to process marine catches for various consumer uses. It most commonly serves as the main ship in a fleet sent to waters a great distance from home port to catch, prepare, and store fish or

Buddhism: Vajrayana literature: …Father Tantra (emphasizing activity), the Mother Tantra (emphasizing appreciation), and the Nondual Tantra (dealing with both aspects unitively). The original Sanskrit versions of most of these works have been lost, but their influence is noticeable in works such as Jnanasiddhi (“Attainment of Knowledge”) by the great Vajrayana teacher Indrabhuti (c.…

Mother Teresa ; canonized September 4, 2016; feast day September 5) was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India. She was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel

Mother Teresa ; canonized September 4, 2016; feast day September 5) was the founder of the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic congregation of women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India. She was the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1979 Nobel

Danh Vo: …la Ville de Paris and Mother Tongue at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City, which featured personal effects of former secretary of defense Robert McNamara acquired through auction. Also, as part of the Hugo Boss Prize awarded to Dahn Vo in 2012, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum hosted…

Walter Lang: Films of the 1940s: Mother Wore Tights (1947) was another period musical for Grable, here as half of a husband-and-wife vaudeville song-and-dance team.

Javier Bardem: …home in the psychological thriller Mother! He also costarred with Cruz in both Loving Pablo (2017), about the relationship between Pablo Escobar and journalist Virginia Vallejo, and Asghar Farhadi’s family drama Todos lo saben (2018; Everybody Knows).

Jennifer Aniston: …Garry Marshall’s paean to motherhood, Mother’s Day (2016). In the animated Storks (2016), she provided the voice of a busy mother. Aniston later starred as a former beauty queen whose teenage daughter enters a pageant in the Netflix movie Dumplin’ (2018). She then paired up with Adam Sandler in the…

Mother’s Day, holiday in honour of mothers that is celebrated in countries throughout the world. In its modern form the holiday originated in the United States, where it is observed on the second Sunday in May. Many other countries also celebrate the holiday on this date, while some mark the

David Storey: …about a failed art master; Mother’s Day (1976); Sisters (1978); Early Days (1980); and The March on Russia (1989).

Anne Hathaway: WeCrashed and The Idea of You: …Chastain in the 1950s thriller Mother’s Instinct, about two women whose friendship unravels following a tragedy.

Valium: …won it the nickname “Mother’s Little Helper” in a 1966 song of that name by the British rock band the Rolling Stones. See also diazepam.

Abigail Goodrich Whittelsey: …edit its new periodical, the Mother’s Magazine, which first appeared in January 1833. Aimed at educating mothers about their responsibilities and potentialities, the magazine quickly proved a success. It was transferred to New York City in 1834 when the Whittelseys moved there, and she continued to edit it (with one…

Red Hot Chili Peppers: Their 1989 album, Mother’s Milk, became a surprise hit. The album went gold by early 1990 and was followed by the more successful Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991), which included the band’s first top ten single, “Under the Bridge,” as well as the Grammy Award-winning “Give It Away.”

Karel Čapek: …noble pacifist; and Matka (1938; The Mother) vindicated armed resistance to barbaric invasion.

Grazia Deledda: title, The Mother), the tragedy of a mother who realizes her dream of her son’s becoming a priest only to see him yield to the temptations of the flesh. In these and others of her more than 40 novels, Deledda often used Sardinia’s landscape as a…

Alois Hába: His opera Matka (The Mother), first performed in 1931, was his crowning achievement; in it he uses nonthematic constructions characteristic of his work as a whole. Such music makes as little use as possible of repetition and variation of distinct melodies and themes. Another athematic opera, Thy Kingdom…

Sansevieria: Mother-in-law’s tongue, or snake plant (Dracaena trifasciata, formerly Sansevieria trifasciata), is a popular houseplant with yellow-striped leaves and tiny pale green scented flowers. It is sometimes sold as Sansevieria.

dumb cane, (Dieffenbachia seguine), herbaceous plant of the arum family (Araceae), commonly grown as a houseplant. Numerous horticultural varieties have been developed, and the plant is prized for its attractive foliage and ability to tolerate low light intensities. The name mother-in-law’s tongue,

attachment theory, in developmental psychology, the theory that humans are born with a need to form a close emotional bond with a caregiver and that such a bond will develop during the first six months of a child’s life if the caregiver is appropriately responsive. Developed by the British

Jeju Island: …which furnishes a special iridescent mother-of-pearl used for inlaid lacquer. Skilled women divers, called haenyeo (“sea women”), gather seaweed and shellfish. In the early 21st century, controversy erupted over the construction of a South Korean naval base on the southern coast. Area, including 26 small associated islands, 714 square miles…

pottery: Majolica: …a nacreous effect known as mother-of-pearl (madre perle).

climate: Cloud types: …are known as nacreous or “mother-of-pearl” clouds because of their brilliant iridescent colours.

saxifrage: Its common names are strawberry begonia, strawberry geranium, and mother-of-thousands.

Friedrich Froebel: …materials, including a collection of Mother-Play and Nursery Songs, with lengthy explanations of their meaning and use. This immensely popular book was translated into many foreign languages. Froebel insisted that improvement of infant education was a vital preliminary to comprehensive educational and social reform. His experiments at the Kindergarten attracted…

motherboard, printed circuit board (PCB) that connects all components of a general-purpose computer. A motherboard is often referred to as the “backbone” or “spine” of a computer. A motherboard is easily identified, as it is the largest board inside a computer’s casing. In tower computers, it

Richard Gere: …included the eight-episode BBC series MotherFatherSon (2019).

lactation: Composition and properties of milk: The nutritional status of the mother is important throughout this period. The mother’s daily caloric intake must increase significantly in order to replenish the mother’s nutrient and energy stores. The use of drugs or smoking by the mother can adversely affect the infant; many drugs are secreted in breast milk,…

Laetare Sunday, fourth Sunday in Lent in the Western Christian Church, so called from the first word (“Rejoice”) of the introit of the liturgy. It is also known as mid-Lent Sunday, for it occurs just over halfway through Lent, and as Refreshment Sunday because it may be observed with some

Glenda Jackson: …with dementia, and the film Mothering Sunday (2021), a romantic drama set in post-World War I England. Jackson was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1978.

Graham Swift: Mothering Sunday (2016) details in retrospect an affair between a domestic servant (later a writer) and the scion of a wealthy family. In Here We Are (2020), Swift focused on three performers at a seaside variety show and their love triangle.

Battle of Stalingrad: …1967; its focal point is The Motherland Calls, a great 52-metre- (172-foot-) high statue of a winged female figure holding a sword aloft. The tip of the sword reaches 85 metres (280 feet) into the air. In the Mamayev complex is the tomb of Chuikov, who went on to lead…

Turkey: The 1982 constitution: Instead, a third party, the Motherland Party (MP), emerged as the clear winner, gaining more than half the seats. The MP—a heterogeneous coalition of liberal, nationalist, social democratic, and Islamic groups—owed its success to the unwillingness of Turks to accept the army’s prescription for government and to the reputation of…

Willem Dafoe: …crime drama adapted from the novel by Jonathan Lethem; and Togo, a Disney drama about the “Great Race of Mercy,” in which dog-sled teams were used to distribute medicine during a diphtheria epidemic in Alaska in 1925. He later appeared in The Last Thing He Wanted (2020), an adaptation of…

Alec Baldwin: 30 Rock, SNL, and later films: … chapter in the 1970s; and Motherless Brooklyn (2019), a crime drama adapted from the novel by Jonathan Lethem. Baldwin also lent his voice to such animated films as The Boss Baby (2017); its sequel, The Boss Baby: Family Business (2021); and Arctic Dogs (2019). In 2020 he reprised the role…

Terrence McNally: In his play Mothers and Sons (2014), McNally examined a mother coming to terms with her late son’s homosexuality and with society’s evolving understanding of what constitutes a family. Fire and Air (2018) is about the Ballets Russes and founder Serge Diaghilev’s relationship with Vaslav Nijinsky.

Tom Wilson: Work at MGM/Verve and beyond: …signed was Frank Zappa’s group, the Mothers of Invention. The band was strikingly unconventional, and its debut album, Freak Out! (1966), drew on rock and pop conventions as it satirized them, expanding rock’s musical base by incorporating a mix of studio manipulations, doo-wop melodies, shifting time signatures, rhythm-and-blues riffs, and…

Dirty War: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, an association of women who had lost children and grandchildren to the Dirty War, began calling international attention to the plight of the desaparecidos (“disappeared persons”) through weekly Thursday afternoon vigils in the Plaza de Mayo, fronting the presidential…

Eve Arden: …Eve Arden Show (1957–58) and The Mothers-in-Law (1967–69). In the midst of her prolific film and television career she occasionally returned to the stage, assuming roles in the Broadway musicals Very Warm for May, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II (1939), and Let’s Face It, by Cole Porter (1941).…

Devo: July 28, 1948), Bob Mothersbaugh (b. August 11, 1952, Akron, Ohio), Bob Casale (b. July 14, 1952, Kent, Ohio—d. February 17, 2014), and Alan Myers (b. 1954/55—d. June 24, 2013, Los Angeles, California).

Devo: The band members were Mark Mothersbaugh (b. May 18, 1950, Akron, Ohio, U.S.), Jerry Casale (b. July 28, 1948), Bob Mothersbaugh (b. August 11, 1952, Akron, Ohio), Bob Casale (b. July 14, 1952, Kent, Ohio—d. February 17, 2014), and Alan Myers (b. 1954/55—d. June 24, 2013, Los Angeles, California).

Little Rock Nine: Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed—became the centre of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, especially in the South. The events that followed their enrollment in Little Rock Central High School provoked intense national debate about racial segregation and civil rights.

Maurice Gee: …Priests of Ferris (1984), and Motherstone (1985)—concerns the efforts of two children to defeat evil forces that threaten an imaginary world. The dystopian series comprising Salt (2007), Gool (2008), and The Limping Man (2010) was lauded for its unsparing descriptions and careful characterizations. In The Severed Land (2017) a girl…

Motherwell and Wishaw: …comprising the neighbouring towns of Motherwell and Wishaw, North Lanarkshire council area, historic county of Lanarkshire, west-central Scotland, on the southeastern periphery of the Glasgow metropolitan area.

Motherwell and Wishaw, urban and industrial area comprising the neighbouring towns of Motherwell and Wishaw, North Lanarkshire council area, historic county of Lanarkshire, west-central Scotland, on the southeastern periphery of the Glasgow metropolitan area. Rapid growth in the late 19th and early

Robert Motherwell was an American painter, one of the founders and principal exponents of Abstract Expressionism (q.v.), who was among the first American artists to cultivate accidental elements in his work. A precocious youth, Motherwell received a scholarship to study art when he was 11 years

Agra Fort: The Pearl Mosque (Moti Masjid), constructed by Shah Jahān, is a tranquil and perfectly proportioned structure made entirely of white marble. The Hall of Private Audience (Diwan-i-Khas) was used for receiving distinguished visitors. The famous Peacock Throne was once kept there, before Aurangzeb took it to…

Min Mountains: …Mountains, is known as the Motian Mountains.

Keith Jarrett: …bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Paul Motian; and he toured and recorded with the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek. During this period he experimented with a vast array of tonal and structural devices that previously had been associated more with world music than jazz. At the same time, he revealed his…

Keith Jarrett: …bassist Charlie Haden, and drummer Paul Motian; and he toured and recorded with the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek. During this period he experimented with a vast array of tonal and structural devices that previously had been associated more with world music than jazz. At the same time, he revealed his…

dance: Developing movements into phrases: In motif and development, material from within the phrase is developed in new ways, for example, by embellishing it with other movements (the same jump but with different arm movements), by imitating it on a different scale (the same jump, only bigger or smaller), or by…

Motihari, city, northwestern Bihar state, northeastern India. It is situated on the east bank of a lake, about 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Bettiah. Motihari was constituted a municipality in 1869. A major road centre, the city trades in oilseeds and has sugar-milling and cotton-weaving

human digestive system: Motilin: A high level of motilin in the blood stimulates the contraction of the fundus and antrum and accelerates gastric emptying. It contracts the gallbladder and increases the squeeze pressure of the lower esophageal sphincter. Motilin is secreted between meals.

Spain: Prehistory: …where fortified hamlets known as motillas dominated a flat landscape. In eastern and northern Spain people did not live in villages at all but lived in hamlets such as Moncín (Zaragoza) or on isolated family farms such as El Castillo (Frías de Albarracín, Teruel). In the wetter regions of Spain…

Motilón, (Spanish: “Hairless Ones”), collective name loosely applied by the Spaniards to various highland and lowland American Indian peoples who lived in and about the Colombian and Venezuelan Andes and Lake Maracaibo. Chief among them were the Chaké and the Mape, who were agricultural and

motion, in physics, change with time of the position or orientation of a body. Motion along a line or a curve is called translation. Motion that changes the orientation of a body is called rotation. In both cases all points in the body have the same velocity (directed speed) and the same

motion, in parliamentary rules of order, a procedure by which proposals are submitted for the consideration of deliberative assemblies. If a motion is in order, it then becomes subject to the action of the assembly. See parliamentary procedure. In procedural law, a motion is an application to a

motion capture, the process used to translate physical movement in three-dimensional (3D) space into a digitized and tracked computer format. Motion capture is used primarily in creative animation, as actors or objects can be filmed and have their movement data transposed onto animation assets. The

graphic design: Postwar graphic design in the United States: “Motion graphics” are kinetic graphic designs for film titles and television that occur in the fourth dimension—time. A variety of animated film techniques were applied to motion-picture titling in the 1950s by Saul Bass and, in Canada, by Norman McLaren of the Canadian National Film…

African American literature: The turn of the 21st century: …a Hugo for the autobiographical The Motion of Light in Water (1988). The voices of novelist John Edgar Wideman (who twice won the PEN/Faulkner Award given by the international writers’ organization Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists, and Novelists [PEN]) and his incarcerated brother Robby in Brothers and Keepers (1984), one of…

history of film: Decline of the Hollywood studios: …Japan, the government created a Bureau of Motion Picture Affairs to coordinate the production of entertainment features with patriotic, morale-boosting themes and messages about the “American way of life,” the nature of the enemy and the allies, civilian responsibility on the home front, and the fighting forces themselves. Initially unsophisticated…

Sam Wood: Later films: …anticommunist, helped found the watchdog Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals in 1944, and he served as its first president. In 1947 he testified against many figures in Hollywood before the House Un-American Activities Committee. His will specified that his heirs (except his wife) had to sign…

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, professional organization for those engaged in the production of motion pictures in the United States. Membership, which is by invitation only, is based on distinctive achievements in one of the branches of film production recognized by the academy and

Motion Picture Association (MPA), in the United States, organization of the major motion-picture studios that rates movies for suitability to various kinds of audiences, aids the studios in international distribution, advises them on taxation, works to prevent film piracy, and carries on a

Motion Picture Association (MPA), in the United States, organization of the major motion-picture studios that rates movies for suitability to various kinds of audiences, aids the studios in international distribution, advises them on taxation, works to prevent film piracy, and carries on a

history of film: Early growth of the film industry: …powerful anti-Trust organization was the Motion Picture Distributing and Sales Company, which began operation in May 1910 (three weeks after the inception of General Film) and which eventually came to serve 47 exchanges in 27 cities. For nearly two years, independents were able to present a united front through the…

Motion Picture Patents Company, trust of 10 film producers and distributors who attempted to gain complete control of the motion-picture industry in the United States from 1908 to 1912. The original members were the American companies Edison, Vitagraph, Biograph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, and Kalem;

Hays Office, American organization that promulgated a moral code for films. In 1922, after a number of scandals involving Hollywood personalities, film industry leaders formed the organization to counteract the threat of government censorship and to create favourable publicity for the industry.