Frank E. Kleinschmidt

Frank Emil Kleinschmidt (1871-1949) was a photographer and documentary cinematographer who explored the Arctic and filmed with the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I.

Kleinschmidt was born in Alt Rüdnitz, Germany, on September 28, 1871. In 1893, he emigrated to the United States while working his way around the globe as a sailor on tramp steamers. Kleinschmidt went to Alaska in 1897 as an explorer during the Klondike Gold Rush, and raised his family there. He had his first experience with making motion pictures around 1909 while shooting film of a walrus hunt. His debut in the film business came when he released a motion picture record of the 1911 Carnegie Pittsburgh Museum expedition to Alaska and Siberia.

Kleinschmidt was attached to the Austro-Hungarian army in 1915 as an official photographer and cinematographer. His film War on Three Fronts (USA, 1916) has scenes showing military operations in the Balkans, on the Eastern front and near the Adriatic coast at Trieste. Kleinschmidt covered the Gorlice-Tarnow Offensive from the frontline trenches in May 1915, shot film from a plane of the bombardment of Belgrade and recorded naval operations on an Austrian submarine in the Mediterranean.

After the war Kleinschmidt worked on several film projects, mostly related to the Arctic North. In May 1922, he and his wife sailed from Seattle, Washington, and produced Adventures in the Far North. He was probably most successful commercially with a short film released in 1925, picturing Santa Claus in his workshop while he visits his Eskimo neighbors and tends his reindeer. Kleinschmidt toured across the United States with this film around Christmas time.

Frank Kleinschmidt moved to Hollywood, California, around 1932. He died in Los Angeles on March 25, 1949. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

[Biography from Wikipedia]