• Born: 1869 in Vilnius, Lithuania
• Died: Sep 15, 1934 in New York, New York
• Occupation: Director, Writer
• Active: teens-'20s
• Major Genres: Drama
• Career Highlights: Ost und West, Enlighten Thy Daughter, One Law for Both
• First Major Screen Credit: Should a Woman Divorce? (1914)

Biography

A busy presence in the independent film market of 1914-1925, Ivan Abramson had been a director for Jacob P. Adler's Jewish stage company for 15 years. In 1914, Abramson founded Ivan Film Productions, Inc., whose best-known productions were moralistic stories of the kind that would be termed "exploitation melodrama" in later decades. The best known was Enlighten Thy Daughter (1917), which he also wrote and directed. Zena Keefe starred as the naive girl who loses her innocence on a stormy night because her parents failed to inform her of the facts of life. (The melodrama was dusted off by low-budget producer Louis Weiss and remade as a talkie in 1933.) Abramson left the Ivan company in 1917 to found the Graphic Film Corporation, whose first production, Moral Suicide, was yet another exploitation thriller. Catching 'em on their way up or down, the New York-based Graphic productions featured both the veteran Gail Kane and Broadway newcomer Tallulah Bankhead, the latter making her screen debut in Abramson's 1918 When Men Betray. Like most independent operators, Abramson was out of the film business by the mid-'20s. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide