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Segundo de Chomón became involved in film through his wife, who was an actress in Pathé films. In 1902 he became a concessionary for Pathé in Barcelona, distributing its product in Spanish-speaking countries and managing a factory for the coloring of Pathé films. He began shooting footage of Spanish locations for the company, then in 1905 moved to Paris where he became a trick film specialist. The body of work he created over five years was outstanding. Films such as The Red Spectre (1907), Kiri-Kis (1907), The Invisible Thief (1909) and A Panicky Picnic (1909) are among the most imaginative and technically accomplished of their age.
De Chomón created fantastical narratives embellished with ingenious effects, gorgeous color, innovative hand-drawn and puppet animation, tricks of the eye that surprise and delight, and startling turns of surreal imagination. It is curious why he is not generally known as one of the early cinema masters, except among the cognoscenti in the field. Perhaps it is because there is a smaller body of work than that created by Georges Méliès (his works can perhaps be described as a cross between that of Méliès and another who combined trickery with animation, Émile Cohl); perhaps it's because he was a Spaniard working in France for the key part of his film career that has meant that neither side has championed him as much as they might have done. De Chomón carried on as a filmmaker, specializing in trick effects, working for Pathé, Itala and others, and contributing effects work to two of the most notable films of the silent era, Giovanni Pastrone's Cabiria (1914) and Abel Gance's Napoleon (1927).- Thomas "Tad" Aloysius Dorgan was born on 29 April, 1877, at San Francisco, the son of Thomas J. and Anna Dorgan. His father worked as a laundryman and later as a teamster in the Bay Area.
Dorgan began working in the mid 1890s as a cartoonist for the San Francisco Bulletin. In 1904 he joined the staff of the New York Evening Journal as a cartoonist and sports writer. Soon his cartoons and sports columns were being picked up by the Hearst wire service and published nationwide and abroad. While at the Evening Journal Dorgan was instrumental in advancing the career of fellow sports writer, Charles E. van Loan.
Through his wit and creative use of the English language, Dorgan became one of the most beloved sports journalists of his day. He was famous for assigning many sports celebrities with ingenious nicknames and for originating some of the most popular slang phrases of all time. Dorgan was thought to have been the first to use slang terms like: "Twenty-Three Skidoo", "He's a Hard-Boiled Egg", "Dumb Dora", "Finale Hopper", "Solid Ivory", "Drug Store Cowboy", "Cake-Eater", "The Cat's Meow" "Nickel Nurse", "There's Nobody Home", "You Tell 'Em the First Hundred Years are the Hardest", Dumb-Bell", 'As Busy as a One-Armed Paper-Hanger with Hives" and others.
Tad Dorgan died on 2 May, 1929, at his home in Great Neck, Long Island. He had been suffering from heart disease for several years and even though he spent most of that that time bedridden he was able to continue working up to a few days before his death. The end came not long after he came down with pneumonia.