The Keystone Kops never made a film at the Vitagraph Building in Bay Shore, or Long Island.

Our Gang comedies had absolutely nothing to do with the Vitagraph Company at all.

Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, and Marie Dressler never worked for Vitagraph so they could not have filmed at the Bay Shore Vitagraph. In additon, Charlie Chaplin never lived nor did he own a home in Bay Shore.

As for A Small Piece of the World: The Bay Shore Story- Dennis Hopper, shown in the video is not a film historian and his part about the Vitagraph studio had no truth and it was obvious he had no working knowledge of the Bay Shore studio. If he was such an expert, he would have photos of the studio and the staff. He clearly did not.

Pearl White, star of the serial, The Perils of Pauline (1915) worked for Pathe when she filmed that series and never worked for Vitagraph. No such episode was ever filmed on the railroad tracks in Bay Shore or any part of Bay Shore.

The voice over speaking about Vitagraph also had no truth as well. Also, the footage used in the Vitagraph segment was not from the studio and therefore the film piece was edited in for reasons of deception.

Refer to the articles on this site for accurate and well researched material by a trained and experienced film historian.

An example of the how certain people comit fraud, the Westfield Mall approached the Bay Shore Historical Society sometime in 2008 to display historic photots of Bay Shore. Not having anything to present, the Hancock's conspired with Suffolk Printing to obtain high resolution scans from the original glass plates owned by the Long Island Maritime Museum. When I interviewed Charlie of Suffolk Printing, he told me that he brought his own scanning and computer equipment to the museum to make the scans.

Those photos, from the museum's collection of Martin J. Anderson's glass plate photography are what line the walls of the Westfield Mall. The Hancock's lied to the Westfield Mall staff and made them think that the photos came from the Bay Shore Historical Society. A plaque was paid for by Westfield and the Bay Shore Historical Society wrongly took credit for property that did not belong to it.

I wrote the following letter.

Westfield investigated my sources, learned that the Hancock's had deceived them and the plaque was recently changed to reflect Long Island Maritime Museum as the source of the photos from it's collection.

Any photos from the Bay Shore Historical Society that claim to be from it's archives produced by photographer Martin J. Anderson are really from the collection of the archives of the Long Island Maritime Museum.

Thomas Santorelli 2011