when Vitagraph purchased a controlling interest in Lubin, Selig, and Essanay. Postwar prosperity Vitagraph's leading star of the post-World War I period was comedian Larry Semon. He had joined the studio in 1916 as a writer and director, but soon became a star in a steady stream of comedy shorts. A former cartoonist, Semon favored large-scale slapstick. His films were so profitable that Vitagraph gave Semon a free hand in making them, but Semon became so extravagant in staging the films that the expenses nearly broke the company. Semon's relationship with Vitagraph became strained when the company insisted that Semon finance the films himself, and he left for Educational Pictures in 1923. With the loss of foreign distributors and the rise of the monopolistic studio system, Vitagraph was slowly but surely being squeezed out of the business. On January 28, 1925, it left the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (later MPAA); the owner, Albert E. Smith, explained: Acquisition by Warner Bros. On April 20, 1925, Smith finally gave up and sold the company to Warner Bros. for a comfortable profit. The Flatbush studio (renamed Vitaphone) was later used as an independent unit within Warner Bros., specializing in early sound shorts. Vitaphone closed the Flatbush plant in 1940. Vitagraph brand name The Vitagraph name was briefly resurrected on two occasions. In 1932-33 producer Leon Schlesinger made six westerns starring John Wayne and released them through the Warner Bros. exchanges. The studio chose to market these very-low-budget features under the less prestigious Vitagraph banner. In 1960 Vitagraph returned to theater screens (starting with 1960's Looney Tunes cartoon Hopalong Casualty), with the end titles reading "A Warner Bros. Cartoon / A Vitagraph Release". Merrie Melodies of the same period (starting with that same year's From Hare to Heir) had the same end title, with the last line being "A Vitaphone Release." This may have been done to protect the studio's ownership of the two dormant trade names. Both the Vitagraph and Vitaphone names were retired in 1969. Publication Founder Albert E. Smith, in collaboration with coauthor Phil A. Koury, wrote an autobiography, Two Reels and a Crank, in 1952. It includes a very detailed history of Vitagraph and a lengthy list of people who had been in the Vitagraph Family which included Billy Anderson, Florence Lawrence, Florence Turner, Florence Auer, Richard Barthelmess, John Bunny, Francis X. Bushman, Dolores Costello, Maurice Costello,